Re: how can I make a reference card like the Emacs reference card

[Eduardo Ochs <eduardoochs@gmail.com>]

On Thu, 8 Dec 2022 at 16:55, Gottfried <gottfried@posteo.de> wrote:
>
> Hi,
> I am learning Emacs, so please be patient with my basic questions.
>
> I started to read the manual on a daily basis.
>
> I would like to make some reference card like the Emacs reference card
> for Emacs keybindings.
>
> I was looking on the web to find something and watched some videos, but
> I didn't find anything yet.
> Does somebody know some websites or videos on you tube?
> It's about formatting text, after or before I start to write text.
>
> 1. I guess I have first to set up the right environment.
> e.g. very small letters (how to do that?)
>
> 2. which mode should I choose?
>
> 3. I guess I have to create a rectangle with several columns
> and enlarge it to the whole buffer / sheet
>
> 4. Then I have to enter text
>
> 5. How to do the formatting of the text?
>     e.g which minor mode?
>     e.g headings in bigger letters on the first line
>
> Is there a better way?
>
> Kind regards
>
> Gottfried


Hi Gottfried,

when I started to learn Emacs I realized that an _editable_ reference
card in ASCII worked much better for me than printed reference cards
or handwritten notes...

If you "install" and "load" eev in the sense explained in this section,

  http://angg.twu.net/eev-intros/find-eev-install-intro.html#0

then this defun

  (defun r () (interactive) (find-2a nil '(find-fline "~/REFCARD")))

would make `M-x r' behave as "split the frame into a left half and a
right half, and display the file "~/REFCARD" on the window at the
right" - and this will work even when eev-mode is off.

This will open a "reference card" in Fundamental Mode, i.e., without
colors or fonts. A nice exercise is to modify that to create a second
command that will open another "reference card" in Org, that will have
color, fonts, italics, boldfaces, bells, and whistles... but for me
the version that uses Fundamental Mode works better because in it it
is trivial to write several columns of text and cram a lot of a
information in a single page.

Hope that helps,
  Eduardo Ochs
  http://angg.twu.net/#eev
  http://angg.twu.net/eepitch.html