Emacs

The first any new Emacs user should do is the basic tutorial. One could compare this to vimtutor in vim. To launch this you can M-x help-with-tutorial this opens a tutorial page that tells the basic motions and actions. This can also be opened by pressing the link tutorial in the default startscreen on the bottom.

But first, I will use M- and C- a lot here for keybinds. M stands for meta and is alt, C is control.

Emacs is fast. External packages may be slow, so if Emacs is slow it's because you have made it slow.

You now have a full small base and a little more sane configuration to use, expand and love.

Here is the full configuration from above in one block:

;;; SANE EMACS DEFAULT ;;;

;; disables startupscreen
(setq inhibit-startup-screen t
      ring-bell-function 'ignore
      use-short-answers t
      ;; smooth scrolling
      scroll-step 1
      scroll-conservatively 101
      display-line-numbers-type 'relative
      ;; prevents file system clutter
      create-lockfiles nil
      backup-directory-alist `(("." . ,(concat user-Emacs-directory "backups"))))

;; use spaces for indentation and clean whitespace
(setq-default indent-tabs-mode nil
              show-trailing-whitespace t)
(add-hook 'before-save-hook 'delete-trailing-whitespace)

;; A dark-theme
(load-theme 'modus-vivendi-tinted t)

;; options to enable for better behaviour
(electric-pair-mode 1)
(global-display-line-numbers-mode 1) ;; needed for relative line numbers
(recentf-mode 1)
(savehist-mode 1)
(save-place-mode 1)
(delete-selection-mode 1)
;; minibuffer (the section on the bottom) behaviour
(which-key-mode 1)
(fido-vertical-mode 1)
;; file navigation help
(global-auto-revert-mode 1)
(global-hl-line-mode 1)
(show-paren-mode 1)
(global-eldoc-mode 1)
;; clean the UI
(tool-bar-mode -1)
(menu-bar-mode -1)

Org-mode is amazing. That's the only words one can say about it.

It allows you, in plain text, to do anything from taking notes, markdown like syntax, but also with tables, codeblocks jumpable links and metadata and information like the author, date and time and more.

That alone may not sound that amazing, but after you have written this plain text you can, from one file, export that to ODT (open document format) files and so DOCX, LATEX, html, markdown, plain text, pdf or add it to a calendar or TODO list.

It allows you, from plain text to have codeblocks that can be executed, exported and highlighted, tables, math, documents, and organisation of events in one format, but with a lot of completely different outcomes.

I now use this for word documents, this blog post, longer emails, notes and documentation.

You can create headings with * and the more of them there are the further down a tree it gets. You leave it as the first character on the line.

Tables are created with the pipe, |. You type one pipe, a word and another pipe, then as many as you need in the row. Tab goes to the next section, and enter makes a new line.

• If you surround a word with _ it is underlines
• If you use * it will be bold
• If you use / it will be italic

Sourceblocks may be created with:

Org mode works out of the box, no need for a setup.

| #+BEGIN_SRC language
|   code
| #+END_SRC

(I use [|] pipes here so that END SRC in the block doesn't escape the block.)

Links are created with

[[url][display text]]

C-c C-e opens the export menu, which lets you choose what format to export the org file to.

This is a front-end for managing version control systems. Git being the most popular.

The prefix key for it is *C-x v *, where you so say what it should do.

Some that I personally use a lot is:

• C-x v v to commit changes
• C-x v d to open a pannel to manage and see changes in the whole repo. You may push P, mark for change m delete d view log L diff D and more from this pannel.
• C-x v P to push changes
• C-x v L to see commit log. Here you can expand the commits with enter, hit enter again in the body to see the diff from the commit. Hit enter again in that to jump to the file.

You can do a lot more with vc-mode, but this is what I do the most.

For vc-mode you need to be in a project under version control and set it up so it know what user it should do actions as. I just set up my ssh key for git and add this:

(setenv "SSH_ASKPASS" nil)
(setenv "GIT_ASKPASS" nil)

Then it know's what to do when i commit or push to the remote server.

The file manager.

Dired displays the file system in the same format as ls -la does.

You may enter files or directories, change names (R), move files (M), delete files (d/D), + to create a directory, (C) to copy a file and more.

You can also do shell actions on the item the cursor is over with &/!

