37 ms·

Emacs, naked

294 points by bzg 13y ago

Configure GNU Emacs (24.3 or above) to avoid distraction.

terhechte 13y ago
Coming from Vim, when I switched to Emacs, I found the starting aesthetic experience more than lacking (or, ugly). It took me some time (and a helpful HN discussion) until I found good themes and good plugins to make it look aesthetically pleasing (to my eyes, at least, after all people's tastes differ). If somebody is looking for a nice Emacs theme and feels that the OP is a bit too minimal, have a look at my Emacs conf (I know, shameless plug) here [1] There's also a screenshot [2] This configuration is kinda optimized for Emacs+Evil to be more like Vim, so you may just want to have a look at the theme / plugins. [1] https://github.com/terhechte/emacs.d https://github.com/terhechte/emacs.d [2] https://raw2.github.com/terhechte/emacs.d/master/screenshot.png https://raw2.github.com/terhechte/emacs.d/master/screenshot....
- bzg 13y ago
  Oh, nice mode-line! I can't figure out how to get the theme from your repo, any hint?
  - jbeja 13y ago
    I believe that is emacs powerline: https://github.com/jonathanchu/emacs-powerline https://github.com/jonathanchu/emacs-powerline
    - bzg 13y ago
      This is it, thanks. Beautiful, but too bad there is no easy way to deactivate it.
  - terhechte 13y ago
    Hey, I'm using the Soothe theme, with local modifications: https://github.com/terhechte/emacs.d/tree/master/elpa/soothe-theme-20130805.1700 https://github.com/terhechte/emacs.d/tree/master/elpa/soothe... The original can be found here: https://github.com/emacsfodder/emacs-soothe-theme https://github.com/emacsfodder/emacs-soothe-theme Another nice theme is Cyberpunk: https://github.com/n3mo/cyberpunk-theme.el https://github.com/n3mo/cyberpunk-theme.el As jbeja answered, I'm using powerline with the default theme for the status bar: (require 'powerline) (powerline-default-theme)
- anuragramdasan 13y ago
  What line numbering plugin is this? Looks very similar to vim numbers. I've been trying to find something like that for emacs for a while now. All I found wasLinum mode, which clutters the UI and doesnt give relative line numbering.
  - terhechte 13y ago
    Hey, I'm using relative-number: https://github.com/terhechte/emacs.d/blob/master/plugins/relative-number.el https://github.com/terhechte/emacs.d/blob/master/plugins/rel... It mostly works as well as in Vim, except if you're using Code folding, which confuses it a bit.
  - fafner 13y ago
    Why do you want line numbers next to your code at all? Aren't they just visual clutter? The current line number is shown in the mode-line anyway.
    - rbonvall 13y ago
      At least in Vim, line numbers help to move around and operate on text really quickly. Move cursor to ninth line above: 9k Delete from here to seventh line below: 7dd Copy thirteenth line above after second line below: :-13t+2 Having line numbers always visible (either relative or absolute) helps for doing this operations quickly.
      - aaronem 13y ago
        Emacs offers goto-line on M-g g or M-g M-g, which admittedly is not the handiest of key sequences; I've been thinking about rebinding that to be more useful, but I don't use it often enough to really need to. Line numbers are also useful, for example, when doing web development, and hunting down the line that's mentioned in a stack trace. Absent integration between the browser's debugger and Emacs, which is something I've fiddled around with (based on mozrepl) but never got working, that's a good second best.
    - klibertp 13y ago
- mercurial 13y ago
  I try out emacs every few years. Every time, I get discouraged whenever I attempt to do something simple (change the theme, etc) by the amount of configuration necessary. I may try your repo, since it seems to have a lot of stuff already configured. The other thing is that Emacs is really slow to start as soon as you have a few plugins, compared to vim.
  - terhechte 13y ago
    If you try my repo, have a look at the custom keys that I defined, that helps things a lot. Also, the one great feature about Emacs is MX (which I bound to CMD-. This opens the minibuffer where you can execute arbitrary EmacsLisp functions. Everything you do in Emacs (even arrow up, left or right) is bound to an Emacs function. So if you start out, and you want to do something, but you don't know the shortcut, just do CMD-. and start typing. The naming is really good. Say you want to deactivate line truncation. You go into MX and type "truncate" and among the results will be "toggle-truncate-lines" you go there, hit enter, and you're done. This is a bit more difficult in stock Emacs, as it has no wildcard search for MX but I'm using the Helm plugin, which offers this feature and makes it really really easy to find functions. I hardly ever use all these Emacs shortcuts like C-c C-e ... I just hit MX and type what I need to do. Sadly, startup is still really slow for my configuration, which is why I have a Vim config with similar keys for quick Terminal usage. I start Emacs in the morning and keep it open all day. When I need to quickly fix something in the Terminal, I use Vim.
    - aaronem 13y ago
      An excellent point; having a command line in your editor is something whose value is hard to recognize until you've tried it, and hard to overstate once you're used to it. It might, though, be worth using the typical Emacs nomenclature for key sequences, i.e. M-x where you use 'MX' and (assuming your Command key is bound to Meta, as is ordinary for OS X Emacs users) M-. where you use 'CMD-.' -- your choice of preferred nomenclature is of course up to you, but using the standard forms makes it easier for other users, particularly neophytes such as the one to whom your advice here is directed, to understand what you're describing and relate it to the Emacs manual and to whatever other resources they're using.
- dilap 13y ago
  Very interesting thing you've got going there, and I love the visual aesthetic. Two quick tips that you probably already know, but just in case it's useful to you or someone else: * Emacs can wrap lines at word boundaries, while intelligently preserving/extending indentation (something like this: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/8581161 https://gist.github.com/anonymous/8581161) * If you're using emacs on the mac, it's worth taking a look at the railwaycat fork ("brew install emacs-mac"). Some improvements over vanilla emacs: Emoji (and other fun unicode) display works, fullscreen and maximize work better, scrolling with the trackpad works in a reasonable way.
  - abrowne 13y ago
    I think you need to "brew tap railwaycat/emacsmacport" first to install that.
    - aaronem 13y ago
      I built it from scratch, only using Brew to install the necessary image format libraries, and that worked fine too.
  - terhechte 13y ago
    Thanks for these tips, I'm already using the railwaycat fork, and it is really good. I compiled it myself though, didn't know that I can get it via brew now. That is fantastic, as I'm still on 24.3.1 :) Also, I didn't know about the wrap-while-keeping indentation, that's something I always wanted. Will try it out later. Thanks!
  - __david__ 13y ago
    Also, note that Emacs 24.4 (currently unreleased) will have improved full screen support and better color support (same effect as "brew install emacs --srgb"). I've been using the Emacs head (from a month ago) and it's been very stable for me. For sane trackpad scrolling in vanilla Emacs I use this: '(mouse-wheel-scroll-amount (quote (0.01)))
