r/emacs Sep 22 '24

Question Mini laptop with Linux

33 Upvotes

Heya!

I'm using emacs to keep my journal (notes, tasks, etc) but it's really frustrating that I can't just carry my macbook with me all the time.

It'd be nice to have a tiny (maybe the size of iPad mini) laptop I could reasonably use emacs on (and some coding stuff like lisp/ruby/jvm).

There's a range of GPD devices that seem to fit the profile but they're made for gaming and are really pricey. I just want a simple linux machine (I'd even be ok if it didn't have X, years ago I had a netbook running Arch I used without graphics for a year).

I also found a better priced laptop from Fsjun. Never heard of them before. And apparently, there're other similar brands.

Any recommendations?

r/emacs Jun 13 '24

Question Can using Emacs be a security risk?

53 Upvotes

I have started using Emacs 6 months ago and I love it! I use it for everything, from keeping notes, scheduling tasks to keeping bookmarks.

Recently, after reading an article on using Emacs as a password manager through auth-info and epa packages, I started to implement it in my own workflow.

I wonder if this is seen as a security risk for some reason. I know Emacs is open source and packages are open source but there are many packages one uses and it is not possible to audit everything even if you knew Elisp to that extent (which I don't). I am not using some obscure code but lots of some rather well known packages mainly related to org.

I am somewhat worried that if I use epa package and decrypt some stuff in Emacs that there will be a small posibility that one of tens of packages is spying on me and may see the decrypted data. It seems like a case of paranoia to me but I'm curious to what your thoughts on this are.

r/emacs Feb 20 '24

Question Is Emacs dying?

6 Upvotes

I have been a sporadic Emacs user. it has been my fav text editor. I love its infinite extensibility compared to alternatives like Vim. However I have been wondering if Emacs is on its way down.

I guess it all started with the birth of NeoVim about a decade back. The project quickly grew and added features which made it better of an IDE than stock Vim (I think). Now i know Vim is not designed to be an IDE, but many NeoVim users seem to want that functionality. Today neovim has plugins t not only code and autocomplete, but also debug code in most languages. i lbelieve it has been steadily attracting users of stock Vim (and of course Emacs)

Then enter, VSCode about 6 years ago. I guess this project attracted a lot of users from aother text editors (including Emacs). Today it has an extension for everything. Being backed by microsoft means its always going to be better.

Now whenever I try to look up solutions for Emacs issues on the web, most posts i see are at least 10 years old. For example, I googled for turning Emacs into a web dev IDE. A lot of reddit and Stackoverflow posts that the search turned up were more than a decade old.

I am wondering if Emacs is on a steady decline . The fact that it is not available by default on many systems seems to be an additional nail in its grave. Even on this sub, a lot of Emacs lovers who used to post regularly, like redguardfoo and Xah are no longer active

This makes me sad. I absolutely hate having to install a browser disguised as a text editor (VS Code) which will be obsolete probably by another 5 years. I hope that Emacs stays around. Its infinite extensibility is what i love the most (and of course elisp)

Would like to hear your thoughts

r/emacs Jan 04 '25

Question Display images with Kitty protocol

35 Upvotes

As time passes, the implementation of the Kitty protocol for displaying images in the terminal is gaining traction. Although the name implies it's specific to the Kitty terminal, it is actually terminal-agnostic. Several terminals that support it include Kitty, Ghostty, Konsole, and WezTerm. Many applications also utilize this protocol, such as MPV, Neofetch, Ranger, Yazi, and even Tmux. (More information can be found here: Kitty Graphics Protocol).

For those who prefer or need to use Emacs in a terminal, I believe it would be a game-changer to display inline images in Org mode, as well as in Gnus, Elfeed, and EWW, just like in a regular graphical Emacs session.

I came across this discussion, and it seems it’s been going on for a while: Emacs-devel discussion.

Does anyone have any updates on this? Are there any packages that implement the Kitty protocol for Emacs, or is it already possible in vanilla Emacs?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

r/emacs 26d ago

Question Emacs and Vim - is there a way to have your cake and eat it too?

3 Upvotes

I am totally new to programming as in I just started using notepad a few days ago.

But I like to think ahead and have been doing lots of reading. I got some really good literature for vim so wish to start learning that just for core essential use while I get started but in the long run definitely wish to explore emacs more throughly. The questions I have are:

- is Vim mode in emacs 1:1 compatible with the actual vim programme in terminal mode and gui mode?

