Show HN: Emacs Mini Manual
tuhdo.github.io
tuhdo.github.io
The following words also sounds convincing:
"If you are a programmer, you should try to automate thing as much as possible. One way of doing this is using a good editor that automates many menial and tedious tasks. For example, one of the thing that annoys me is using the command cd to change into a deep directory path like this:
[/path/to/a/very/long/long/long/long/long/long/..../directory/ ]"
[1] http://www.neilvandyke.org/quack/ [2] https://github.com/greghendershott/racket-mode [3] http://www.greghendershott.com/
An example of this is that as part of my job I have to maintain a handful of wordpress sites. We keep these sites in one git repo, but they are different sites altogether so the layout would be:
/sites/www/site1 /sites/www/site2 (and so on)
... with each site(N) being distinct Wordpress installations. One of the annoying aspects of maintaining a bunch of Wordpress sites like this is that they all contain the WP framework code (which I never edit) and all of the code that is edited frequently tends to be in each sites respective theme, all of which also tend to have the same filenames. So if you wanted to visit the header template for site1 you would fire up projectile, type in "site1/wp-content/themes/header.php" or some such and you'd probably get a hit. If you just typed in "header.php" you'd end up with a bunch of different hits, including Wordpress framework files, multiplied by the number of sites.
Projectile has a mechanism for ignoring files[1], which is nice for omitting framework code, but I wanted a workflow that was "On keystroke, prompt me for sitename and open a projectile prompt that autocompletes files for that site only". Turns out this is really easy. While Projectile will normally use git to determine its project root, you can actually add a .projectile file to any directory and that directory then becomes a project root. From there it's easy to write an interactive elisp function that will ask you which projectile project to load, then fire up the autocomplete. Bind that to a global key and it becomes really easy to break down your large-ish codebase into logical sub-projects and get to business quickly.
(Haha, I just realized how emacs-y that tip was.)
Lastly, if you find your .emacs configuration becoming unwieldy, or if you are like me and originally broke out mode specific configuration into distinct files (php.el, ruby.el, web.el) I can't recommend enough switching your config to one big org-mode + babel[2] file. Doing so was my first foray into org-mode and literate programming and I can't recommend it enough, if only for keeping your Emacs configuration sanely documented. I used this config as an example for getting started:
https://github.com/larstvei/dot-emacs/blob/master/init.org
[1] https://github.com/bbatsov/projectile#ignoring-files [2] http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/intro.html
By the way, thanks for putting both of them up there: I forgot about the one I put up on Wordpress :D
Thanks for writing such a good article, so people can have a better glimpse of what Emacs is capable of. It saved my time because I don't have to research all of those and make my article even longer :D
C-f to the beginning of each character group and add whitespace.
You can also set mark at first 'b' in the first line, go to first 'b' in the last line and use C-x r t to insert a string across all the lines.
You can of course use regex-replace, too: \(a+\|b+\|c+\|d+\) -> \1 <- space here
And so on and on. It's good to see well written "introductory courses", like this one, but what about "Emacs for black belts"? "Advanced Emacsology"? There is one book about writing Emacs extensions (http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9781565922617.do), but that's all there is. Does anyone know about another source of knowledge about the most advanced Emacs techniques?
This manual is only about stock Emacs features, not adding complexity with 3rd party packages. When I first introduced on Reddit, someone advised me to stick to stock Emacs (which I did) because they see this section using an external package (ggtags) for browsing kernel source code: http://tuhdo.github.io/emacs-tutor.html#sec-8. When people are good with the basics, they understand what they need and find appropriate packages.
If you want advance techniques, the primary resource should be Emacs Lisp Manual, Emacs docstrings, and learn code written by package maintainers.
EDIT: Even before working with Emacs Lisp, using 3rd party packages already makes Emacs much more advanced.
(I'm also learning English, so I know that having your mistakes pointed out helps - that's what the [] are for in the quote)
Yeah, been there, done that. :) Docstrings and easy access to source code (find-function, find-library) are a great strength of Emacs - not only the documentation is of great quality, but it's mostly up-to-date. But going through packages' sources is not always pleasant: some authors are not very good with English (like me, for example), others have a dislike for writing comments, yet others are biased against cl-lib or too much in favour of eieio and so on. It's still a great learning experience, but it takes more time than it could take if the content was presented more systematically and in a more readable manner. Like in a book. Or a series of articles, or something. Note: I am thinking about writing something like this myself, but I don't feel confident enough just yet.