  - aaronem 13y ago
    Seconding the recommendation for the Railwaycat fork, which is excellent. I just wonder about how quickly it'll be integrated into the 24.4 codebase, once that version drops; I'm really looking forward to file change notification support, for example so that Emacs can autorevert my Dropbox-synchronized Org files when it sees that they've been synced.
- antonios 13y ago
  Very nice. Which font is this?
  - quesebifurcan 13y ago
    I think he's using PragmataPro. If not, it's very similar. Beautiful font, one of my favorites.
  - terhechte 13y ago
    It is M+ http://mplus-fonts.sourceforge.jp/ http://mplus-fonts.sourceforge.jp/ Can't recommend it enough. Beautiful monospaced font for terminal and editor. And the light version works great on my 11" Macbook Air as it consumes less pixels and therefore allows more code to be visible.
- blueblob 13y ago
  Not trying to be a douche, but trying to get an honest answer: if you are coming from Vim, using Evil-Vim to get Vim-like commands why use Emacs in the first place? What features do you use/did you want that made you switch?
  - terhechte 13y ago
    Primarily I wanted to write my own extensions in an integrated language with a good, honed, text api. Vimscript is really not so nice, and Emacs has a fantastic text / editor API that's a pleasure to work with. Other features that were important to me were - Org Mode (I'm using it for all documentation now) - Usability: As described below, every function in the editor can be accessed with a quick command (with pattern matching to find the correct one) vs. knowledge of arcane commands in vim. Also, most modes offer convenient access to all their features in the menu bar. So when I'm using a Clojure mode, and I can't currently remember the correct command / keystroke for changing the current Repl namespace to my current file, I click the menubar and there it is. All neatly listed. Makes it a lot easier. - I like the Emacs way of having all in one window. I have one big fullscreen window with multiple buffers, and in there I have a terminal, a repl, multiple code windows, html documentation. So I never have to leave that mode. Keeps me productive. That is also kinda possible with tmux and Vim, but then I always had overlapping keyboard shortcuts for switching windows. All in all Emacs works better for me here. - Lots of small things, in general Emacs feels like a much more solid editor, with more configuration options to fit it to my liking.
    - blueblob 13y ago
      Fair enough. Lots of people dislike vimscript and although I think you can also write plugins using python, it also seems more difficult to interface with. I know that you can have a big fullscreen window with multiple buffers and a terminal and a repl in terminal vim without tmux. I guess you are not interested but you could see multiple buffers with :vsplit or :split to get vertical and horizontal splits, respectively. There are plugins for a terminal/repl. Org mode sounds interesting to me, one of the things that I miss from eclipse is that I could see the javadoc when I held the mouse over an object/method/function, is that what Org mode does? Thanks for the reply.
- jasonm23 13y ago
  I am super glad to see Soothe being used / well loved. Thanks for using it.
sdegutis 13y ago
I switched to Emacs a year and a half ago when I started using Clojure, and customized it heavily for the first few months. But I avoid customizing it any more. I'm never truly satisfied with what I end up with, and I hit too many frustrating walls trying to make it just right. One major problem for me is the plugin ecosystem. There's Melpa which is easy to use and has the most up-to-date packages, but they're built off of HEAD which makes them extremely brittle. Many plugin authors decry Melpa and say that if you installed their package from it, then you're on your own. There's also Marmalade but I haven't found it to have nearly the same scope of packages.
- bzg 13y ago
  Actually, I'm also on the "less configuration, less trouble" side. That's why I like some minor mode to let me get rid of what I don't want to see, sometimes.
  - pivo 13y ago
    Agree with the less is more idea when it comes to configuration. An additional benefit to this is that it's more comfortable to use vanilla emacs when you need to work on hosts you don't typically use.
- FraaJad 13y ago
  I like this approach to package mgmt. https://github.com/overtone/emacs-live https://github.com/overtone/emacs-live Even though it is "manual", i prefer stability of my programming environment over the ability to install packages "quickly".
- NigelTufnel 13y ago
  I walked almost the same path. For the first couple of months I was customizing the hell out of Emacs. Then the things started falling apart and I've switched to the 20-line long .emacs and empty .emacs.d (well, almost empty if you don't count key-chord/ace-jump-mode combo which makes file navigation a mindreading experience)
  - 13y ago
kinleyd 13y ago
-1, 1 and t have worked for me in setting most modes except that blasted scroll-bar-mode, which it turns out calls for a 0 - what the heck! Thanks for a super post.
- fafner 13y ago
  (scroll-bar-mode -1) and M-- 1 M-x scroll-bar-mode RET both work for me.
  - kinleyd 13y ago
    Yeah, when 0 also didn't work, I took another look at it. Turns out I needed to call (add-hook 'server-visit-hook 'my-custom-function) with the call to scroll-bar-mode inside my custom function, because I'm working off an emacsclient. Now I have my choice of -1, 0, nil, etc. Finally sorted out. :)
swah 13y ago
Ì wonder if some Emacs people intend to migrate to LightTable in a few years?
- agumonkey 13y ago
  I'd bet on a clang/gcc evolution, emacs has made adaptation/absorption a native specialty, LT will probably give it a push.
  - bzg 13y ago
    Emacs loves diversity. As a dinner.
    - agumonkey 13y ago
      I'm still not 100% sure Emacs is LightTable tolerant though.
    - auvrw 13y ago
      this, but without the contentious overtones. wait, let me back up for a moment wrt the original article. that screenshot in the article is not emacs. i can't give you a screenshot of emacs, because emacs doesn't even depend on a windowing system for near-maximum awesomeness. it is my go-to text editor, and i very likely will (progn several of these snippets into my .el files. that said, we do have have windowing systems now, with some better ones on the way, not to mention touchscreens. i haven't tried out lighttable yet, but i intend to, and i greatly hope that either (1) lighttable follows in emacs footsteps of being fully scriptable (as opposed to the adopting a plugin model that's so typical of java ides) or (2) emacs devours all of that beyond-code-folding -- how best to say it? -- code-exploding (?) awesomeness that lighttable attempts to bring and that, to me, appears to map perfectly onto this new world we find ourselves in where computers are not giant boxes attached to printers anymore but are, instead, whole buildings attached to touchscreens. doesn't matter if your program's a crocodile or wildabeast: adapt or die.
      - agumonkey 13y ago
adorton 13y ago
That fringe is neat. Anybody know if Vim supports something like that? I've never been able to make complete sense of vim's line length options. They never seem to work quite "right".
