About

This site is all about Emacs, and I hope it spurs you into learning more for yourself.

Nothing else will enable you to build your own personal text editing heaven, quite like Emacs.

.emacs.d

The full config used in the @emacs_gifs recordings is ocodo’s .emacs.d.

Color theme

The theme is Darktooth, use M-x package-install RETURN darktooth-theme to install from Emacs.

Modeline

The mode-line (status bar for non-Emacs people) is based on Amit Patel s blog post https://github.com/ocodo/.emacs.d/blob/master/custom/amitp-mode-line.el

I don’t always have that switched on btw (If you’re thinking, hey! that’s a standard mode-line!)

Custom keys

Custom keys are listed in personal-keybindings

Good places to feed your Emacs knowledge

The Emacs manual Ctrl-h r and Help Ctrl-h along with the commands: describe-command, describe-key, describe-package, describe-function, describe-variable, etc. will really boost your understanding of Emacs, think of it less as a text editor, and more a programming environment which ships with a huge library of commands and settings. (functions and variables.)

Meta - x

There is one particular key combination that once learned will really open up your discovery of Emacs:

Meta-x

Did you catch that?

Here it is again: Meta-x

Meta is usually the Alt key on modern keyboards.

Got that?

Meta-x is the single most useful command in Emacs.

It will start the emacs command launcher (execute-extended-command) and it will make every single command in Emacs available to you by name.

Add smex for nicer command completion.

Key bindings are not set in stone

If you re new to Emacs the key bindings can be overwhelming, consier that it’s important to learn how to open files Ctrl-x Ctrl-f, save them Ctrl-x Ctrl-s and quit Ctrl-x Ctrl-c, I have to agree these are not intuitive,

I added Super-o open Super-s save and Super-q quit to my config to help people coming from modern text editor apps.

Super is usually Cmd on OS X (although Alt and Cmd are sometimes switched) and on Windows it’s usually the Windows key.

Emacs defaults aren’t pleasant for most people, and it’s definitely an editor that will require a deeper degree of learning than most, but you will benefit enormously from the investment in time, and you’ll have a toolkit that you can use for your entire life as a programmer or a writer.

There are many alternative keyboard command setups for Emacs, notably Evil (which Spacemacs also gives you plus a lot of other nice packages and configuration).

Much more…

Visit Awesome-Emacs on github for a huge list of (all?) great Emacs things.