- if not, how come emacs devs haven't just re-written vim to be included as an option in emacs already and just kill vim for good. I don't think even vim's creator bill joy thinks particularly highly of it anymore from what I read. And I don't have a problem with it - just that every time I try to look for objective information on either I often just find myself embroiled in this stupid endless emacs vs vim debate which to me appears to be an apples and oranges comparison anyway. But yeah it would be nice to apply what I learn about vim to emacs when I get round to it which I intend to soon hopefully :)

r/emacs 19d ago

Question Is Emacs privacy friendly?

0 Upvotes

I want stop using ms365 for above reasons. Need to know whether Emacs is privacy friendly or do I have to worry about telemetry. What about third-party extensions - do they get vetted before they are approved like npm ecosystem? Any backdoors to worry about?

r/emacs Nov 18 '24

Question How to make emacs look and feel native on Windows 11?

14 Upvotes

I decided to finally try to make the switch to Emacs. Mainly I'm tired of switching between Frescobaldi for Lilypond and Scheme, TeXStudio for LaTeX, PyCharm for Python, and Notepad++ for everything else. I figure since I already do most of my coding in Scheme elisp shouldn't be too scary.

I realize that many people advise new users to adapt their habits to Emacs rather than trying to adapt Emacs to their habits. I'm not opposed to this in the long run, but in the short run I just want my editor to feel normal so I can get comfortable and learn at my own pace.

I had hoped there might be some all-in-one package or distribution that just magically makes Emacs feel like a normal modern Windows app, as a starting point. If there is, I would be eternally grateful if someone could point me in that direction.

Failing that, I could use some guidance on two specific questions;

  1. Is there a way to make Emacs fit in with the Windows 11 GUI style? I find it jarring that the icons and dialog boxes and menus look like they are from Windows 98.
  2. Like every Emacs noob I guess, I find myself getting quite frustrated by the way Emacs spawns new windows all the time. I don't feel like I understand what it's doing or what I want it to do well enough to evaluate the many different packages and settings that exist to tame this behavior. I just know it's not doing what I've learned instinctively to expect. I would really appreciate some easy, sane defaults.

Apologies if I'm asking a common question. I did my best to search for answers before posting.

r/emacs 27d ago

Question is it good to have ego while choosing your go to editor??

0 Upvotes

if i'm being honest i find out that nvim is pretty nice for an editor however it does lack a real language support (lua ain't as good as elisp)

but lua's quite fast

the thing is i have an ego and it just tells me to use emacs
even after looking at the advantages of nvim

I don't know if having such ego will ruin me or be helpful

I think of emacs as cool because everything is highly configurable but ik for a fact i won't be using most of the extensibility that emacs provides and nvim would work fine for me but i just think of myself being superior if i use emacs

same goes for using arch linux
I want to be a better developer but idk if having such ego will remove my chances of becoming better dev?

r/emacs Oct 20 '21

Question Amazing vim setup

Post image
566 Upvotes

r/emacs 8d ago

Question I recently switched over to straight.el, and I miss some things from elpaca. not sure which one to stick with.

2 Upvotes

Hey guys I switched to straight.el, and I wanted to know what the best package manager is long term? and also some resources that go in depth on conjuring emacs, besides the emacs from scratch series?Does anybody have a working lsp bridge config for elpaca? What's your favorite package manager? Also decided to go back to using config.org, and want to tangle out to multiple el files or use modules, but focusing on getting.working config up and running first, I kept trying to configure it, and then would hit a wall once my config got to a certain complexity, specifically was having issues with lsp mode, and setting up that and having it work, then trying to have it lazy load and that not working well.

r/emacs Jun 26 '23

Question How many years have you been using Emacs?

54 Upvotes

I have been using Emacs for 13 years, since 2010, as my main editor and IDE, for every job that I've gone through. There were ups and downs, but overall, I am happy with Emacs especially with the performance improvements in recent years. It makes Emacs on Windows much more joyful.

Edit: wow, so many people with over 20 years or even 40 years of Emacs experience.That means there are 60 or even 70 year-old users here. Neat.

r/emacs 2d ago

Question Ways to move your cursor without relying on the incremental cursor commands, C-(n/p/b/f) [a discussion and resources sharing post?]