- girvo 13y ago
  There are a number of hacks to do it as plugins, but I can never get them to play nice with other plugins :(
ams6110 13y ago
nice stuff. My .emacs keeps the mode line, which I like, but turns off the scrollbars and menu bars, and sets a wide fringe (though not quite as wide as shown). I don't like text jammed right up to the edge of the window. Anyone know how to achieve a "fringe" on the top and bottom? And also how to do it in xterm windows?
- ams6110 13y ago
  Just discovered, you can create a "fringe" in xterm by the -b option: -b number This option specifies the size of the inner border (the distance between the outer edge of the characters and the window border) in pixels. That is the vt100 internalBorder resource. The default is ``2''.
shocks 13y ago
Nice! For vim I like to use " remove the toolbar set guioptions-=T " remove scrollbars set guioptions-=L set guioptions-=r
- euoia 13y ago
  And in macvim: if has("gui_macvim") autocmd GUIEnter * set fullscreen endif
  - shocks 13y ago
    Ohh! I've been using Cmd-Ctrl-f like a loser all this time!
TeMPOraL 13y ago
(shameless plug) Don't you want a nice Nyan Cat in that modeline in the sky? ;). http://nyan-mode.buildsomethingamazing.com/ http://nyan-mode.buildsomethingamazing.com/
- aaronem 13y ago
  (shameless plug) And don't you want the current weather to go alongside your Nyan, thanks to an Emacs minor mode inspired by a Hacker News comment? https://github.com/aaron-em/weatherline-mode.el https://github.com/aaron-em/weatherline-mode.el
  - TeMPOraL 13y ago
    Nyan Cat endorses this plugin! https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/216352/weather.png https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/216352/weather.png
    - aaronem 13y ago
      Awesome! Mind if I grab a copy of this image, to use with whatever attribution you like, on the repo README? I don't use nyan-mode myself, and it'd be nice to have the screenshot to show people who find the repository.
      - TeMPOraL 13y ago
        Sure, go ahead :). I'll put link to and/or a screenshot of your project somewhere in the Nyan Mode page/readme, as you wrote it was inspired by a comment about Nyan Mode ;).
        aaronem 13y ago
        Thanks -- but you might want to wait a little while; someone opened a Github issue pointing out that the API offers better weather info than I'm using, and also linking a weather icon font I didn't know existed, so I'm mid-rewrite right now. It'll look a lot better once it's done. :)
throwaway_yy2Di 13y ago
If you reflect for a moment, obviously a minority of HN will be made alienated and uncomfortable by this sexualized humor. Do you really want this?
- yetanotherphd 13y ago
  Well another minority might view strip teases as an act of empowerment and self expression, and be made alienated and uncomfortable by your sex-negative viewpoint. How would you balance the interests of these two minorities?
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - dTal 13y ago
    Evidently, by changing the title. Personally I thought "striptease" was a much richer metaphor for what the linked article showed - the removal of "dressing", piece by piece. But then I'm not a prude with a stick up my ass.
    - S4M 13y ago
      Seriously, what the fuck with the title change this time? Is the term "strip tease" offending, really? There used to be a Belgian-French television show called just like that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strip-Tease_%28TV_series%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strip-Tease_%28TV_series%29
      - aaronem 13y ago
        I'm guessing it was a belated attempt to stifle the inevitable social justice flame war.
  - throwaway_yy2Di 13y ago
    Obviously the professional way! By inviting them to the center of the office to discuss frankly their viewpoints on sex until everyone quits from misery. I'd also scatter conservative religious pamphlets and dildos around the office to encourage everyone to participate. Because obviously it would deprive a reader to explain how to remove GUI widgets from an emacs frame [window], without making a metaphor of the window as a naked female, and the widgets as clothing, and the process as a striptease. This is exactly how a mature team of mixed-sex professionals discuses emacs widgets. An HN thread on removing emacs widgets without overt sexual analogies [0] would be a unnatural, stilted place full of repressed sad people. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6983088 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6983088
annasaru 13y ago
I sleep with emacs regularly, yet I am seduced ...
- FraaJad 13y ago
  swalpa uppinakayi haakappa.
- gavinpc 13y ago
  Wait, do you mean fall asleep on emacs? Until I break the habit, thank God for undo.
phkn1 13y ago
Why go to all that trouble? There's always "emacs -nw" to get pretty minimal in an xterm...
- __david__ 13y ago
  You don't get as many color choices and you don't get as many key bindings. "C-M-%" is pretty much impossible in the terminal. You have to do "M-x query-replace-regexp", or make some other custom binding.
  - claudius 13y ago
    You can hit Esc before the combination to fill in for M and then it is just C-S-5 for me, which is certainly doable?
    - breadbox 13y ago
      In some (most, I thought, but maybe I'm wrong) terminals, you can only use the control key to generate an actual control character -- i.e. one of ASCII 0-31. The ctrl key basically unsets bit 64 from the typed key, so ctrl-A through ctrl-Z generate ASCII 1-26, ctrl-@ generates ASCII 0 (though traditionally ctrl-spc gives this as well), and ctrl with [ \ ] ^ _ generate the remaining ASCII 27-31. Ctrl-? sometimes generates ASCII 127 (pretending that ctrl actually subtracts 64 instead of unsetting the bit), but otherwise there are no remaining ASCII values left for such extensions as ctrl-%.
      - __david__ 13y ago
        No, you're right. As far as I know, standard vt100/ANSI terminals do not have any special escape sequences for control key combinations that don't map directly into ASCII.
vsbuffalo 13y ago
As a long time emacs user (and lover) I wish RMS and other emacs developers would take his quote to heart more in emacs development. Emacs is shipped with too many things. Emacs finally has a really nice package manager, so I'd love to see a version with minimal default packages. Do I really need java-mode if I never, ever will use Java? Calc when I have R? SMTP support? No, I need absolutely none of this.
- bza 13y ago
  The current policy (as enunciated by Stefan Monnier, who took over as maintainer from RMS a few years ago) is for new packages to be added to the package archive unless there's a very strong argument for their providing core functionality. (Packages that already ship with Emacs are unlikely to be removed from the core, though.)
  - technomancy 13y ago
    I've heard it's actually being considered to move org-mode and eshell into packages, provided the release process can be ammended to generate releases which include packages by default.
- klibertp 13y ago
  Obligatory link: http://nullprogram.com/blog/2009/06/23/ http://nullprogram.com/blog/2009/06/23/ I don't get why this is a problem - almost everything that comes with default Emacs installation is not loaded by default and so you don't even need to know it's there. Or you can just remove these modes altogether from your installation, no problem. On the other hand, if something made it to the Emacs core, it's probably more stable and easier integrated with other plugins. There are many plugins in the wild which do a great job by themselves, but fail miserably in the presence of other plugins enabled, and such plugins are not in Emacs (or I didn't see them yet).
