Emaculate Misconseption
16 11 2006The time has come, and possibly not soon enough. I have been using vi again of late, after a long stint of nano. Well, it seems that according to my buddy manchicken <>< that the mark of the beast is vi vi vi. Now, I want to start doing right and supporting more and more free software on a daily basis. My first step, Emacs.
I have used Emacs in the past, but at a very newbish level. I played around with LaserJock and some Emacs personal wiki stuff and even tried out the Emacs IRC program. Right now, I want to take baby steps, and learn Emacs correctly. I need to start pretty basic and get the C^ this and that down, and then move on to the more advanced topics such as:
- IRC
- Coding and Compiling
So, I come to you my fellow lazywebbers, and ask for your help, opinions, facts, or whatever it may be, and possibly take my hand and guide me correctly 
Any help is great help to me, and all of it is greatly appreciated. So please, if you have nothing else better to do, then at least point this helpless fool to perpetual freedom.
Welcome!!!!
Some cool links:
http://del.icio.us/edcrypt/emacs
Prefer emacs-snapshot-gtk from ubuntu universe.
Make sure you swap the caps-lock and ctrl keys (there’s a setting in gnome and OSX for this or registry hacking in Windows). Your pinky-finger will thank you. emacswiki.org is a great site, and make sure to go through the excellent info pages (’info’ is best browsed… in emacs!). If you’re into extensions, the elisp info page is also quite good. Enjoy!
Eric is right: The most important thing you can do to use emacs effectively is to make caps-lock another ctrl key.
;; Congratulations!
;; Cherry-picking from my emacs configuration files, here
;; are some tips:
;; these popup when doing C-x C-f, so load them in advance
;; to save the aggravation
(load “cl-seq”)
(load “view”)
;; easier window handling
(global-set-key (kbd “C-.”) ‘other-window)
(global-set-key (kbd “C-,”) ’split-window-vertically)
(global-set-key (kbd “C->”) ‘delete-window)
(global-set-key (kbd “C-
;; Hmm.. continued..
(global-set-key (kbd “C-
;; argh, html filter..
(global-set-key (kbd “C-<”) ‘delete-other-windows)
;; tiny-tools
(if (functionp ‘tinybuffer-next-buffer)
(progn
(global-set-key (kbd “C-`”) ‘tinybuffer-next-buffer)
(global-set-key (kbd “C-~”) ‘tinybuffer-previous-buffer)))
;; other
(global-set-key (kbd “M-[”) ‘execute-extended-command)
; See http://tiny-tools.sourceforge.net/README.html
(push
(file-name-as-directory
(expand-file-name “/home/victor/src/tiny-tools-cvs/tiny-tools/lisp/tiny” (getenv “HOME”))) load-path)
(load “tinyliba”)
(load “tinylibb”)
(load “tinylibm”)
(load “tinylib”)
;(load “tinylibxe”)
(setq tinybuffer-:load-hook nil)
(require ‘tinybuffer)
(require ‘tinyef)
My .emacs file is very simple. And focused on coding
(global-font-lock-mode t)
(column-number-mode t)
(setq compilation-window-height
(global-set-key [f8] ‘compile)
(global-set-key “\M-n” ‘goto-line)
Also make sure you check out M-x outline-minor-mode for some nice code folding. (Don’t bother with the outline mode’s shortcuts, they are too complicated, stick to using the menu.)
rock on! you all kick arse. Thanks for the tips, tricks, and tweaks! I am reading all about Emacs now and playing around with it as we speak. thanks again everyone!
I started out on Emacs and switched to vi. Vim has all the Emacs functionality I was missing but with a vi interface, so I’m happy.
Zed! Sorry man, I accidentally deleted your comments instead of accepting them. Tricky email, guess I should learn to read
Anyways, Zed said this:
Welcome to the Church. Emacs Wiki knows (almost all); here’s their newbie page. Here’s Steve Yegge’s Effective Emacs.
oh Zed, hehe, thanks for that as well. I am a little slow tonight ;p
What didn’t you like about vi? Wasn’t it Free enough?
Along with making consistant tabs in all applications, I think a lot of us would like to be able to C-u 8 C-k and thinks like that. It may be too much to ask, but an emacs-mode for basic editing in more apps would be nice.