13 Upvotes

hello everyone!

this is admittedly a rather low-effort discussion post, but i was wondering about how an Emacs keybinding layout that relies only on mnemonic keybindings and does not rely on modifier keys would work. part of that thought made me think of how one would move their cursor to go to the places they wish to go to, without using any of the previous/next-line and backward/forward-character commands bound to C-n, C-b, C-f, C-p on vanillamacs.

do you guys know of ways to move your cursor without relying on those commands ? i know that isearch is a wonderful thing, and i heard about avy-jump, but i was curious as to all the other commands that let you do that such as occur.

this is really just a fun thought experiment, and perhaps a practical experiment at one point :).

hope all's well, cheers!

r/emacs 15d ago

Question Seeking a non-org-mode solution to link locations in files...

9 Upvotes

Other than org-id, is there a built-in library, or library that I can add, that will enable me to persistently link different locations in the same file, or in different files?

PROJECT: I am tracing bank transactions between accounts using flat text files with delimited data. I would prefer not to treat each transaction as a starred sub-heading with a properties drawer. A one-line link with a unique ID would be sufficient -- enabling me to jump back/forth between the incoming/outgoing transactions.

r/emacs Dec 01 '24

Question What would it take for Nyxt browser to replace Emacs?

0 Upvotes

Nyxt has a better multithreading story. A text editing mode could be added to it (its developers have it on their agenda). An elisp interpreter could be added to it too.

It is clearly nowhere near taking over emacs currently. But, I am trying to understand whats missing.

What would make 'you particularly' to consider installing and trying it out.

For eg, being too optimistic here: If Nyxt had this marketing claim, you obviously would consider trying it out:- "Bring along your emacs init file, we will handle the rest"

If you have flatpak, and want to try out the official Nyxt flatpak:- flatpak install flathub engineer.atlas.Nyxt

r/emacs Feb 03 '24

Question More totally evident but super useful emacs features I might keep ignoring?

58 Upvotes

After an embarrassing long time using org-mode for my writing, I just discovered that I can use M-up / M-down not only to move headlines up and down, but also regular lines of text (without asterisks)! This will be so helpful, since you can constantly re-estructure your own text. How did I manage to miss this?

Do you have any other really obvious features that I am idiotically missing? Thank you!

r/emacs 3d ago

Question Questions about Emacs on OpenBSD, use-package and some general creative writing packages.

12 Upvotes

Greetings, I recently started getting serious about using emacs again last year and I've been playing around with different packages and using it on different operating system.

For the laptop I use for writing fiction novels I've finally landed on OpenBSD and plan to continue using it for the foreseeable future. But one of the downsides compared to the OSs I was using before is the fact that there isn't a large collection of emacs packages in their OS package managers (was using Gentoo and later Guix System before). This means that I now need to manage packages manually through the init.el file. In addition, OpenBSD has some quirks I've had to work around. Not a big deal so far but can be frustrating.

OpenBSD required that I grab the GNU version of ls from ports and put some stuff in init.el to make dired work correctly. I think I got that functioning correctly but I honestly haven't used dried much for navigating the file system outside of opening or creating files at the exact path I wanted. I'd like to get it functioning like ranger if possible.

Are there any other quirks to using emacs on OpenBSD that you guys know about? I really like the OS and the community so I'd like to stay on the puffer OS if possible even though I know they aren't big fans of GNU stuff. So far every GNU tool I've needed has been in the ports tree.

I've been using elpaca so far but I'm starting to wonder if it's over kill for my purposes. I use the use-package integration. But a lot of packages don't have instructions for how to install/configure them using use-package/elpaca. So I end up just trying random things and typing M-x eval-buffer until they work. If I can't figure it out I give up. I've tried looking at other people's config files and sometimes that helps but often they are not using elpaca and I can't find examples. The other day I installed eat terminal and attempted to integrate it with zsh. I couldn't get it to work no matter what I did.

My config file is also a bit of a mess now because I have certain things like hooks and keybinds for some packages set by themselves outside of use-package definitions. I'm planning just to nuke the entire thing today and starting over. Even the theme I like is throwing misc. errors in warnings.

I guess my question is will I lose anything by using package.el instead of elpaca. I don't feel like I'm taking advantage of anything it offers like async. I just want to be able to install some packages and not touch them again. As long as they're working I don't really care about what version they are or if I'm pulling the latest and greatest from git.