- fafner 13y ago
  So why does it bother you that there are modes which you don't use? They aren't loaded as default anyway.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- __david__ 13y ago
  Why do you this? ;; these patterns allow a new frame to open for their matches (remove-hook 'same-window-regexps "\\*info\\*\\(\\|<[0-9]+>\\)") (remove-hook 'same-window-regexps "\\`\\*Customiz.*\\*\\'") It appears the default value for same-window-regexps is nil... Do you have a package installed that is adding those or something?
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
brickcap 13y ago
Here is a screenshot of my emacs. http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7346/12104669276_154ae3d98f_o.png http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7346/12104669276_154ae3d98f_o.... Scroll bars and menu turned off. Theme solarized and transparent background. I feel good when I am programming :)
- fafner 13y ago
  A transparent background adds too much visual noise in my opinion. The same is true for line numbers.
  - brickcap 13y ago
    Line numbers can be handy to locate compiler errors. I removed it once but then it became a lot harder to locate where the program was causing problems or where the compiler errors occurred. I would like to remove them but I guess I am stuck with it ....
    - fafner 13y ago
      You should run the compiler inside Emacs (M-x compile). That way you can easily jump to error locations. (You can also use M-x goto-line to quickly jump to a specific line)
      - laichzeit0 13y ago
        Serious question, are Emacs users seriously in the habbit of typing things like M-x some-long-command-with-minuses? In Vim to go to a line number it's just colon line number, e.g. ":34" goes to line 34. I mean that's the default, not something that's been keymapped. Or do you guys end up keymapping things like that frequently aswell? Then again you guys don't have modal editing so I can see why it's always M-x before doing something non-edity, so it might seem assbackwards for a Vim user :) I take for instance the most common commands I use in Vim to edit with that I use 95% of the day and they're rarely more than a single character or 3 at the most.
kabdib 13y ago
I've found the latest revisions of Emacs to be incredibly ugly, and I have to turn off most of the crap (menus, etc.) to be comfortable. Stock Emacs also seems to want to open up a minibuffer when I've told it "please just edit this set of files". It's also got some idea that I want to to suspend the shell I launched it from (er, no, not ever). The argument I see on forums is: "Well, the right way to use Emacs is to just start it and then never leave, so you only have to get that stuff out of the way once." So I spend 30 minutes figuring out the right elisp stuff to disable so I can get rid of the crapware. Crapware in Emacs. What's next, AOL sponsorship splash screens?
- Karunamon 13y ago
  This is the same problem I've run into. I want to try living in Emacs, because there's pretty much a mode or package for everything, but a few of the basics don't work quite right to a point where that is usable yet. For instance, terminal emulation. There's terminal mode and eshell, but if you have even a mildly complicated PS1, all you get are control codes everywhere. Just strange, off-kilter behavior. At this point, I'd be happy if I could just embed iTerm2 in a buffer and be done with it.
  - cag_ii 13y ago
    Have you tried "M-x ansi-term" ?
    - Karunamon 13y ago
      Yup. It only looks slightly less weird than eshell or regular term mode. Still makes my ZSH prompt look screwy and still causes strange breakage with apps (iotop was completely unusable, for instance, as was anything ncurses based)
- SimHacker 13y ago
  UniPress Emacs (aka Gosling Emacs aka Soft Hoarder Emacs) had a VI emulation mode, that when you went :q, switched you back into a shell buffer that had its mode lines hidden, with all the keyboard bindings set so you couldn't tell you were in Emacs. The only vi command I know is :q!
lispm 13y ago
Like Zmacs of the Lisp Machine. Mostly full screen, with a mini buffer and the status line at the bottom. A lot of interaction then happens with a type-out buffer which comes down from the top and disappears when not needed.
nayefc 13y ago
If you use Emacs in the terminal, almost none of this applies as they are there by standard.
jbeja 13y ago
For some who works with split windows, i don't like the idea to trim the space and hide the status-bar, but everything else is great.
yamaneko 13y ago
Rule 34, what have you done?
skywhopper 13y ago
It's very unfortunate that Emacs' default appearance is so terrible. I slogged through figuring most of this stuff out myself a few years ago.
mixedbit 13y ago
Are there usability reasons for a dark text on a light background being default in almost all editors?
- technomancy 13y ago
  It depends on the lighting of the room you're in. In a well-lit room or outside (I love hacking outdoors) a light background will reduce eye strain, but when it's darker around it's less suitable. In any case, it's always easier to darken a light screen than to make a dark screen brighter given that you rarely see laptop screens brighter than 300 nits.
bitwize 13y ago
emacs -nw :) It looks great when it combine it with amber-on-black Glass Tty in my xterm.
- SimHacker 13y ago
  :TCTYP GLASS
npsimons 13y ago
Many of these suggestions seem similar to Steve Yegge's "Effective Emacs" which I can recommend if you are a new Emacs user (or even if you've just not seen it before): https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/effective-emacs https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/effective-emacs I like getting rid of toolbars and such, but still like to keep the modeline and gutters.
lucidguppy 13y ago
http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.html http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.html
Myrmornis 13y ago
plug: I wrote a minor mode that's similar to this: https://github.com/dandavison/minimal https://github.com/dandavison/minimal (hi bzg!)
jaseemabid 13y ago
I have a moderately well written emacs.d, and I'd be happy to see a few use it/learn from it/correct me/give feedback. Just startup emacs (24+) with the init.el and it will download dependencies from elpa. Will have to restart once afterwards to make the theme right. Screeshot : http://i.imgur.com/2wmxir5.png http://i.imgur.com/2wmxir5.png Source: https://github.com/jaseemabid/emacs.d https://github.com/jaseemabid/emacs.d
drdaeman 13y ago
I hoped the article would be not about look-and-feel, but about building a stripped-down version of Emacs without obsolete parts like TRAMP or LEIM (because there are system-global subsystems for those nowadays), or maybe even trying to tear chunks from MULE. In a perfectionist "must be a pure gem, no imperfections allowed" sense, ton of seemingly unnecessary libraries is the only thing that actually bothers me about The Editor.
dschiptsov 13y ago
./configure --prefix=/usr/local --program-prefix=t --without-x11 --without-all \ && make -s bootstrap && sudo make -s install

