* Re: Fwd: A few Emacs newbie questions, need oldbie answers :)
2004-04-25 16:54 Fwd: A few Emacs newbie questions, need oldbie answers :) Deboo
@ 2004-04-25 18:55 ` Jason Earl
0 siblings, 0 replies; 2+ messages in thread
From: Jason Earl @ 2004-04-25 18:55 UTC (permalink / raw)
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
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