Dired needs no setup, it's out of the box.

Eshell is the Emacs built-in terminal emulator.

As it is written in Emacs lisp it works on windows and unix-like operating systems.

The reason I use it is as it has all you need of utils, and written in elisp, so it's the same across different operating systems.

It's also in Emacs, and so you can do any normal Emacs motion and operation on the buffer.

Eshell is out of the box, you can bind it to a key, I have it at C-c g t.

Compile-mode is one feature I could kill for, but luckily I don't have to, as it's right here.

It allows you to run external commands, like cc, csc, cargo, make or grep inside of Emacs, and if the command returns a pointer to a file that becomes a clickable link that jumps you to that place.

This can be useful with errors, so that you can jump straight to it instead of having to navigate there yourself.

Same as above, no need for extra setup.

Rmail is an email client. This is one I use a lot, as it allows me to read and send and manage my emails in Emacs.

• M-x rmail to open
• m to write a new email
• C-c C-c to send it

For it to work you need to set it up with an account, imap and smpt for modern email. I would recommend in a gpg encrypted .authinfo file.

For rmail you need some things set up.

First, enable imap for your email, for me that will be going on yahoo.com settings and enabling it and getting a password to use for external email management.

After that I add:

• machine smtp.mail.yahoo.com login email@email.com port 465 password THE_PASSWORD
• machine imap.mail.yahoo.com login email@email.com port 993 password THE_PASSWORD

to my ~/.authinfo file before i gpg encrypt it.

You so need to tell emacs where to look for the email, here is a template you can use:

(setq user-full-name "NAME"
      user-mail-address "email@email.com")

(setq send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it
      smtpmail-smtp-server "smtp.mail.{your email, for me yahoo}.com"
      smtpmail-smtp-service 465
      smtpmail-stream-type 'ssl)

(setq rmail-movemail-program "/usr/local/bin/movemail" ;; needs to be gnu movemail here for best support
      rmail-primary-inbox-list '("imaps://email%40email.com@imap.mail.{emailprovider}.com:993"))

(setq auth-sources '("~/.authinfo.gpg"))

Now just M-x rmail and enter the gpg password you used to encrypt the authinfo file. Then rmail is set up. m for new email to doubble check.

This is maybe not one everyone needs, but ERC is a good IRC client that comnes with Emacs. It's nothing more, and nothing less.

This is a minimal setup for irc.

You just need this if you want to chat on a irc chat with login requirement, like emacs.

In .authinfo.gpg you also need:

• machine irc.libera.chat login USERNAME password PASSWORD

Then in your emacs config add:

(setq erc-nick "User_Nick"
      erc-autojoin-channels-alist '(("libera.chat" "#emacs")))

(setq erc-use-auth-source-for-nickserv-password t) ;; checks authinfo.gpg for login

And that's all.

Move line up or down:

(defun my/move-line-up ()
  "Moves line under cursor up one line"
  (interactive)
  (transpose-lines 1)
  (forward-line -2))

(defun my/move-line-down ()
  "moves line under cursor down one line"
  (interactive)
  (forward-line 1)
  (transpose-lines 1)
  (forward-line -1))

Recompile etags:

(defun my/recompile-etags ()
  "a command to generate etags 'TAGS' file for the current projects"
  (interactive)
  (let ((default-directory (vc-root-dir)))
    (call-process-shell-command
     "find . -type f \\( -name '*.el' -o -name '*.[ch]' -o -name '*.scm' \\) -print0 | xargs -0 etags -o TAGS")))

Visual Block Mode:

(defun my/visual-block-mode ()
  "something like vims visual block to a keybind, so i can edit multiple lines at once for the same thing"
  (interactive)
  (unless cua-mode   (cua-mode 1))
  (cua-rectangle-mark-mode 1))

(global-set-key (kbd "C-|")
                'my/visual-block-mode)

My Push:

(defun my/push ()
  "git push so it works on my machine and setup"
  (interactive)
  (let ((display-buffer-alist
         '(("\\*Async Shell Command\\*"
            display-buffer-no-window))))
    (shell-command "git push &"))
  (message "Pushing..."))

As my setup doesn't always like the one that comes with VC-mode.

I also have many more, but I cannot just have it all here. Go here to check my completion setup, some more functions, the dasboard, my theme and more.