Re: Fwd: A few Emacs newbie questions, need oldbie answers :)

Re: Fwd: A few Emacs newbie questions, need oldbie answers :)

[Deboo]

On Tue, Apr 20, 2004 at 01:00:52PM +0200, Daan Hoogland wrote:
>From: Daan Hoogland <emacs@onecht.net>
[Snip]
>>From: Jason Earl <jearl@wegointer.net>
>>Date: 20 april 2004 7:11:25 GMT+02:00
>>To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
>>Subject: Re: A few Emacs newbie questions, need oldbie answers :)
>>
>>Deboo <emacs@debian.elitemail.org> writes:
>>
[Snip]
>>>      In emacs, how to search/get a lisp program (download) and how
>>>      to install it and how to load it? E.g., remind.el
>>
>>Most of the Emacs packages I use have Debian packages.  This makes
>>installing them as easy as a simple apt command.  However, I do have
>>some packages installed manually (and remind.el just happens to be one
>>of them).  Generally speaking the correct thing to do is to download
>>the .el files and then follow the instructions provided.  In the case
>>of remind.el that means adding a folder to your Emacs load path by
>>putting something similar to the following line in your .emacs file:
>>
>>(setq load-path (cons "~/emacs-lisp" load-path))
>>
>>You then simply put remind.el in this directory (~/emacs-lisp in my
>>case) and add:
>>
>>(require 'remind)
>>
>>to your .emacs file.  There are additional programs that need to be
>>installed for remind.el to work, but the instructions in the remind.el
>>file are pretty clear.

        I'm using debian linux and the lisp files are in
        /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp directory. Some files here are names
        xxxx-el, some just xxxx, and some as xxxx.el, whereas some
        others as xxxx.elc . I don't understand lisp or programming so I dont
        know what is the difference, but could I move this directory to
        my home directory and inform emacs somehow that this directory
        is in my home dir?

>>
>>>      What is the best reminder, PIM and todo list manager avaliable
>>>      for emacs (console)?
>>
>>I don't know about best, but I tend to use plain calendar for
>>organization, a plain text file for a todo list and bbdb for a PIM.  I
>>took a look at remind.el, planner.el, and others, but they were more
>>than I needed.  YMMV.
>>
        Actually I haven't really seen any console utility which would
        have many features or be a PIM sort of thing. Not like Evolution
        and Outlook but something decent for console. I wonder if a
        decent one exists. I remember having asked this question to bob
        on the debian irc channel, an year or so ago and got a response
        that he just uses emacs.


>>>      What is the best way to backup all of these emacs and other
>>>      programs' configs and data files?
>>
>>I tend to want backups of my entire home directory.  To create a
>>backup of my home directory (/home/jearl) in /tmp (you probably want
>>to store your backups someplace safer), I do:
>>
>>tar -jcvf ~/tmp/backup.tar.bz2 -C /home/ jearl
>>
>>On most any Linux system 'info tar' is your friend.  On any other
>>system 'man tar' should get the job done.  Of course, if you have
>>anything other than GNU tar then you'll have to work harder, other tar
>>programs generally aren't as featureful.  If you are using Windows,
>>install Cygwin.

        I will still need to think hard what I'll have to use for backup
        since my home directory is _large_.

>>I tend to cut and paste in Emacs using the keyboard (even in X
>>Windows).  Basically I do a C-<space> to set the mark, then I move my
>>point (cursor) to the end of the region I want to copy and when I have
>>selected the region I choose M-w to copy the region or C-w to cut
>>(kill) the region.  I then move the point to where I want to paste the
>>text and do a C-y to paste the text.  Subsequent M-y commands will
>>cycle through your kill-ring for older bits of text that you copied or
>>killed.


>>If you haven't taken a look at the Emacs tutorial hit 'C-h t' and
>>spend a bit of time learning some other basic Emacs tricks.

        I had actually gone thru it but it's been a long while and then
        I had stopped using emacs, just used t be fasinated and usd to
        install emacs and all the goodies and keep it in the show case
        and use vim. Well, even right now I'm using vim since it's the
        editor defined in mutt, but I'm pressing Ctrl-K to delete lines
        instead of pressing dd ... lol that's emacs inductance?


>>>      What is the best way (or the easiest way) to switch buffers?

>>I tend to do 'C-x b' to switch to the previous buffer or 'C-x C-b' for
>>a list of buffers.

        Well, I researched on this one a bit. I read the info docs and
	saw emacs-goodies-el has a cycle-buffer-forward and
        cycle-buffer-backward commands and we can bind these to M-N and
        M-P in .emacs, according to the info, but when I do this and
        start emacs, I get errors pointing me to these lines. When I
        remove the macros, emacs starts okay. Can anything be done so
        that these bindings work?

