Re: Simple emacs setup for general prose?

[Tim X <timx@nospam.dev.null>]

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