My .emacs is on GitHub: http://github.com/avar/dotemacs/blob/master/.emacs http://github.com/avar/dotemacs/blob/master/.emacs along with the elisp library I use

My .emacs is on GitHub: http://github.com/avar/dotemacs/blob/master/.emacs http://github.com/avar/dotemacs/blob/master/.emacs along with the elisp library I use http://github.com/avar/elisp http://github.com/avar/elisp Some noteworthy things: It's a ~1200 line file (and expanding) this is how I navigate it: (defun show-dot-emacs-structure () "Show the outline-mode structure of ~/.emacs" (interactive) (occur "^;;;;+")) Which shows the outline of the file, e.g.: 74 matches for "^;;;;+" in buffer: .emacs 57:;;;; Debugging 67:;;;; Load paths 112:;;;; Emacs' interface 229:;;;; User info 236:;;;; Encoding 253:;;;; Indenting 273:;;;;; Per-project indentation settings 275:;;;;;; Git A quiet startup: ;; Don't display the 'Welcome to GNU Emacs' buffer on startup (setq inhibit-startup-message t) ;; Display this instead of "For information about GNU Emacs and the ;; GNU system, type C-h C-a.". This has been made intentionally hard ;; to customize in GNU Emacs so I have to resort to hackery. (defun display-startup-echo-area-message () "If it wasn't for this you'd be GNU/Spammed by now" (message "")) ;; Don't insert instructions in the *scratch* buffer (setq initial-scratch-message nil) Core UI settings: ;; Display the line and column number in the modeline (setq line-number-mode t) (setq column-number-mode t) (line-number-mode t) (column-number-mode t) ;; syntax highlight everywhere (global-font-lock-mode t) ;; Show matching parens (mixed style) (show-paren-mode t) (setq show-paren-delay 0.0) ;; 'mixed highligts the whole sexp making it unreadable, maybe tweak ;; color display? (setq show-paren-style 'parenthesis) ;; Highlight selection (transient-mark-mode t) ;; make all "yes or no" prompts show "y or n" instead (fset 'yes-or-no-p 'y-or-n-p) Changing the switching is worth it, but I really need to find something that allows me to <TAB> between different possibilities once completion is exhausted, e.g. if I say "foo.c" and have both "foo.c" and "foo.c.txt": ;; Switching (iswitchb-mode 1) (icomplete-mode 1) I wish I could also turn off the annoying #-files, but they're hardcoded in Emacs's C code: ;; I use version control, don't annoy me with backup files everywhere (setq make-backup-files nil) (setq auto-save-default nil) Better file selection: ;;; Electric minibuffer! ;;; When selecting a file to visit, // will mean / and ;;; ~ will mean $HOME regardless of preceding text. (setq file-name-shadow-tty-properties '(invisible t)) (file-name-shadow-mode 1) I didn't write this, but it's very useful. It emulates vim's sofftab feature. So indenting with spaces doesn't suck anymore. (defun backward-delete-whitespace-to-column () "delete back to the previous column of whitespace, or just one char if that's not possible. This emulates vim's softtabs feature." (interactive) (if indent-tabs-mode (call-interactively 'backward-delete-char-untabify) ;; let's get to work (let ((movement (% (current-column) tab-width)) (p (point))) ;; brain freeze, should be easier to calculate goal (when (= movement 0) (setq movement tab-width)) (if (save-excursion (backward-char movement) (string-match "^\\s-+$" (buffer-substring-no-properties (point) p))) (delete-region (- p movement) p) (call-interactively 'backward-delete-char-untabify))))) (global-set-key (kbd "<DEL>") 'backward-delete-whitespace-to-column) I really wish I could find something for Emacs which automatically detects the style of the code I'm editing and switches the coding style to that. For libraries I use (eval-after-load) for everything and (autoload). It really speeds up startup. ack is a much better M-x grep (needs ack.el): ;;;;; ack (defalias 'grep 'ack) I have something to make swank work with clojure and sbcl, but it's too large to include here. clojure-mode et al make it really hard to do this, unfortunately (upstream isn't really interested in this use case): (defun run-clojure () "Starts clojure in Slime" (interactive) (pre-slime) (slime 'clojure)) (defun run-sbcl () "Starts SBCL in Slime" (interactive) (pre-slime) (slime 'sbcl)) You should use nopaste.el (shameless plug): http://github.com/avar/nopaste http://github.com/avar/nopaste ;;;;; nopaste.el (autoload 'nopaste "nopaste" nil t) (eval-after-load "nopaste" '(progn (setq nopaste-nickname "avar") (setq nopaste-channel nil) (setq nopaste-description nil))) (global-set-key (kbd "C-c n p") 'nopaste) (global-set-key (kbd "C-c n y") 'nopaste-yank-url) Here's how I still tolerate GMail and other web apps. I can click on any text field in Chrome and edit it in Emacs: ;;;;; Emacs Chrome edit server - http://wiki.github.com/stsquad/emacs_chrome/ (when (getenv "DISPLAY") (require 'edit-server) (setq edit-server-new-frame nil) (add-hook 'edit-server-done-hook 'on-edit-server-done-do-backup) (edit-server-start)) And this has saved my many a time from losing web form content (I should really make this use Git): (defun on-edit-server-done-do-backup () "Run when text is sent to Google Chrome. Do a backup of the stuff sent there in case something goes wrong, e.g. Chrome crashes." (let* ((backup-dir "~/._emacs_chrome-backup") (backup-file (format "%s.txt" (float-time))) (backup-path (concat backup-dir "/" backup-file))) (unless (file-directory-p backup-dir) (make-directory backup-dir)) (write-region (point-min) (point-max) backup-path))) Install browse-kill-ring.el now: (global-set-key (kbd "C-c k") 'browse-kill-ring) That's about it for the really interesting stuff. But there's a lot of other mundane stuff in there.