>>>      Best thing I could use emacs under dos/windoze if I could, bu it
>>>      would be huge to be put on a mini CD. I haven't ever tried that
>>>      version, but would like to know user experiences.
>>
>>Actually a slimmed down Emacs isn't so big.

        For now I've put vim and jed, may be if I could find a small
        version of emacs, i would put that along.


>>>      How to auomatically spell-check while typing text?
>>
>>M-x flyspell-mode

        Very cool, and it seems to be fast. I don't know why vim becomes
        super slow in insert mode ... seems to have some problem with
        ispell/aspell. Wonder what is causing this.


>>>      How to use and set word-wrap in emacs?
>>
>>M-q or M-x auto-fill-mode

        How would I put this in .emacs so emacs always has word-wrap on?
        Would this be a nice thing to do?

>>>      How to use a console-based graphics viewer (zgv or fbi or feh)
>>>      from within emacs?
>>
>>No idea.  I tend to run X Windows on boxes where I want to view
>>graphics.

        It's alright for now to use zgv or the others but would love to
        have one under emacs. Maybe it would be a resource hog under
	emacs.
        I'll try searching for one.

>>>      I want to load the todoo-mode for all files that are within
>>>      ~/todo folder, whichever I load in to emacs anytime. What do I
>>>      have to put in .emacs to do this?
>>
>>No idea.

        I found another way to do it. Putting "-*- todoo -*-" on first
        line ( or second line if the first contains #!/bin/sh), and then
        opening any such file, would automatically put the file in that
        mode. I tried using two modes instead of one but that didn't
        have any success.


A few mode questions if you or anyone has the time and wouldn't mind:

How to get yellow color on emacs in console? Yellow always shows up as
  brownish-red.

Why does Emacs load all files in to the scratch buffer? If it's a file,
and we've modified it, emacs asks us to save it before quitting but
doesn't ask any such thing if we've typed in to the scratch buffer.
How to autosave the scratch buffer? Sometimes I jot down something useful,
in to the scratch buffer when there's no time to think of a filename etc.

How to make a custom dictionary and load it in emacs? How to use
  autocompletion for long words in the custom dictionary? How to use
  emacspeak? Do I need to become blind to use emacspeak or can anyone
  use it?

How to print from emacs, in color (with background, foreground and
  syntax-highlight colors)?


Thanks a lot for the detailed replies, thanks to others too who replied.
I haven't been getting any messages on this list sine last 5 days or
more, so please cc me a copy if you reply.

Regards,
Deboo

P.S: I downloaded a copy of the wiki.pl a few days ago, with help from
Alex but couldn't figure out then how to open it. I renamed it to
wiki.html and am now enjoying it. Only thing I would like to use an imap
supporting and ssl supporting email client so wanderlust comes close to
this, but I couldn't find much of anything in the wiki about wanderlust,
except a little bit of undocumented config and a bit of it's features.
Where can I find such info.

Re: Fwd: A few Emacs newbie questions, need oldbie answers :)

[Jason Earl]

Deboo <emacs@debian.elitemail.org> writes:

> On Tue, Apr 20, 2004 at 01:00:52PM +0200, Daan Hoogland wrote:
>>From: Daan Hoogland <emacs@onecht.net>
> [Snip]
>>>From: Jason Earl <jearl@wegointer.net>
>>>Date: 20 april 2004 7:11:25 GMT+02:00
>>>To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
>>>Subject: Re: A few Emacs newbie questions, need oldbie answers :)
>>>
>>>Deboo <emacs@debian.elitemail.org> writes:
>>>
> [Snip]
>>>>      In emacs, how to search/get a lisp program (download) and how
>>>>      to install it and how to load it? E.g., remind.el
>>>
>>>Most of the Emacs packages I use have Debian packages.  This makes
>>>installing them as easy as a simple apt command.  However, I do have
>>>some packages installed manually (and remind.el just happens to be one
>>>of them).  Generally speaking the correct thing to do is to download
>>>the .el files and then follow the instructions provided.  In the case
>>>of remind.el that means adding a folder to your Emacs load path by
>>>putting something similar to the following line in your .emacs file:
>>>
>>>(setq load-path (cons "~/emacs-lisp" load-path))
>>>
>>>You then simply put remind.el in this directory (~/emacs-lisp in my
>>>case) and add:
>>>
>>>(require 'remind)
>>>
>>>to your .emacs file.  There are additional programs that need to be
>>>installed for remind.el to work, but the instructions in the remind.el
>>>file are pretty clear.
>
>         I'm using debian linux and the lisp files are in
>         /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp directory. Some files here are names
>         xxxx-el, some just xxxx, and some as xxxx.el, whereas some
>         others as xxxx.elc . I don't understand lisp or programming so I dont
>         know what is the difference, but could I move this directory to
>         my home directory and inform emacs somehow that this directory
>         is in my home dir?