294 points by bzg 13y ago

Configure GNU Emacs (24.3 or above) to avoid distraction.

Coming from Vim, when I switched to Emacs, I found the starting aesthetic experience more than lacking (or, ugly). It took me some time (and a helpful HN discussion) until I found good themes and good plugins to make it look aesthetically pleasing (to my eyes, at least, after all people's tastes differ). If somebody is looking for a nice Emacs theme and feels that the OP is a bit too minimal, have a look at my Emacs conf (I know, shameless plug) here [1] There's also a screenshot [2] This configuration is kinda optimized for Emacs+Evil to be more like Vim, so you may just want to have a look at the theme / plugins. [1] https://github.com/terhechte/emacs.d https://github.com/terhechte/emacs.d [2] https://raw2.github.com/terhechte/emacs.d/master/screenshot.png https://raw2.github.com/terhechte/emacs.d/master/screenshot....

bzg 13y ago
Oh, nice mode-line! I can't figure out how to get the theme from your repo, any hint?
- jbeja 13y ago
  I believe that is emacs powerline: https://github.com/jonathanchu/emacs-powerline https://github.com/jonathanchu/emacs-powerline
  - bzg 13y ago
    This is it, thanks. Beautiful, but too bad there is no easy way to deactivate it.
- terhechte 13y ago
  Hey, I'm using the Soothe theme, with local modifications: https://github.com/terhechte/emacs.d/tree/master/elpa/soothe-theme-20130805.1700 https://github.com/terhechte/emacs.d/tree/master/elpa/soothe... The original can be found here: https://github.com/emacsfodder/emacs-soothe-theme https://github.com/emacsfodder/emacs-soothe-theme Another nice theme is Cyberpunk: https://github.com/n3mo/cyberpunk-theme.el https://github.com/n3mo/cyberpunk-theme.el As jbeja answered, I'm using powerline with the default theme for the status bar: (require 'powerline) (powerline-default-theme)
anuragramdasan 13y ago
What line numbering plugin is this? Looks very similar to vim numbers. I've been trying to find something like that for emacs for a while now. All I found wasLinum mode, which clutters the UI and doesnt give relative line numbering.
- terhechte 13y ago
  Hey, I'm using relative-number: https://github.com/terhechte/emacs.d/blob/master/plugins/relative-number.el https://github.com/terhechte/emacs.d/blob/master/plugins/rel... It mostly works as well as in Vim, except if you're using Code folding, which confuses it a bit.
- fafner 13y ago
  Why do you want line numbers next to your code at all? Aren't they just visual clutter? The current line number is shown in the mode-line anyway.
  - rbonvall 13y ago
    At least in Vim, line numbers help to move around and operate on text really quickly. Move cursor to ninth line above: 9k Delete from here to seventh line below: 7dd Copy thirteenth line above after second line below: :-13t+2 Having line numbers always visible (either relative or absolute) helps for doing this operations quickly.
    - aaronem 13y ago
      Emacs offers goto-line on M-g g or M-g M-g, which admittedly is not the handiest of key sequences; I've been thinking about rebinding that to be more useful, but I don't use it often enough to really need to. Line numbers are also useful, for example, when doing web development, and hunting down the line that's mentioned in a stack trace. Absent integration between the browser's debugger and Emacs, which is something I've fiddled around with (based on mozrepl) but never got working, that's a good second best.
  - klibertp 13y ago
mercurial 13y ago
I try out emacs every few years. Every time, I get discouraged whenever I attempt to do something simple (change the theme, etc) by the amount of configuration necessary. I may try your repo, since it seems to have a lot of stuff already configured. The other thing is that Emacs is really slow to start as soon as you have a few plugins, compared to vim.
- terhechte 13y ago
  If you try my repo, have a look at the custom keys that I defined, that helps things a lot. Also, the one great feature about Emacs is MX (which I bound to CMD-. This opens the minibuffer where you can execute arbitrary EmacsLisp functions. Everything you do in Emacs (even arrow up, left or right) is bound to an Emacs function. So if you start out, and you want to do something, but you don't know the shortcut, just do CMD-. and start typing. The naming is really good. Say you want to deactivate line truncation. You go into MX and type "truncate" and among the results will be "toggle-truncate-lines" you go there, hit enter, and you're done. This is a bit more difficult in stock Emacs, as it has no wildcard search for MX but I'm using the Helm plugin, which offers this feature and makes it really really easy to find functions. I hardly ever use all these Emacs shortcuts like C-c C-e ... I just hit MX and type what I need to do. Sadly, startup is still really slow for my configuration, which is why I have a Vim config with similar keys for quick Terminal usage. I start Emacs in the morning and keep it open all day. When I need to quickly fix something in the Terminal, I use Vim.
  - aaronem 13y ago
    An excellent point; having a command line in your editor is something whose value is hard to recognize until you've tried it, and hard to overstate once you're used to it. It might, though, be worth using the typical Emacs nomenclature for key sequences, i.e. M-x where you use 'MX' and (assuming your Command key is bound to Meta, as is ordinary for OS X Emacs users) M-. where you use 'CMD-.' -- your choice of preferred nomenclature is of course up to you, but using the standard forms makes it easier for other users, particularly neophytes such as the one to whom your advice here is directed, to understand what you're describing and relate it to the Emacs manual and to whatever other resources they're using.
dilap 13y ago
Very interesting thing you've got going there, and I love the visual aesthetic. Two quick tips that you probably already know, but just in case it's useful to you or someone else: * Emacs can wrap lines at word boundaries, while intelligently preserving/extending indentation (something like this: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/8581161 https://gist.github.com/anonymous/8581161) * If you're using emacs on the mac, it's worth taking a look at the railwaycat fork ("brew install emacs-mac"). Some improvements over vanilla emacs: Emoji (and other fun unicode) display works, fullscreen and maximize work better, scrolling with the trackpad works in a reasonable way.
- abrowne 13y ago
  I think you need to "brew tap railwaycat/emacsmacport" first to install that.
  - aaronem 13y ago
    I built it from scratch, only using Brew to install the necessary image format libraries, and that worked fine too.
- terhechte 13y ago
  Thanks for these tips, I'm already using the railwaycat fork, and it is really good. I compiled it myself though, didn't know that I can get it via brew now. That is fantastic, as I'm still on 24.3.1 :) Also, I didn't know about the wrap-while-keeping indentation, that's something I always wanted. Will try it out later. Thanks!
- __david__ 13y ago
  Also, note that Emacs 24.4 (currently unreleased) will have improved full screen support and better color support (same effect as "brew install emacs --srgb"). I've been using the Emacs head (from a month ago) and it's been very stable for me. For sane trackpad scrolling in vanilla Emacs I use this: '(mouse-wheel-scroll-amount (quote (0.01)))
- aaronem 13y ago
  Seconding the recommendation for the Railwaycat fork, which is excellent. I just wonder about how quickly it'll be integrated into the 24.4 codebase, once that version drops; I'm really looking forward to file change notification support, for example so that Emacs can autorevert my Dropbox-synchronized Org files when it sees that they've been synced.
antonios 13y ago
Very nice. Which font is this?
- quesebifurcan 13y ago
  I think he's using PragmataPro. If not, it's very similar. Beautiful font, one of my favorites.
- terhechte 13y ago
  It is M+ http://mplus-fonts.sourceforge.jp/ http://mplus-fonts.sourceforge.jp/ Can't recommend it enough. Beautiful monospaced font for terminal and editor. And the light version works great on my 11" Macbook Air as it consumes less pixels and therefore allows more code to be visible.
blueblob 13y ago
Not trying to be a douche, but trying to get an honest answer: if you are coming from Vim, using Evil-Vim to get Vim-like commands why use Emacs in the first place? What features do you use/did you want that made you switch?
- terhechte 13y ago
  Primarily I wanted to write my own extensions in an integrated language with a good, honed, text api. Vimscript is really not so nice, and Emacs has a fantastic text / editor API that's a pleasure to work with. Other features that were important to me were - Org Mode (I'm using it for all documentation now) - Usability: As described below, every function in the editor can be accessed with a quick command (with pattern matching to find the correct one) vs. knowledge of arcane commands in vim. Also, most modes offer convenient access to all their features in the menu bar. So when I'm using a Clojure mode, and I can't currently remember the correct command / keystroke for changing the current Repl namespace to my current file, I click the menubar and there it is. All neatly listed. Makes it a lot easier. - I like the Emacs way of having all in one window. I have one big fullscreen window with multiple buffers, and in there I have a terminal, a repl, multiple code windows, html documentation. So I never have to leave that mode. Keeps me productive. That is also kinda possible with tmux and Vim, but then I always had overlapping keyboard shortcuts for switching windows. All in all Emacs works better for me here. - Lots of small things, in general Emacs feels like a much more solid editor, with more configuration options to fit it to my liking.
  - blueblob 13y ago
    Fair enough. Lots of people dislike vimscript and although I think you can also write plugins using python, it also seems more difficult to interface with. I know that you can have a big fullscreen window with multiple buffers and a terminal and a repl in terminal vim without tmux. I guess you are not interested but you could see multiple buffers with :vsplit or :split to get vertical and horizontal splits, respectively. There are plugins for a terminal/repl. Org mode sounds interesting to me, one of the things that I miss from eclipse is that I could see the javadoc when I held the mouse over an object/method/function, is that what Org mode does? Thanks for the reply.
jasonm23 13y ago
I am super glad to see Soothe being used / well loved. Thanks for using it.

