Simple emacs setup for general prose?

Simple emacs setup for general prose?

[bclark76]

I'd like to edit prose using emacs.  Is there a mode where I can
smoothly type prose?

I want paragraphs to look like this:

*TAB*Here is the start of a paragraph that I want emacs to autofill.
notice how it begins with a tab character on the first line, and the
second and subsequent lines do not start with the tab character.
this ALMOST seems possible using M-x text then M-x fill, but
unfortunately my paragraphs come out as below.

*TAB*The preceeding tab actually gets converted to spaces which
*TAB*I do not want.  I also don't want this line to be indented at
all!
*TAB*If I want emacs to format this paragraph the way I want, I have
*TAB*to manually delete the tab ( which has actually been converted
*TAB*to spaces ) on the second line before continuing to type.

*TAB*I want to be able to end my paragraph by pressing RET twice
followed by a TAB and have the paragraph automatically auto filled to
appear as this one.

Thanks, and sorry for the NOOB question.

Re: Simple emacs setup for general prose?

[Andreas Politz]

bclark76 <bclark76@gmail.com> writes:

> I'd like to edit prose using emacs.  Is there a mode where I can
> smoothly type prose?
>
> I want paragraphs to look like this:
>
> *TAB*Here is the start of a paragraph that I want emacs to autofill.
> notice how it begins with a tab character on the first line, and the
> second and subsequent lines do not start with the tab character.
> this ALMOST seems possible using M-x text then M-x fill, but
> unfortunately my paragraphs come out as below.
>

Try `paragraph-indent-text-mode', `auto-fill-mode' and
M-: (setq indent-tabs-mode t) RET

-ap

Re: Simple emacs setup for general prose?

[Tim X]

bclark76 <bclark76@gmail.com> writes:


> I'd like to edit prose using emacs.  Is there a mode where I can
> smoothly type prose?
>
> I want paragraphs to look like this:
>
> *TAB*Here is the start of a paragraph that I want emacs to autofill.
> notice how it begins with a tab character on the first line, and the
> second and subsequent lines do not start with the tab character.
> this ALMOST seems possible using M-x text then M-x fill, but
> unfortunately my paragraphs come out as below.
>
> *TAB*The preceeding tab actually gets converted to spaces which
> *TAB*I do not want.  I also don't want this line to be indented at
> all!
> *TAB*If I want emacs to format this paragraph the way I want, I have
> *TAB*to manually delete the tab ( which has actually been converted
> *TAB*to spaces ) on the second line before continuing to type.
>
> *TAB*I want to be able to end my paragraph by pressing RET twice
> followed by a TAB and have the paragraph automatically auto filled to
> appear as this one.
>

Emacs has many major and minor modes. To really provide the best advice,
we need to understand exactly what your requirements are. 

Do you really just want your 'pros' to be in plain text or do you
eventually want to format them for printing etc. If the latter, I'd
highly recommend auctex. 

There are also modes for writing enriched text, modes for writing screen
plays, I think I've seen some for poetry etc and then there are some
minor modes, such as fill-text, paragraph mode etc for just plain text. 

Let us know more about what you want and we can probably point you in
the right direction.

Tim


-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au

Re: Simple emacs setup for general prose?

[Daniel Goldin]

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I use org-mode for editing prose. Double-space to define paragraphs instead
of tabs. The results can easily be ported to latex. pdf, odt or html and
tweaked to create tabbed pars, if that's what you want.

d.

On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 1:42 PM, Tim X <timx@nospam.dev.null> wrote:

> bclark76 <bclark76@gmail.com> writes:
>
>
> > I'd like to edit prose using emacs.  Is there a mode where I can
> > smoothly type prose?
> >
> > I want paragraphs to look like this:
> >
> > *TAB*Here is the start of a paragraph that I want emacs to autofill.
> > notice how it begins with a tab character on the first line, and the
> > second and subsequent lines do not start with the tab character.
> > this ALMOST seems possible using M-x text then M-x fill, but
> > unfortunately my paragraphs come out as below.
> >
> > *TAB*The preceeding tab actually gets converted to spaces which
> > *TAB*I do not want.  I also don't want this line to be indented at
> > all!
> > *TAB*If I want emacs to format this paragraph the way I want, I have
> > *TAB*to manually delete the tab ( which has actually been converted
> > *TAB*to spaces ) on the second line before continuing to type.
> >
> > *TAB*I want to be able to end my paragraph by pressing RET twice
> > followed by a TAB and have the paragraph automatically auto filled to
> > appear as this one.
> >
>
> Emacs has many major and minor modes. To really provide the best advice,
> we need to understand exactly what your requirements are.
>
> Do you really just want your 'pros' to be in plain text or do you
> eventually want to format them for printing etc. If the latter, I'd
> highly recommend auctex.
>
> There are also modes for writing enriched text, modes for writing screen
> plays, I think I've seen some for poetry etc and then there are some
> minor modes, such as fill-text, paragraph mode etc for just plain text.
>
> Let us know more about what you want and we can probably point you in
> the right direction.
>
> Tim
>
>
> --
> tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au
>



-- 
Daniel Goldin
626.817.2462

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Re: Simple emacs setup for general prose?

[rusi]

On Mar 8, 11:44 pm, bclark76 <bclar...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd like to edit prose using emacs.  Is there a mode where I can
> smoothly type prose?
>
> I want paragraphs to look like this:
>
> *TAB*Here is the start of a paragraph that I want emacs to autofill.
> notice how it begins with a tab character on the first line, and the
> second and subsequent lines do not start with the tab character.
> this ALMOST seems possible using M-x text then M-x fill, but
> unfortunately my paragraphs come out as below.
>
> *TAB*The preceeding tab actually gets converted to spaces which
> *TAB*I do not want.  I also don't want this line to be indented at
> all!
> *TAB*If I want emacs to format this paragraph the way I want, I have
> *TAB*to manually delete the tab ( which has actually been converted
> *TAB*to spaces ) on the second line before continuing to type.
>
> *TAB*I want to be able to end my paragraph by pressing RET twice
> followed by a TAB and have the paragraph automatically auto filled to
> appear as this one.
>
> Thanks, and sorry for the NOOB question.

How about this?
M-x text-mode
M-x visual-line-mode

Probably wont work on emacs versions < 23

Re: Simple emacs setup for general prose?

[suvayu ali]

On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 10:51 AM, Daniel Goldin <danielgoldin@gmail.com> wrote:
> I use org-mode for editing prose. Double-space to define paragraphs instead
> of tabs. The results can easily be ported to latex. pdf, odt or html and
> tweaked to create tabbed pars, if that's what you want.

I would second that. I am writing my thesis in org-mode and exporting
to pdf via latex. I think the beauty lies in the fact that for a
simple setup you can use the same source file to export to several
formats (html, latex and even plain text)

http://orgmode.org/

-- 
Suvayu

Open source is the future. It sets us free.