Yes, I suppose that I wasn't quite clear enough in my instructions.
The recipe that I gave for installing emacs-lisp packages was for
installing them for my own user account (and not for all users on my
machine).  I tend to let Debian take care of the installation of all
site wide packages, that way I don't get conflicts it some of the
Debian-controlled configuration files.  I use Debian packages for
whatever is included in Debian, and if I need something else then I
install it in my home directory in ~/emacs-lisp.  The directives that
make this a part of my Emacs load path are in my .emacs file (actually
.emacs.el), and so I don't get conflicts.

>>>>      What is the best reminder, PIM and todo list manager avaliable
>>>>      for emacs (console)?
>>>
>>>I don't know about best, but I tend to use plain calendar for
>>>organization, a plain text file for a todo list and bbdb for a PIM.  I
>>>took a look at remind.el, planner.el, and others, but they were more
>>>than I needed.  YMMV.
>>>
>         Actually I haven't really seen any console utility which would
>         have many features or be a PIM sort of thing. Not like Evolution
>         and Outlook but something decent for console. I wonder if a
>         decent one exists. I remember having asked this question to bob
>         on the debian irc channel, an year or so ago and got a response
>         that he just uses emacs.

Actually BBDB is pretty amazing as a way to keep track of contacts.
Gnus and spam.el will even use your .bbdb file as a whitelist, and
there are tools to synch bbdb with Palm-based PDAs.

It's the calendar bit that's tricky.  I have tried calendar-mode
(which I like), and planner.el (which shows potential).  Unfortunately
I do most of my actual planning on my PDA, and Emacs is a little weak
in this area.

>>>>      What is the best way to backup all of these emacs and other
>>>>      programs' configs and data files?
>>>
>>>I tend to want backups of my entire home directory.  To create a
>>>backup of my home directory (/home/jearl) in /tmp (you probably
>>>want to store your backups someplace safer), I do:
>>>
>>>tar -jcvf ~/tmp/backup.tar.bz2 -C /home/ jearl
>>>
>>>On most any Linux system 'info tar' is your friend.  On any other
>>>system 'man tar' should get the job done.  Of course, if you have
>>>anything other than GNU tar then you'll have to work harder, other
>>>tar programs generally aren't as featureful.  If you are using
>>>Windows, install Cygwin.
>
>         I will still need to think hard what I'll have to use for
>         backup since my home directory is _large_.

Yes, that's generally the real problem.  If you only want to back up
your Emacs config then copying .emacs somewhere else is probably good
enough.  In my case I would also back up my ~/emacs-lisp directory
because it has some small packages I have written myself.

>>>I tend to cut and paste in Emacs using the keyboard (even in X
>>>Windows).  Basically I do a C-<space> to set the mark, then I move my
>>>point (cursor) to the end of the region I want to copy and when I have
>>>selected the region I choose M-w to copy the region or C-w to cut
>>>(kill) the region.  I then move the point to where I want to paste the
>>>text and do a C-y to paste the text.  Subsequent M-y commands will
>>>cycle through your kill-ring for older bits of text that you copied or
>>>killed.
>
>
>>>If you haven't taken a look at the Emacs tutorial hit 'C-h t' and
>>>spend a bit of time learning some other basic Emacs tricks.
>
>         I had actually gone thru it but it's been a long while and
>         then I had stopped using emacs, just used t be fasinated and
>         usd to install emacs and all the goodies and keep it in the
>         show case and use vim. Well, even right now I'm using vim
>         since it's the editor defined in mutt, but I'm pressing
>         Ctrl-K to delete lines instead of pressing dd ... lol that's
>         emacs inductance?

Switching over from vim to Emacs for reading mail is what really
signified my last major usage of vim.  Once I was using Emacs for
coding, documentation (with LaTeX or Texinfo), and email then there
wasn't really much left for vim to do.  I still tend to use vi for
quick systems administration tasks, and for dealing with really large
files (like logfiles), but that's about it.  When I get homesick for
vi-style keystrokes I simply use viper.

>>>>      What is the best way (or the easiest way) to switch buffers?
>
>>>I tend to do 'C-x b' to switch to the previous buffer or 'C-x C-b' for
>>>a list of buffers.

>         Well, I researched on this one a bit. I read the info docs
> 	  and saw emacs-goodies-el has a cycle-buffer-forward and
> 	  cycle-buffer-backward commands and we can bind these to M-N
> 	  and M-P in .emacs, according to the info, but when I do this
> 	  and start emacs, I get errors pointing me to these
> 	  lines. When I remove the macros, emacs starts okay. Can
> 	  anything be done so that these bindings work?