sdegutis 13y ago

I switched to Emacs a year and a half ago when I started using Clojure, and customized it heavily for the first few months. But I avoid customizing it any more. I'm never truly satisfied with what I end up with, and I hit too many frustrating walls trying to make it just right. One major problem for me is the plugin ecosystem. There's Melpa which is easy to use and has the most up-to-date packages, but they're built off of HEAD which makes them extremely brittle. Many plugin authors decry Melpa and say that if you installed their package from it, then you're on your own. There's also Marmalade but I haven't found it to have nearly the same scope of packages.

bzg 13y ago
Actually, I'm also on the "less configuration, less trouble" side. That's why I like some minor mode to let me get rid of what I don't want to see, sometimes.
- pivo 13y ago
  Agree with the less is more idea when it comes to configuration. An additional benefit to this is that it's more comfortable to use vanilla emacs when you need to work on hosts you don't typically use.
FraaJad 13y ago
I like this approach to package mgmt. https://github.com/overtone/emacs-live https://github.com/overtone/emacs-live Even though it is "manual", i prefer stability of my programming environment over the ability to install packages "quickly".
NigelTufnel 13y ago
I walked almost the same path. For the first couple of months I was customizing the hell out of Emacs. Then the things started falling apart and I've switched to the 20-line long .emacs and empty .emacs.d (well, almost empty if you don't count key-chord/ace-jump-mode combo which makes file navigation a mindreading experience)
- 13y ago

kinleyd 13y ago

-1, 1 and t have worked for me in setting most modes except that blasted scroll-bar-mode, which it turns out calls for a 0 - what the heck! Thanks for a super post.

fafner 13y ago
(scroll-bar-mode -1) and M-- 1 M-x scroll-bar-mode RET both work for me.
- kinleyd 13y ago
  Yeah, when 0 also didn't work, I took another look at it. Turns out I needed to call (add-hook 'server-visit-hook 'my-custom-function) with the call to scroll-bar-mode inside my custom function, because I'm working off an emacsclient. Now I have my choice of -1, 0, nil, etc. Finally sorted out. :)

swah 13y ago

Ì wonder if some Emacs people intend to migrate to LightTable in a few years?

agumonkey 13y ago
I'd bet on a clang/gcc evolution, emacs has made adaptation/absorption a native specialty, LT will probably give it a push.
- bzg 13y ago
  Emacs loves diversity. As a dinner.
  - agumonkey 13y ago
    I'm still not 100% sure Emacs is LightTable tolerant though.
  - auvrw 13y ago
    this, but without the contentious overtones. wait, let me back up for a moment wrt the original article. that screenshot in the article is not emacs. i can't give you a screenshot of emacs, because emacs doesn't even depend on a windowing system for near-maximum awesomeness. it is my go-to text editor, and i very likely will (progn several of these snippets into my .el files. that said, we do have have windowing systems now, with some better ones on the way, not to mention touchscreens. i haven't tried out lighttable yet, but i intend to, and i greatly hope that either (1) lighttable follows in emacs footsteps of being fully scriptable (as opposed to the adopting a plugin model that's so typical of java ides) or (2) emacs devours all of that beyond-code-folding -- how best to say it? -- code-exploding (?) awesomeness that lighttable attempts to bring and that, to me, appears to map perfectly onto this new world we find ourselves in where computers are not giant boxes attached to printers anymore but are, instead, whole buildings attached to touchscreens. doesn't matter if your program's a crocodile or wildabeast: adapt or die.
    - agumonkey 13y ago

adorton 13y ago

That fringe is neat. Anybody know if Vim supports something like that? I've never been able to make complete sense of vim's line length options. They never seem to work quite "right".

