Now that I have customised my emacs extensively, the default configuration is quite uncomfortable for me to use. I have a file called my-defaults.el which is the bare minimum I need to make using emacs a pleasant experience. If I have to sit down at your emacs session, I will probably need to cut and paste these into a temp buffer and call M-x eval-region.
I’ve mentioned some of these modifications before.
I always always use ido and uniquify. Ido makes it so nice for finding files and switching buffers, I now find the default behaviour surprising and sometimes even catch myself waiting for the options to appear.
(require 'ido) (require 'uniquify)
flex-matching is a given of course, and I don’t like being prompted unnecessarily for new buffers – I’m always creating them.
(ido-mode t) (setq ido-enable-flex-matching t) (setq ido-create-new-buffer 'always)
The way emacs deals with identically named files by default is poor, but it is great that it is so easy to fix.
(setq uniquify-buffer-name-style 'reverse) (setq uniquify-separator "|") (setq uniquify-after-kill-buffer-p t) (setq uniquify-ignore-buffers-re "^\\*")
Since emacs23, fonts now look great. This is from my windows config. Other folks have written about beautifying emacs for other OSes. I summarised those posts here.
(set-default-font
"-outline-Consolas-normal-r-normal-normal-14-97-96-96-c-*-iso8859-1")
It should be obvious what most of these do. The most important ones are setting yes-or-no-p to accept y or n rather than forcing me to type yes<RETURN> and removing the toolbar. Actually no, scratch that, these are all important. (Emacs23 has some of these set by default).
(global-font-lock-mode 1) (setq inhibit-splash-screen t) (setq font-lock-maximum-decoration 3) (setq use-file-dialog nil) (setq use-dialog-box nil) (fset 'yes-or-no-p 'y-or-n-p) (tool-bar-mode -1) (show-paren-mode 1) (transient-mark-mode t) (setq case-fold-search t) (blink-cursor-mode 0)
It took me ages to figure out how to prevent emacs converting a bunch of spaces into tabs. And of course, the scrollbar should always be on the right.
(custom-set-variables '(scroll-bar-mode 'right) '(indent-tabs-mode nil))
Where am I?
(line-number-mode 1) (column-number-mode 1)
Keep emacs backup files in one place. This is from my windows config again.
(push '("." . "c:/home/jared/.emacs-backups") backup-directory-alist)
And make it so that when I copy a region, that gets sent to the OS clipboard.
(setq x-select-enable-clipboard t) (setq interprogram-paste-function 'x-cut-buffer-or-selection-value)
Hey jared,
Thanks for the article on muse I have started using muse to generate the syntax highlighting on my web page. I use the muse-publish-region function as I do not want muse to generate the complete web page.
Very nice Abdullah, your posts are looking good. Just curious though, why don’t you use muse to generate the complete webpage?
Well the reason i do not use muse to publish the complete web page is because I have my own styles that I want to apply and these get modified by muse.
It might be worth setting up a muse style so that the entire page gets generated exactly how you want it. I’ve written a few posts on customizing muse. The best one to start with might be this one.