sharing my firsts, org babel tangle and "init" .org file

[Brady Trainor <algebrat@uw.edu>]

Have you migrated your init files into .org file(s)? What's your setup?

Below is my first setup for fellow newbs, or for the interested 
developer. And please let me know if I'm missing some logic or 
conventions/practices.

In the short history of my Emacs init file evolution (~ oct '13), I had 
considered packages like dot-emacs.org, but for some reason had not 
succeeded (I thought it had demanded Emacs 24.3.50+, but I don't see 
that in the description now).

So when I recently felt motivated to try such a .org Literation of my 
init files (my project of making agenda custom commands and capture 
templates was starting to topple), I tried let's say a more basic approach.

I worked mostly from the tutorial in
     Babel: Introduction / Emacs Initialization with Babel
 
http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/intro.html#emacs-initialization

It took just a little wrestling with a clean tty2 Emacs, but here is my 
interpretation of a "minimal" setup for initializing via org babel 
tangling:

  ____________
/

;;;; make sure org has been installed in an "emacs -q"

(require 'package)
(package-initialize)
(require 'org)

;; declare org indentation before we might manually open org to tangle
(setq org-startup-indented t)
(setq org-hide-block-startup t)
;; declare source indentation before we might manually open org to tangle
(setq org-src-fontify-natively t)
(setq org-edit-src-content-indentation 0)

;; default I/O in windows is undecided-dos/unix for de/encoding respectively
(prefer-coding-system 'utf-8-unix)

;; load org initialization files
(require 'ob-tangle)
(org-babel-load-file "/e/emacs-config/dot-emacs-test.org")

\____________


Some of those aren't necessary but for aesthetics before manually 
stepping through lines for testing the initialization (starting emacs -q 
tangling and/or executing one-by-one).

The character encoding is there as I have some utf-8 Fahrenheit symbols 
in my (.org) init file.

Initially (while troubleshooting) I had some dired customizations 
(vertical omit, horizontal hide), font family and color-theming in this 
code block, as I have a hard time looking at plain Emacs for too long.

You may also want to toggle some tangles in your (first ever) init file, 
this can be done per file, subtree or source block, via

#+PROPERTY: header-args :tangle yes
  or
:PROPERTIES:
:header-args: :tangle no
:END:
  or
#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp :tangle no

And the latter take precendence.


TWIMC, HTH

Brady