Emacs

Introduction

“I use emacs, which might be thought of as a thermonuclear word processor… the engineer-hours that, in the case of Microsoft Word, were devoted to features like mail merge, and the ability to embed feature-length motion pictures in corporate memoranda, were, in the case of emacs, focused with maniacal intensity on the deceptively simple-seeming problem of editing text. If you are a professional writer… emacs outshines all other editing software in approximately the same way that the noonday sun does the stars. It is not just bigger and brighter; it simply makes everything else vanish.”

I can make Emacs fit my workflow rather than the other way around.

Emacs is a LISP machine.

Emacs basics

It’s highly recommended to run Emacs without any customization a couple of times to learn how the basic Emacs commands work. We can do that by running Emacs with the Q command-line argument, like this: emacs -Q. If you want—again, highly recommended—you can run the Emacs Tutorial by running C-h t. Do the tutorial until you feel confident. Also, experiment in the Scratch buffer, like in the video tutorial above.

Common Emacs commands:

• C-x C-f : find-file, allows you to open an existing file. If the file doesn’t exist, create a new file.
• C-x C-s : save-buffer, saves buffer to disk.
• C-x b : ibuffer, show a list of buffers in the minibuffer, and allows you to switch to a different buffer.
• C-x C-b : ibuffer, runs ibuffer in a new window (use q to quit).
• C-x k : kill (close) buffer.
• C-x C-c : quit Emacs.
• C-o : org-open-line : inserts new line below point.
• C-x 2 : split window in two, one below another.
• C-x 3 : split window in two, side-by-side windows.
• C-x o : switch to other window.
• C-x 0 : close window.
• C-x 1 : close other windows.
• C-<space> : toggle the mark.
• C-w : kill (cut) text between point and mark. (‘w’ is for “wipe”).
• M-w : (copy) save region, but don’t kill it. (‘w’ is for “wipe”)
• C-y : yank (paste) first item from the kill-ring.
• M-y : display items in the kill-ring to yank (paste) into the buffer.

To get out of trouble, use C-g (keyboard quit) to cancel whatever it is that Emacs is doing at the moment. Use C-x C-c to rage-quit if you need to (I admit that I have when I first started out). C-x u will undo, and C-? will redo. Use C-x C-s to save current buffer. If the current buffer is a horrible mess, you can run M-x revert-buffer to get back to whatever it was when you loaded it from disk (by doing a C-x C-f). Also, sometimes you will want to toggle a file read-only. You can do that by pressing x C-q.

Press C-h to view a list of options to get help. Especially useful is C-h k when you want to know what a keyboard command does without running it first. For example, pressing C-h k <F4> will tell you that it runs the command kmacro-end-or-call-macro. Press q to close the help window.

If you want to read a comprehensive—very much so—guide to Emacs, the history, and the details of how it works, read my massive Creative writing with Emacs blog post from 2019. It delves into the mechanics of Emacs in much more depth, leaving us free to explore Emacs as a writer’s toolbox. So, if you are completely blank with regard to Emacs, I highly recommend that you read at least the first part of it before continuing.

And, before you ask, let me tell you my favorite Emacs command: C-o (insert new line below); I use it all the time!

Now that you know a thing or two about Emacs, here’s another introductory video about Emacs as a text editor:

NB: He uses the <Esc> key as an alternative to <Control> like in <Esc> y. May I suggest that you use C-y instead. Using the Escape key that way will conflict with the modal editing package Boon mentioned below./

Doom-Emacs

Doom-Emacs is a minimalist modern Emacs distribution that is light and fast. It provides a rock-solid and highly configurable infrastructure to base an Emacs configuration on.

I switched to Doom-Emacs after declaring Emacs Bankruptcy ¹, and I haven’t regretted it. It uses every trick in the book to optimize, and the install/upgrade/maintenance scripts are excellent. It provides infrastructure and a well thought out framework for creating your own, speedy Emacs configuration.

Notes about the Hotel California configuration

If you feel that you need to have at least a menu-bar, then you can turn it on/off by running this command: M-x menu-bar-mode. It can be useful sometimes, especially when learning the Emacs ropes.