4 ms·

Emacs Tip #27: midnight-mode

29 points by apgwoz 18y ago

petercooper 18y ago
Whew, leaving emacs open for three months? That's intense. I've had uptimes of up to a year, but I knew I was totally wrong to do so and it wasn't in a corporate environment as this sounds to be ;-)
- jodrellblank 18y ago
  One of Steve Yegge's old rants includes the suggestion that some of his favourite systems are those that have both extensible-while-running and doesn't-crash - one being emacs. Uptimes of up to a year aren't totally wrong - having to shut down and close everything to manually work around some memory leaks and gradual flakiness or to guard against crashes isn't a great or desirable feature, even if it is extremely common.
  - petercooper 18y ago
    I was implicitly referring to routine kernel updates (desirable on most OS - though not all), or other key software updates (especially on OS X or Windows) - rather than forced restarts for stability reasons.
    - kirubakaran 18y ago
      > routine kernel updates ksplice
      - petercooper 18y ago
        Very interesting. Just submitted that to HN as a separate link. A very new technology though. If you fancy leaving a comment with any insight you have: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=385225 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=385225
- apgwoz 18y ago
  It seems perfectly reasonable for me to have emacs open for a year. Why do you say it was wrong?
  - petercooper 18y ago
    I guess it depends on your operating system, but there are few where it'd be good operational policy to not have key system updates at least a few times a year. They do exist, of course..
    - apgwoz 18y ago
      But, if you're using one of those systems, the best security practice is to not be on a network, and everyone follows best practices, right? :)
- davidw 18y ago
  BTW, for those interested in finding out how long your emacs has been running, I wrote an emacs uptime package a while back: http://www.welton.it/freesoftware/files/uptime.el http://www.welton.it/freesoftware/files/uptime.el
silentbicycle 18y ago
Nice! You can find a lot of these by reading the Emacs info pages closely...never noticed that one. My favorite "wish I had known about that sooner" part is iswitchb-mode -- it tremendously improves buffer switching, IMHO. (I usually filter the buffer list with iswitchb and then hold C-k to close buffers.) It makes the buffer switch prompt in the minibuffer behave like dmenu (http://www.suckless.org/programs/dmenu.html http://www.suckless.org/programs/dmenu.html), for people who are already big fans of one or the other. Also variously cool/vital: flyspell, keyboard macros, the mark and kill rings, abbrev, set-goal-column, C-x zzzzzz.
- defunkt 18y ago
  You might want to check out ido mode, which is like iswitchb mode but for buffers, files, symbols, anything. http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs-en/InteractivelyDoThings http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs-en/InteractivelyDoThings
- litewulf 18y ago
  If you like abbrev, try out pabbrev, its even more awesome. (Theres also another predictive abbrevation mode that seems to have better UI, but I had difficulty getting it working in my "I will spend 30 minutes mucking with my .emacs" moment)

29 points by apgwoz 18y ago

Whew, leaving emacs open for three months? That's intense. I've had uptimes of up to a year, but I knew I was totally wrong to do so and it wasn't in a corporate environment as this sounds to be ;-)

jodrellblank 18y ago
One of Steve Yegge's old rants includes the suggestion that some of his favourite systems are those that have both extensible-while-running and doesn't-crash - one being emacs. Uptimes of up to a year aren't totally wrong - having to shut down and close everything to manually work around some memory leaks and gradual flakiness or to guard against crashes isn't a great or desirable feature, even if it is extremely common.
- petercooper 18y ago
  I was implicitly referring to routine kernel updates (desirable on most OS - though not all), or other key software updates (especially on OS X or Windows) - rather than forced restarts for stability reasons.
  - kirubakaran 18y ago
    > routine kernel updates ksplice
    - petercooper 18y ago
      Very interesting. Just submitted that to HN as a separate link. A very new technology though. If you fancy leaving a comment with any insight you have: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=385225 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=385225
apgwoz 18y ago
It seems perfectly reasonable for me to have emacs open for a year. Why do you say it was wrong?
- petercooper 18y ago
  I guess it depends on your operating system, but there are few where it'd be good operational policy to not have key system updates at least a few times a year. They do exist, of course..
  - apgwoz 18y ago
    But, if you're using one of those systems, the best security practice is to not be on a network, and everyone follows best practices, right? :)
davidw 18y ago
BTW, for those interested in finding out how long your emacs has been running, I wrote an emacs uptime package a while back: http://www.welton.it/freesoftware/files/uptime.el http://www.welton.it/freesoftware/files/uptime.el

silentbicycle 18y ago

Nice! You can find a lot of these by reading the Emacs info pages closely...never noticed that one. My favorite "wish I had known about that sooner" part is iswitchb-mode -- it tremendously improves buffer switching, IMHO. (I usually filter the buffer list with iswitchb and then hold C-k to close buffers.) It makes the buffer switch prompt in the minibuffer behave like dmenu (http://www.suckless.org/programs/dmenu.html http://www.suckless.org/programs/dmenu.html), for people who are already big fans of one or the other. Also variously cool/vital: flyspell, keyboard macros, the mark and kill rings, abbrev, set-goal-column, C-x zzzzzz.

defunkt 18y ago
You might want to check out ido mode, which is like iswitchb mode but for buffers, files, symbols, anything. http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs-en/InteractivelyDoThings http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs-en/InteractivelyDoThings
litewulf 18y ago
If you like abbrev, try out pabbrev, its even more awesome. (Theres also another predictive abbrevation mode that seems to have better UI, but I had difficulty getting it working in my "I will spend 30 minutes mucking with my .emacs" moment)