Diary of an Emacs tragic

Category: Emacs

  • Nic Ferrier – This Year in Emacs

    On 19/02/2013 Nic Ferrier gave a great talk current status of Emacs, and where it’s heading.

    Skills Matter : In The Brain of Nic Ferrier: This Year in Emacs.

  • Linuxconf 2013

    Linuxconf 2013

    I just got back from having an amazing week at LCA2013. That was my first LCA and I was really not quite sure what to expect. It turned out to be an amazing experience. I met so man really smart people, learnt a lot and generally got exposed to all sorts of new ideas and software.
    Some of the highlights were:

    1. Sir Tim Berners Lee.
    2. Meeting kernel hackers.
    3. Meeting Joey Hess as I backed his kickstarter.
    4. Finding out about Apache OFBiz
    5. Seeing Paul Fenwick give several presentations. Here are some of his videos on youtube.
    6. Organising the emacs BoF.
    7. Realising that I’m not the only emacs user in Australia.
    8. The Penguin Dinner on Mt Stromlo.

    There were many other great and inspiring things. Too many to list. All I can say is I hope I can make it to LCA2014 in Perth.

  • Edit a regex search string in Emacs

    If you are writing a complex regex search in emacs and need to edit the string, arrow keys takes you out of the search. M-e allows you to really edit the string.

  • The Mark Ring in emacs

    Each time you mark with C-<SPC>, Emacs saves the mark in the mark ring.
    You can step back through your mark ring with C-u C-<SPC>.
    You can swap point and mark with C-x C-x.

  • Indenting of comments in emacs-lisp mode

    Emacs-lisp mode indents comments based on the number of semi-colons prefixing them.
    One semi-colon indents to column 40.
    Two semi-colons indent to the same level as the block you are in.
    Three semi-colons indent to wherever you place it and don’t move if you press <TAB>

    ;;; column:
;;;34567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789
                                        ; one semi-colon
(when (some case)
  ;; two semi-colons indents to the appropriate level
  (second line)
  )
;; two semi-colons indents to the appropriate level
      ;;; I want this comment to stay right here

  • Re-reading the emacs tutorial

    It came upon me to re-read the emacs tutorial. Last time I read it was probably about 17 years ago. Things might have changed since then.
    I picked up two things:
    C-/ is undo and is equivalent to C-_
    C-h c gives you brief help on a keyboard shortcut. I was using C-h k but that opens a new window which can be annoying sometimes.
    C-h t takes you to the tutorial.

  • Swap Registers in emacs calc

    <TAB> to swap the contents of the last two registers in calc.

  • emacs keyboard macros

    If you haven’t explored the power of keyboard macros in emacs, you should.
    You only need to remember a few keys to get going:

    <F3> Start recording a macro
<F4> End recording a macro
C-x e to repeat the macro

    Give it a go!

  • Emacs Rocks videos

    Magnar from @emacsrocks has produced some really nice emacs demos. They confirm my emacs tragic status. I hope to one day be 1/10th as good as Magnar.
    I found the video about multiple-cursors particularly fascinating. In fact all the videos are mind-blowing!
     

  • Select what you typed rather than the completion in ido-mode

    Sometimes you don’t want the completion that ido is offering me in Emacs, for instance when trying to create a temporary buffer C-x C-b sometempbuffername. C-j will to get ido to accept what you typed rather than the completion.