What exactly did you add to your .emacs file?  I don't generally
rebind keys (I use Emacs on too many machines), but I am sure that
what you want to do is possible.

>>>>      Best thing I could use emacs under dos/windoze if I could, bu it
>>>>      would be huge to be put on a mini CD. I haven't ever tried that
>>>>      version, but would like to know user experiences.
>>>
>>>Actually a slimmed down Emacs isn't so big.
>
>         For now I've put vim and jed, may be if I could find a small
>         version of emacs, i would put that along.
>
>
>>>>      How to auomatically spell-check while typing text?
>>>
>>>M-x flyspell-mode
>
>         Very cool, and it seems to be fast. I don't know why vim becomes
>         super slow in insert mode ... seems to have some problem with
>         ispell/aspell. Wonder what is causing this.
>
>
>>>>      How to use and set word-wrap in emacs?
>>>
>>>M-q or M-x auto-fill-mode
>
>         How would I put this in .emacs so emacs always has word-wrap
>         on?  Would this be a nice thing to do?

M-x customize-variable text-mode-hook

This will let you turn on both auto-fill-mode and flyspell-mode for
all text buffers.  Very handy.

>>>>      How to use a console-based graphics viewer (zgv or fbi or feh)
>>>>      from within emacs?
>>>
>>>No idea.  I tend to run X Windows on boxes where I want to view
>>>graphics.
>
>         It's alright for now to use zgv or the others but would love
>         to have one under emacs. Maybe it would be a resource hog
>         under emacs.  I'll try searching for one.

I think that the real problem is that graphics are relatively new to
Emacs even under X Windows.  I can't imagine that the Emacs hackers
have even tried to deal with the graphics on the console.

>>>>      I want to load the todoo-mode for all files that are within
>>>>      ~/todo folder, whichever I load in to emacs anytime. What do I
>>>>      have to put in .emacs to do this?
>>>
>>>No idea.
>
>         I found another way to do it. Putting "-*- todoo -*-" on first
>         line ( or second line if the first contains #!/bin/sh), and then
>         opening any such file, would automatically put the file in that
>         mode. I tried using two modes instead of one but that didn't
>         have any success.
>
>
> A few mode questions if you or anyone has the time and wouldn't mind:
>
> How to get yellow color on emacs in console? Yellow always shows up as
>   brownish-red.
>
> Why does Emacs load all files in to the scratch buffer? If it's a file,
> and we've modified it, emacs asks us to save it before quitting but
> doesn't ask any such thing if we've typed in to the scratch buffer.
> How to autosave the scratch buffer? Sometimes I jot down something useful,
> in to the scratch buffer when there's no time to think of a filename etc.

The *scratch* buffer is a special case.  In fact, I think that this is
part of the Emacs FAQ.  Emacs has to start up with a buffer, and so it
starts with *scratch*.  This buffer is made somewhat useful because it
starts in elisp mode (so you can test scratch emacs programs).  I have
a ~/notes buffer that I have Emacs load automatically that I use for a
scratch pad.

> How to make a custom dictionary and load it in emacs? How to use
>   autocompletion for long words in the custom dictionary? How to use
>   emacspeak? Do I need to become blind to use emacspeak or can anyone
>   use it?

Take a look at the documentation for abbrev mode.  It allows for all
sorts of keystroke shortcuts.  For example, when typing in my Journal
all I have to do is insert 'kk' and I get
'KaeLynn\index{Earl!KaeLynn}'.

> How to print from emacs, in color (with background, foreground and
>   syntax-highlight colors)?

That's a good question.  I tend to use a2ps to fancy print text files.
What does ps-print-region and ps-print-buffer get you?  If you like
the results you might want to take a look at ps-print-customize.

> Thanks a lot for the detailed replies, thanks to others too who replied.
> I haven't been getting any messages on this list sine last 5 days or
> more, so please cc me a copy if you reply.

No sweat.  Fact of the matter is that I am simply spending a bit of
time sharpening my Emacs skills.  Helping others is a pretty efficient
way to do that.

> Regards,
> Deboo
>
> P.S: I downloaded a copy of the wiki.pl a few days ago, with help from
> Alex but couldn't figure out then how to open it. I renamed it to
> wiki.html and am now enjoying it. Only thing I would like to use an imap
> supporting and ssl supporting email client so wanderlust comes close to
> this, but I couldn't find much of anything in the wiki about wanderlust,
> except a little bit of undocumented config and a bit of it's features.
> Where can I find such info.

Gnus supports both IMAP and SSL (as does VM, I believe).  I personally
really like Gnus.

Jason