girvo 13y ago
There are a number of hacks to do it as plugins, but I can never get them to play nice with other plugins :(

ams6110 13y ago

nice stuff. My .emacs keeps the mode line, which I like, but turns off the scrollbars and menu bars, and sets a wide fringe (though not quite as wide as shown). I don't like text jammed right up to the edge of the window. Anyone know how to achieve a "fringe" on the top and bottom? And also how to do it in xterm windows?

ams6110 13y ago
Just discovered, you can create a "fringe" in xterm by the -b option: -b number This option specifies the size of the inner border (the distance between the outer edge of the characters and the window border) in pixels. That is the vt100 internalBorder resource. The default is ``2''.

shocks 13y ago

Nice! For vim I like to use " remove the toolbar set guioptions-=T " remove scrollbars set guioptions-=L set guioptions-=r

euoia 13y ago
And in macvim: if has("gui_macvim") autocmd GUIEnter * set fullscreen endif
- shocks 13y ago
  Ohh! I've been using Cmd-Ctrl-f like a loser all this time!

TeMPOraL 13y ago

(shameless plug) Don't you want a nice Nyan Cat in that modeline in the sky? ;). http://nyan-mode.buildsomethingamazing.com/ http://nyan-mode.buildsomethingamazing.com/

aaronem 13y ago
(shameless plug) And don't you want the current weather to go alongside your Nyan, thanks to an Emacs minor mode inspired by a Hacker News comment? https://github.com/aaron-em/weatherline-mode.el https://github.com/aaron-em/weatherline-mode.el
- TeMPOraL 13y ago
  Nyan Cat endorses this plugin! https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/216352/weather.png https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/216352/weather.png
  - aaronem 13y ago
    Awesome! Mind if I grab a copy of this image, to use with whatever attribution you like, on the repo README? I don't use nyan-mode myself, and it'd be nice to have the screenshot to show people who find the repository.
    - TeMPOraL 13y ago
      Sure, go ahead :). I'll put link to and/or a screenshot of your project somewhere in the Nyan Mode page/readme, as you wrote it was inspired by a comment about Nyan Mode ;).
      - aaronem 13y ago
        Thanks -- but you might want to wait a little while; someone opened a Github issue pointing out that the API offers better weather info than I'm using, and also linking a weather icon font I didn't know existed, so I'm mid-rewrite right now. It'll look a lot better once it's done. :)

throwaway_yy2Di 13y ago

If you reflect for a moment, obviously a minority of HN will be made alienated and uncomfortable by this sexualized humor. Do you really want this?

yetanotherphd 13y ago
Well another minority might view strip teases as an act of empowerment and self expression, and be made alienated and uncomfortable by your sex-negative viewpoint. How would you balance the interests of these two minorities?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- dTal 13y ago
  Evidently, by changing the title. Personally I thought "striptease" was a much richer metaphor for what the linked article showed - the removal of "dressing", piece by piece. But then I'm not a prude with a stick up my ass.
  - S4M 13y ago
    Seriously, what the fuck with the title change this time? Is the term "strip tease" offending, really? There used to be a Belgian-French television show called just like that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strip-Tease_%28TV_series%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strip-Tease_%28TV_series%29
    - aaronem 13y ago
      I'm guessing it was a belated attempt to stifle the inevitable social justice flame war.
- throwaway_yy2Di 13y ago
  Obviously the professional way! By inviting them to the center of the office to discuss frankly their viewpoints on sex until everyone quits from misery. I'd also scatter conservative religious pamphlets and dildos around the office to encourage everyone to participate. Because obviously it would deprive a reader to explain how to remove GUI widgets from an emacs frame [window], without making a metaphor of the window as a naked female, and the widgets as clothing, and the process as a striptease. This is exactly how a mature team of mixed-sex professionals discuses emacs widgets. An HN thread on removing emacs widgets without overt sexual analogies [0] would be a unnatural, stilted place full of repressed sad people. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6983088 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6983088

annasaru 13y ago

I sleep with emacs regularly, yet I am seduced ...

FraaJad 13y ago
swalpa uppinakayi haakappa.
gavinpc 13y ago
Wait, do you mean fall asleep on emacs? Until I break the habit, thank God for undo.

phkn1 13y ago

Why go to all that trouble? There's always "emacs -nw" to get pretty minimal in an xterm...

__david__ 13y ago
You don't get as many color choices and you don't get as many key bindings. "C-M-%" is pretty much impossible in the terminal. You have to do "M-x query-replace-regexp", or make some other custom binding.
- claudius 13y ago
  You can hit Esc before the combination to fill in for M and then it is just C-S-5 for me, which is certainly doable?
  - breadbox 13y ago
    In some (most, I thought, but maybe I'm wrong) terminals, you can only use the control key to generate an actual control character -- i.e. one of ASCII 0-31. The ctrl key basically unsets bit 64 from the typed key, so ctrl-A through ctrl-Z generate ASCII 1-26, ctrl-@ generates ASCII 0 (though traditionally ctrl-spc gives this as well), and ctrl with [ \ ] ^ _ generate the remaining ASCII 27-31. Ctrl-? sometimes generates ASCII 127 (pretending that ctrl actually subtracts 64 instead of unsetting the bit), but otherwise there are no remaining ASCII values left for such extensions as ctrl-%.
    - __david__ 13y ago
      No, you're right. As far as I know, standard vt100/ANSI terminals do not have any special escape sequences for control key combinations that don't map directly into ASCII.

vsbuffalo 13y ago

As a long time emacs user (and lover) I wish RMS and other emacs developers would take his quote to heart more in emacs development. Emacs is shipped with too many things. Emacs finally has a really nice package manager, so I'd love to see a version with minimal default packages. Do I really need java-mode if I never, ever will use Java? Calc when I have R? SMTP support? No, I need absolutely none of this.

bza 13y ago
The current policy (as enunciated by Stefan Monnier, who took over as maintainer from RMS a few years ago) is for new packages to be added to the package archive unless there's a very strong argument for their providing core functionality. (Packages that already ship with Emacs are unlikely to be removed from the core, though.)
- technomancy 13y ago
  I've heard it's actually being considered to move org-mode and eshell into packages, provided the release process can be ammended to generate releases which include packages by default.
klibertp 13y ago
Obligatory link: http://nullprogram.com/blog/2009/06/23/ http://nullprogram.com/blog/2009/06/23/ I don't get why this is a problem - almost everything that comes with default Emacs installation is not loaded by default and so you don't even need to know it's there. Or you can just remove these modes altogether from your installation, no problem. On the other hand, if something made it to the Emacs core, it's probably more stable and easier integrated with other plugins. There are many plugins in the wild which do a great job by themselves, but fail miserably in the presence of other plugins enabled, and such plugins are not in Emacs (or I didn't see them yet).
fafner 13y ago
So why does it bother you that there are modes which you don't use? They aren't loaded as default anyway.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