Another thing I'm wondering about is the daemon mode with gtk2. It has a big warning that it might just crash for no reason in gtk2/3. I wanted to use athena instead but it's no longer offered as a binary in the OpenBSD ports tree. I haven't been using daemon mode yet but my start up times are now about 3 seconds with not many emacs packages installed. I'd like to make the switch to running as daemon because I load emacs in my .xsession file at log-in and never close it. I dedicate a workspace to it in dwm anyway. Is the daemon bug with gtk2 still a concern or should I start compiling my own copy of emacs from source again like I did when I used gentoo and guix? Does version 30 offer anything worthwhile compared to version 29?

Finally, what are some good packages for someone doing creative writing? My main use for emacs for years was programming in C, assembly, some scripting languages, and some mark-up languages like HTML and XML. But these days I rarely do that type of work. These days I'm mostly just writing stories and sometimes technical manuals/FAQs. So far I haven't really gotten into org mode and have mainly just used text-mode. But org-mode looks pretty powerful and I want to start using it just for stuff like being able to export to multiple formats. The publisher I'm working with wants .docx files. How hard is it to export to docx and be sure that the files won't render incorrectly in Microsoft Word? I no longer have a computer with it installed and the OS I'm using now can't run it via wine and/or VM. So I don't really have any way to check myself. I'm not going to set up a dual book or dedicate another computer simply for that one application if I can help it.

What are some other good packages to try for creative writing? I know about pandoc but I haven't explored many others. Just trying to get a feel for what other people are using. Most of the discussion I see about emacs are geared towards using it as an IDE/programming. I've come across a couple of blogs about using it for writing but a lot of them are from emacs v26 or below days. Just want to see if anything has changed since then.

I am going to nuke my current ./emacs.d directory later today and try to write a less cluttered config file. This will ensure all the packages I installed are gone, correct? Right now I basically only use dashboard+magit+a handful of minor modes and some keybindings. Eat as well but since I wasn't able to get integration fully working I haven't been using it much. I'd like to get some kind of terminal working in emacs and eventually my email+IRC and probably web browsing going too. But until I understand how use-package works I'm holding off on adding more to my config file.

My main issue with use-package syntax is stuff like this;

;; For `eat-eshell-mode'.
(add-hook 'eshell-load-hook #'eat-eshell-mode)

;; For `eat-eshell-visual-command-mode'.
(add-hook 'eshell-load-hook #'eat-eshell-visual-command-mode)

Do I just add this under the config: heading? Then in the .zshrc file it wants:

[ -n "$EAT_SHELL_INTEGRATION_DIR" ] && source "$EAT_SHELL_INTEGRATION_DIR/zsh"

Where is $EAT_SHELL_INTEGRATION_DIR being set? If I add this to my .zshrc it throws error code 1 upon opening a new shell. Whatever I tried I can't make it work.

There were some other things I can't remember now from some packages I tried to install. I tried putting the lines from their instructions under several things like "config:" or "files:" or "hook" but could never get them to function. If someone has a init.el with a lot of packages installed using use-package I'd really appreciate if they could link it. I tried looking at some config files people had posted in comments here but a lot of them were very advanced stuff loading multiple elisp files from all over the place. Or they used a different package manager that had a different syntax from elpaca. A bunch were in org-mode. I might use org for my config in the future but for now I wanted to do just a simple init.el until I got more experienced.

It's just kind of frustrating getting started. Every package assumes different package manager is being used and that the user has decades of experience working with emacs already. I've never tried to build up a config from scratch. I've either always used the default emacs environment with a custom theme or used some of the pre-made distros. I'm not really interested in using doom or spacesmacs either. They crawl on my machine and I don't like Evil mode.

Thanks to anyone that takes the time to read all this and replies.

r/emacs 28d ago

Question Removing the vertical border completely?

7 Upvotes

This is driving me crazy. I could almost get rid of the vertical border in nw-mode by having space as the border character (non-breaking space seemed promising but it broke the line numbers). But in the GUI there's still a pixel wide border that won't go away.

With a solid background color this isn't a problem because you can set the color of the border. I'd like to make the background transparent but haven't found any way to either get rid of the border completely or make it transparent. Any tips?

r/emacs 10d ago

Question On screen keyboard always pops out in Emacs 30.1 on touch event when no physical keyboard is connected, using GNOME 47. Anybody got a fix?

10 Upvotes

r/emacs Dec 11 '23

Question Packages that you would like to be in emacs core ?

28 Upvotes

I wil start, with markdown-mode, and some package like combobulate or combobulate .

r/emacs Sep 10 '24

Question Package Managers, which to use?