> someone advised me to stick to stock Emacs
I think it's stupid advice - bad for both programmers and non-programmers. If you're a programmer, using Emacs is (should be) about endless customization, tweaking and - you guessed it - programming your editor to do your work for you. In this case learning to use C-f instead of right arrow is so stupid it hurts - you should learn about define-key, make-sparse-keymap, global-set-key, describe-keymap (and generally describe-...) and of course apropos instead. I guarantee it will take you less time than making C-f a habit! That's the way I learned Emacs: I started learning with Emacs Lisp Manual, not a tutorial or Emacs Manual and it got me up to speed in no time at all. Instead of learning what keys to press to do something it's better - again, for programmers - to just learn the name of a function which does what you want. It's true that I don't use many standard keybindings and I remapped most of them, but this is ok, because this is my editor and nobody else is going to use it anyway. And when I started fiddling with packages I already knew how to hack them into shape and dig through their code, which is infinitely better than just knowing where to find them and praying they have any docs at all :)
And for non-programmers, sticking with vanilla Emacs makes it unnecessarily painful experience, with 2/3 of useful features disabled by default and without access to the functionality available via packages, which I'd call really essential. For non-programmers vanilla Emacs is not that much better than Notepad++ or Gedit (if at all, considering weird key bindings!) and it's pointless to stick to it just to "learn about Emacs philosophy" - non-programmers won't benefit from "the Emacs way" (which is: being an infinitely programmable editor!) at all. It's much better for them to grab some Emacs starter kit, like Prelude or any other starter kit out there and then use customize-... interface to tweak what they need.
" Because the nature of Emacs is an extensible system, people write extensions to improve Emacs and share with others. The extensions improve various aspects of Emacs: Improve existing and add new editing features, integrate 3rd party tools, add programming languages supports, change Emacs appearance… Without the ability to extend, Emacs will just be another obscure editor with some useful features but cannot meet the demands of people, because different people have different needs, and Emacs maintainers cannot provide them all and integrate all into Emacs. With the ability to extend, people can bend Emacs the way they want, much like Lisp.
Unlike other editors which encourage users to stay with the default as much as they can, Emacs encourages users to customize and extend Emacs as much as they can."
http://tuhdo.github.io/emacs-tutor3.html
I just don't want to mix the two things: Emacs basics and Emacs extending together in a guide. It should be separate. I used to use packages a lot, until I realize that many built-in features which I didn't know serve me well. Learning stock Emacs is beneficial because users get the features that are always available.
> I started learning with Emacs Lisp Manual, not a tutorial or Emacs Manual and it got me up to speed in no time at all
I guess you method could work for, but I think it would be intimidating for most new users when they first read that to be able to use Emacs, they will have to learn Emacs Lisp. This is contrasting to everything else, even Vim.
Vanilla Emacs is definitely better than Notepad++ or Gedit:
- Emacs is an implementation of Emacs Lisp with an editor on top of it. The other editors are just... editors.
- Emacs has many useful features such as:
+ how to use mark and point and region. A useful feature is exchange-point-and-mark; other editors do not have this.
+ Dired
+ ibuffers, that can manage hundreds of buffers
+ a window management system (so you don't have to use things like tmux, screen)
+ registers, you can save anything, like window configuration, text, position
+ the help system
+ Bookmark (to quickly access things later)
+ Calc (a scientific calculator)
+ CEDET a language framework for building IDE features (like context-sensitive completion, jump, find references...). The best language it is supporting is C/C++, as demonstrated in the guide.
...more features that typical editors won't have...
Learning all these things should not require customization and external packages to further add burden to learners. After people learned something like Dired, if they want more, they can look it up for packages like Dired+.
Finally, Prelude disables arrow keys and encourage users to use key bindings like C-f, C-b... I think most of the key bindings for editing in Emacs are fine and make editing faster. Of course, the bindings are not as ergonomics as Vim, but it is still much better than other editors.
Since you don't like C-f, C-b... I guess you don't like key bindings with prefix C-x and C-c as well?
And use Helm with it like this: http://tuhdo.github.io/helm-intro.html#sec-28
If you use Helm, there's helm-ag: https://github.com/syohex/emacs-helm-ag
Use MELPA and package manager to install the above packages: http://tuhdo.github.io/emacs-tutor3.html#sec-4-1
All written in org-mode as well.
Thank you
Great material!
With workgroups2, windows configurations can be stored in a workgroup, and you can create as many workgroups and named it; later, you can switch back. Because you can name your window configurations, you don't have the burden to remember which to which in registers. You can also save your window configurations to continue using them in later Emacs sessions.
You can issue a command to save current session with workgroup2.
"There is no installer. All you have to do is:
- Unpack in a location like c:\Local\
- Setup a shortcut on your desktop to c:\Local\Emacs\bin\emacsclientw.exe
- Double click the new shortcut."
Or just use the 32 bit version from official GNU Emacs homepage.
Could you tell me what the problems are? I use Emacs on Windows fine, with all my 3rd-party packages. At least with stock Emacs, it should work on Windows.