__david__ 13y ago
Why do you this? ;; these patterns allow a new frame to open for their matches (remove-hook 'same-window-regexps "\\*info\\*\\(\\|<[0-9]+>\\)") (remove-hook 'same-window-regexps "\\`\\*Customiz.*\\*\\'") It appears the default value for same-window-regexps is nil... Do you have a package installed that is adding those or something?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

brickcap 13y ago

Here is a screenshot of my emacs. http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7346/12104669276_154ae3d98f_o.png http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7346/12104669276_154ae3d98f_o.... Scroll bars and menu turned off. Theme solarized and transparent background. I feel good when I am programming :)

fafner 13y ago
A transparent background adds too much visual noise in my opinion. The same is true for line numbers.
- brickcap 13y ago
  Line numbers can be handy to locate compiler errors. I removed it once but then it became a lot harder to locate where the program was causing problems or where the compiler errors occurred. I would like to remove them but I guess I am stuck with it ....
  - fafner 13y ago
    You should run the compiler inside Emacs (M-x compile). That way you can easily jump to error locations. (You can also use M-x goto-line to quickly jump to a specific line)
    - laichzeit0 13y ago
      Serious question, are Emacs users seriously in the habbit of typing things like M-x some-long-command-with-minuses? In Vim to go to a line number it's just colon line number, e.g. ":34" goes to line 34. I mean that's the default, not something that's been keymapped. Or do you guys end up keymapping things like that frequently aswell? Then again you guys don't have modal editing so I can see why it's always M-x before doing something non-edity, so it might seem assbackwards for a Vim user :) I take for instance the most common commands I use in Vim to edit with that I use 95% of the day and they're rarely more than a single character or 3 at the most.

kabdib 13y ago

I've found the latest revisions of Emacs to be incredibly ugly, and I have to turn off most of the crap (menus, etc.) to be comfortable. Stock Emacs also seems to want to open up a minibuffer when I've told it "please just edit this set of files". It's also got some idea that I want to to suspend the shell I launched it from (er, no, not ever). The argument I see on forums is: "Well, the right way to use Emacs is to just start it and then never leave, so you only have to get that stuff out of the way once." So I spend 30 minutes figuring out the right elisp stuff to disable so I can get rid of the crapware. Crapware in Emacs. What's next, AOL sponsorship splash screens?

Karunamon 13y ago
This is the same problem I've run into. I want to try living in Emacs, because there's pretty much a mode or package for everything, but a few of the basics don't work quite right to a point where that is usable yet. For instance, terminal emulation. There's terminal mode and eshell, but if you have even a mildly complicated PS1, all you get are control codes everywhere. Just strange, off-kilter behavior. At this point, I'd be happy if I could just embed iTerm2 in a buffer and be done with it.
- cag_ii 13y ago
  Have you tried "M-x ansi-term" ?
  - Karunamon 13y ago
    Yup. It only looks slightly less weird than eshell or regular term mode. Still makes my ZSH prompt look screwy and still causes strange breakage with apps (iotop was completely unusable, for instance, as was anything ncurses based)
SimHacker 13y ago
UniPress Emacs (aka Gosling Emacs aka Soft Hoarder Emacs) had a VI emulation mode, that when you went :q, switched you back into a shell buffer that had its mode lines hidden, with all the keyboard bindings set so you couldn't tell you were in Emacs. The only vi command I know is :q!

lispm 13y ago

Like Zmacs of the Lisp Machine. Mostly full screen, with a mini buffer and the status line at the bottom. A lot of interaction then happens with a type-out buffer which comes down from the top and disappears when not needed.

nayefc 13y ago

If you use Emacs in the terminal, almost none of this applies as they are there by standard.

jbeja 13y ago

For some who works with split windows, i don't like the idea to trim the space and hide the status-bar, but everything else is great.

yamaneko 13y ago

Rule 34, what have you done?

skywhopper 13y ago

It's very unfortunate that Emacs' default appearance is so terrible. I slogged through figuring most of this stuff out myself a few years ago.

mixedbit 13y ago

Are there usability reasons for a dark text on a light background being default in almost all editors?

technomancy 13y ago
It depends on the lighting of the room you're in. In a well-lit room or outside (I love hacking outdoors) a light background will reduce eye strain, but when it's darker around it's less suitable. In any case, it's always easier to darken a light screen than to make a dark screen brighter given that you rarely see laptop screens brighter than 300 nits.

bitwize 13y ago

emacs -nw :) It looks great when it combine it with amber-on-black Glass Tty in my xterm.

SimHacker 13y ago
:TCTYP GLASS

npsimons 13y ago

Many of these suggestions seem similar to Steve Yegge's "Effective Emacs" which I can recommend if you are a new Emacs user (or even if you've just not seen it before): https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/effective-emacs https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/effective-emacs I like getting rid of toolbars and such, but still like to keep the modeline and gutters.

lucidguppy 13y ago

http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.html http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.html

Myrmornis 13y ago

plug: I wrote a minor mode that's similar to this: https://github.com/dandavison/minimal https://github.com/dandavison/minimal (hi bzg!)

jaseemabid 13y ago

I have a moderately well written emacs.d, and I'd be happy to see a few use it/learn from it/correct me/give feedback. Just startup emacs (24+) with the init.el and it will download dependencies from elpa. Will have to restart once afterwards to make the theme right. Screeshot : http://i.imgur.com/2wmxir5.png http://i.imgur.com/2wmxir5.png Source: https://github.com/jaseemabid/emacs.d https://github.com/jaseemabid/emacs.d

drdaeman 13y ago

I hoped the article would be not about look-and-feel, but about building a stripped-down version of Emacs without obsolete parts like TRAMP or LEIM (because there are system-global subsystems for those nowadays), or maybe even trying to tear chunks from MULE. In a perfectionist "must be a pure gem, no imperfections allowed" sense, ton of seemingly unnecessary libraries is the only thing that actually bothers me about The Editor.

dschiptsov 13y ago

./configure --prefix=/usr/local --program-prefix=t --without-x11 --without-all \ && make -s bootstrap && sudo make -s install