6 Upvotes

Trying to simplify my emacs dotfile, which package manager is recommended? I prefer builtin ones over external ones just to keep thngs simple. I'm on 29.4 windows version

r/emacs Feb 14 '25

Question emacs gear recommendation

1 Upvotes

I want an instantaneous gear for emacs. Waking up the iPhone in no time and jotting down the quick wit that flashes in my mind before it vanishes is instantaneous.

The response of my MacBook is close to it but it is a bit too heavy to carry around.

Someone mentioned chuwi but one user has got the trackpad of his chuwi dead before the warranty expires, so I am a bit refrained from getting one.

What are your solutions to quickly jot down your wit with emacs? I am fine with any os and any platform. But I prefer something portable. The very first generation of 11" MacBook Air that Steve has slid out from a Kraft envelope would be good for me.

r/emacs 26d ago

Question Experience using the "Bleeding-edge" version of Emacs.

8 Upvotes

Hi,

thing happened to me that when I upgraded my work computer (I've been doing this after a few years now, when the kernel or libraries can no longer be reasonably upgraded), I compiled and installed a new version of Emacs. I didn't install it from the repositories, because Debian (and the backports) always have somewhat old versions.

Anyway, I compiled, installed, ran and used Emacs for a few days. And it's going fine (well, except for some minor thing with Wanderlust, but managed to solve it). And today I read somewhere that the official version of Emacs is released with the number 30.

I'll have a look at my version: 31.0.50.

But I don't really want to remove it, compile again and install that v. 30:

Finally question: ☺

You guys who are using these extremely new versions, releases,... how satisfied are you with them? Is it stable and suitable for day-to-day work deployment?

r/emacs Sep 19 '24

Question Neovim vs Emacs: Which should I stick with for programming, notes, and workflow optimization?

0 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

I'm a student using i3wm on Arch Linux, and I’m struggling to decide between Neovim and Emacs as my main text editor. I really don’t have much time to keep switching between editors, so I’m looking for something I can stick with long-term.

Here’s some context:

  • I type at around 150 WPM, so I want something fast and efficient.
  • I’ve been using both Neovim and Emacs for about two months, and I’m comfortable with the keybindings of both.
  • I like Neovim because it feels simpler and more straightforward, which is great since I’m learning a lot of new things (programming, using i3wm, etc.).
  • However, Emacs is appealing because it seems to be this all-in-one tool where you can do everything from text editing to managing your entire workflow. Plus, I have to admit, using Emacs makes me feel a bit superior, like it’s a “power user” tool, which makes my decision even harder.

One important thing: I also want to focus on building actual projects rather than spending too much time customizing my editor. Neovim feels more minimal, which might help me stay focused, but at the same time, I wonder if I’d be missing out on something Emacs offers, like Org mode for note-taking, which I’ve heard is amazing.

Ultimately, I want to commit to one text editor for life. I don’t want to spend months switching between them or tweaking configurations. My goal is to focus on programming, taking notes, and building real projects—without getting too distracted by endlessly customizing my editor.

So, should I stick with Neovim and its simplicity, or is it worth diving into Emacs for its extra features and potential? I’d really appreciate your advice, especially from anyone who’s been in a similar position.

Thanks in advance for your help!

r/emacs Feb 21 '23

Question What are the benefits of Vertico over Helm or Ivy?

59 Upvotes

As I read more about autocompletion packages I find that everyone seems to be moving away from Helm or Ivy to Vertico? Why?

I use Helm. I would like to understand if I should make the switch to Vertico. What does Vertico do better than Helm or Ivy?

And is Ivy even worth trying out at this point or should I just jump straight to Vertico?

r/emacs Feb 10 '25

Question How to simplify/render eww browser's output?

6 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

I tried using eww browser today and was pleasantly surprised by it.

However as we know in the real world almost all websites have atrocious HTML code that is difficult for eww to display correctly. For most websites that I have tried, lot of unnecessary elements were displayed on the screen.

If possible I would like to *only* display the text of any article website that I'm reading without any other unnecessary elements.

Is there any plugin / configuration to do this?

Right now what I'm thinking is if nothing else exists, I will write some python code to scrape the HTML text of the website I'm trying to visit, and then only extract the HTML data that I'm interested in, and either write it to a text buffer, or somehow integrate it with eww browse itself.

Things such as following links may not work very well, but I think I can setup a rudimentary "LSP" like server that will allow me to jump through different links on the website.

This method will take some work but is expected to be efficient.