This page is a journal of my experiments with emacs. In November of 2008, I decided to use emacs for all my text editing purposes, after long been convinced of Emacs's power and utility in editing programs and texts. At this time, I consider myself to be an adequate user of vim, emacs and TextMate. My goal is to teach myself emacs in an auto-didactic manner and make a note of the questions I had and the solutions I found for them. I hope this serves as a reminder for myself on a later date.
Note: All the instructions on this page, unless otherwise noted, are tested on Mac OS X systems and Aquamacs.
Python + Emacs
Install rope, ropemode, pep8 and pyflakes.
$ pip install ropemode pep8 pyflakes
Install yasnippet-bundle and pymacs in emacs:
M-x package-install yasnippet-bundle
References:
Emacs Client on Mac OS X
Here is a nice AppleScript created by Brian McCallister that provides proper emacsclient behaviour. Update: this script launches a "terminal" window, which is an annoyance.
Navigation
Go to Shortcut
Goto line M-gg.
End of the buffer M-x >
End of the line C-e
Beginning of the line C-a
Editing
Do what Shortcut
zap-to-char (say e) M-z e
merge multiple lines M-^ (alt-shift-6)
Customising emacs
Customizing emacs is done through editing ~/.emacs file. Though, if
you are using emacs-starter-kit you will be putting files under
emacs.d.
Adding a new key binding.
You can bind any operation that you can do in emacs to a set of key strokes. For example: the emacs-git integration -- magit can be invoked by typing M-x magit-status. But, this gets tiring after a while, so you may want to assign a short cut. Short cuts in Emacs start with 'C-c'. You have to decide what comes after C-c. In this case, I chose magit-status.
Add the following lines to your .emacs file:
;; C-c ms Magit-status
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c ms") 'magit-status)
The first line is the comment (a good practice) and the second line tells emacs to call magit-status when you press C-c ms.
After editing a custom function in .emacs file how do I reload it?
Select the block of code that you want to reload and hit C-x C-e (evaluate). This can also be achieved by positioning the cursor (point in emacs lingo) after the last closing parentheses of the function and typing C-x C-e.
Editing ConTEXt files with Emacs
Install ConTEXt. Install AUCTEX using port (on mac).
$ sudo port install auctex
Active AucTEX by putting this (load "auctex.el" nil t t) in .emacs.
Auto completion.
Install YASnippet to get auto-completion on emacs. To use YASnippet, type in the trigger word and press TAB. For example, typing def and pressing TAB will give you
def name():
"""
"""
The next tab press allows you replace the default function name with your own, with subsequent tabs taking you to the parameter list, docstring and finally the body of the function
What programming font?
This page has a nice collection of free programming fonts optimized for editing code over long durations of code. The rule of thumb to remember while selecting a programming font is: it should be a fixed width font. This is especially true in languages like "Python":Python where indentation is essential in understanding the code flow.
I currently use Monaco, a font that is available on Mac OS X set to size 10.
Emacs Muse Notes
Muse tutorial.
Instead of editing the muse-latex.el and muse-book.el files, just use
customize on the muse-latex-header and muse-book-latex-header variables.
Upgrades to new versions of muse will be much smoother.
Emacs + Git integration
Main entry point M-x magit-status (bound to C-c ms). Go to the magit
buffer *magit: PRJNAME* and press tab on the line containing the
filenames. The modified text will expand underneath. Press TAB again
collapse.
Press g in the magit buffer to refresh git status. or execute
M-x magit-status from one of the repository files.
Removing trailing white spaces
The emacs manual
defines tells us that setting buffer variable show-trailing-whitespace
to t will show trailing white spaces.
(setq show-trailing-whitespace 't)
Paste the above line into the current emacs buffer and evaluate the
statement by pressing C-x C-e. Delete the white spaces with
M-x delete-trailing-whitespace
Check to see if your emacs configuration is correct.
Source
emacs -q --eval '(condition-case err (progn (load "~/.emacs") (kill-emacs 0)) (error (kill-emacs 1)))'
Shut down emacs gracefully from the command line
emacsclient -n -e '(kill-emacs)'
How to ? Command
Create a Directory from within emacs M-x make-direct ory
[Spell M-x ispell
check](http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_no
de/emacs/Spelling.html)
Undo C-x u or C-_
Describe key C-h k
Describe bindings C-h b
Describe functions C-h f
Emacs Server/Client
See Running emacs as
daemon.
Setting up SLIME
Movie showing how to setup slime, swank, sbcl and
emacs
Some notes:
check out slime and put it somewhere convenient, ie.,
$HOME/elisp/slime.
Put the following lines in .sbclrc
(require :asdf)
(push "/Users/pradeep/elisp/slime/" asdf:*central-registry*)
Load swank in sbcl:
$ sbcl
(asdf:oos 'asdf:load-op :swank)
(setf swank:*use-dedicated-output-stream* nil)
(setf swank:*communication-style* :fd-handler)
(swank:create-server :dont-close t)
Installing emacs24
What's new in emacs
24?
git clone git://git.savannah.gnu.org/emacs.git
cd emacs
sudo apt-get install libxpm-dev
sudo apt-get install libgif-dev
sudo apt-get install libtiff-dev
./configure
make
sudo make install
My initial impression of emacs24 is that it feels much faster compared
to the stock emacs-snapshot available on ubuntu maverick.
Understanding Emacs
Essays on Emacs
Interesting modes
Help
Interesting reads
Dotemacs
Distributions
Packages
Information well / emacs people
TODO
Is it possible to show the keybindings in the modeline?
Use case: I have configured 'Fn' keys for mode specific actions, but do not remember them, or I want emacs to prompt me to use them.
Starting point: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ModeLineConfiguration
Random tips
- Use
M-x new-frame create a new Emacs window associated with the current Emacs instance. Great for organising, or when running Emacs on a multi monitor setup!
CIDER
Journal
Fri, January 3, 2020
: Trying out Swaroop's Rangoli-emacs
Sat, Jan 4, 2020
: if you see emacs ssl certificate problem error when installing a new dependency (zencoding-mode in my case), try to launch emacs from the terminal emacs -nw instead of the graphical mode. This finds the root certificates.
Thu, Jan 16, 2020
: settings up mac os x and iterm2 for emacs.
what I want is to be able to:
1. on the laptop: use the `command` key as `option` and vice versa, so that it is similar to the "regular keyboard" (I use the Das Keyboards at work and home)
2. in ther iterm2 window, be able to use left-alt key as `meta`. so that when I type `left-alt-m` I get `Meta-m`.
