This project is a semi-systematic attempt to modernize and clean up portions of my emacs startup files that I have accumulated over the years.
They are extremely subjective. Take what you find useful, leave what you don't. To learn more on the individual settings, just read the files. They should be commented reasonably well.
The fundamental philosophy of my choices are as follows.
If you just checked out this project and only see README.md... you are right.
The meat of the project is in "hidden" files .emacs and .emacs.d.
I aim toward a goal state in which my .emacs is just a loads similar to:
(load "~/.emacs.d/scarpaz-main.el")
and directory .emacs.d contains the actual settings, grouped together by topic.
To keep emacs's actual startup files synchronized with the repo, it's not a crazy idea to
make them symbolic links, such as:
cd ~/git_sandboxes/dot-emacs/.emacs.d/
for f in scarpaz-*.el; do ln -svf `pwd`/$f ~/.emacs.d/$f; done
It's not crazy... for me. It might be crazy for you. You do you.
A lot of default emacs key bindings are, as perceived in 2021, insane. Many well curated emacs packages remap them radically.
My philosophy is to change only those I use most frequently, while leaving most original keybindings in place, unless there's other compelling benefit to remove them.
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Some extremely common function take three key presses with the default bindings. One example is saving (
C-x C-s). I remap that to one key press,F2. I also unbind the original bindingC-x C-s, so that I'm forced to learn the new one. -
emacs leaves many function keys available for binding. I map all of them to functions that I find useful. In fact, I reclaim even more function keys than those available by default (e.g.,
F3andF4, originally associated with macro recording). While my choice of new bindings is highly subjective, the higher usability that a good function-key mapping can afford you is hard to dispute. This, of course, only applies if you use 100% keyboards with a full set of function keys. -
The
C-zbinding that suspends the emacs frame is, in my opinion, the most ferociously useless and exasperatingly annoying hot key in the history of computing. Combined with the fact that most users are otherwise used to pressC-zto undo, because that's what all software designed after 1987 does, the potential for mistakes is ever present. I do what the only thing that seems painfully obvious: I mapC-ztoundoin emacs. That way, not only I bring emacs closer to CUA land, but I also hidesuspend-frame, a function that in 2021 and on modern hardware can only serve as a foot shotgun. -
emacs dedicates to navigation an amount of hot keys that seems --in 2021 and on keyboard that have arrow keys-- absurd:
C-f,C-b,C-p,C-n,C-v,M-v,M-f,M-b... Today, with most contemporary keyboards having arrow keys, even those 75% and 65% models that r/MechanicalKeyboards people love, it hardly makes sense to keep these bindings in place. I reclaim them. In the specific case ofC-v, I go back to CUA land, making it another paste (yank). -
M122 bindings. I like big keyboards. My daily driver is a vintage IBM 122-key Model M "Battlecruiser". I post emacs bindings for the F13-F24 keys, plus the extra function keys. Yes, I use the extra function keys for useful things, usually revision control via magit; yes, I do remember what they do without looking them up (that's because they are organized consistently with the F1-F12 assignments); and yes, they are easier to remember than key sequences.
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If you use emacs the same way I do, you might frequently find yourself with a lot of buffers which accumulated over time, and you no longer want. I frequently want to declutter them, and I want to do it quickly. To that goal, I bind the
deletekey so that it kills buffers inhelm-mini. I do so for both the PC and MacOS keys labeled "delete" or "Del", even if they normally perform different functions (on a Mac, the key labeled delete is really a backspace). -
I bind F24 (and C-F12, for when I am away from the battleship) to
helm-mini. That's an extremely useful command to have a one keystroke away. F24 is also the top rightmost key in that corner of the battleship, so muscle memory is easy to build on it. -
I choose the following helm replacements for existing emacs functions:
| Key | New binding | Commentary |
|---|---|---|
C-x b |
helm-mini |
That's a way better buffer manager than emacs' buffer list |
C-s |
helm-swoop |
Perform incremental search all through the file rather than only on the first occurrence. |
M-y |
helm-show-kill-ring |
Display the entire kill ring rather than popping one entry at a time from it. |
F3 |
helm-find-files |
A way better find file mode. |
I customize the calendar significantly, because I use it significantly.
For example:
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I added an extra column displaying the number of each week in the year (1 ... 52)
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Pressing any digit ranging from '1' to '9' will select progressively wider calendar layouts, with per-day columns ranging from 2 to 9 characters. This is especially useful these days in which monitors are wide and have high resolutions.
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My calendar use is centered around weekly reports. I organize my work on a weekly basis, via weekly reports that timestamped on Friday dates. Pressing
worreturnon a calendar date will take you to the weekly report associated with the Friday of that week. -
I bind keys
+and=todiary-insert-entry -
I bind the space bar to a function that will display both diary and holiday information on a given date.
Unfortunately, Atlassian products like BitBucket don't render org-mode. Jira tickets requesting that feature in the cloud and in their server software have been langushing in the Gathering Interest stage for years now.
What they render is a customized version of markdown, that automatically decorates user mentions and automatically links Jira issues and pull requests.
The markdown mode by Jason Blevins already does a fantastic job at supporting markdown editing.
What it misses are the BitBucket-specific extensions.
I offer a minor mode named jira-md that you can use on top of markdown-mode.
It offers the same features:
-
syntax highlighting
- of user mentions
- of jira issues (e.g., ABC-123)
- of dates (e.g., 2021-10-26)
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"peeking", i.e., getting transient information when the cursor is over
- user mentions
- dates (displays the calendar; this is useful to check what day of the week a particular date falls on, as you type it)
-
active elements (i.e., pressing
Alt-Enterwhen the cursor is over an active element)- jumps to jira issues (via
org-jira) when over a Jira issue ID - jumps to the calendar when over a date in one of the recognized formats
- folds and unfolds list items and their subtrees,
when over the bullet character (e.g.,
*or-) - expands names of days of the week into their full date.
- jumps to jira issues (via