Emacs - Productivity Tricks / Hacks, Hacker News

In the past, I have written about using Emacs as a C IDE , and some other stuff . However, I did not realize that I have been using Emacs for many other things. To be brutally honest, I would not have enjoyed using Emacs anywhere nearly as much if it wasn’t for the features listed here. So, I decided to cover some of them. I will provide the configs that I have used to get them to work out of the box on my setup (as in, by literally copying from . emacs )


 First things 
 

  tl; dr:  If you are impatient to get started skip this section and proceed to the first section with package  Helm   









 I am running  Emacs - 1. compiled from source. You don’t need this All the packages were installed from  Emacs  package Manager. By running, 
 This should bring up a list of packages available in  MELPA . Now, don’t worry if you don’t know what  MELPA  is, just think of it as a repository of all packages, as in, analogous to the Debian Package Repo in Debian / Ubuntu distros. In this case, we get a long list of available packages like below: 









 

 

 If you select a package then a new buffer with it’s short description pops up. This buffer usually contains a “Quick Start” instruction. You can simply press  i  and then  x  ) to install the package. So if you like any of the following packages you could do that. 
  Helm 

 If you don’t know what this is, just drop whatever you are doing and give this a shot. Odds are, it is totally going to be worth your time. 
 I don’t think I should try and describe this feature but here is the official blurb from their 
 :      Helm is an Emacs framework for incremental completions and narrowing selections. It helps to rapidly complete file names, buffer names, or any other Emacs interactions requiring selecting an item from a list of possible choices.     


 Demo

() require ‘helm

(

setq-default helm-Mx-fuzzy-match

 (t)    (   global-set-key     Cx  Cm ” (hello-  Mx  )   (   global-set-key     Cc  Cm ” (hello-  Mx  )   (   define-key   evil-ex-map   x  'helm-Mx   )    (   define-key   evil-ex-map   "b"   'helm-mini  
 )   (   define-key   evil-ex-map   “e”   'helm-find-files   )        Evil Mode 
 
  Evil  is an 
 Extensible VI Layer  for Emacs. This is, obviously, a big controversial topic to stray away from a  purist ’s Emacs experience. To be honest, there is no such thing. In my opinion, the raw power of Emacs mainly comes from the ability to turn Emacs into whatever you want. I grew up using machines that did not have anything apart from  vi  on them so I ended up using it quite a bit and got quite good at it too. I’m no guru, but I can use  vim  well enough to get some work done quickly or feel productive without knowing why.   
 Approved By Your Orthopedician 
 
 Using Emacs, I missed the single key press commands a lot, mostly because I am terribly slow at typing, at least, in comparison with 
 real  
 masters   I have encountered    
 Enable  Evil  Mode:  
    
 ()   require   'evil   
   (
   evil-mode  (1)  ;;;; define shortcuts for powerful commands   ;;;; these can be invoked vim-style   ;;;; Esc-:  Esc-    (   define-key   evil-ex-map   "b"   'helm-mini  
 )   (   define-key   evil-ex-map   “e”   'helm-find-files   )   (   define-key   evil-ex-map   "g"   'helm-projectile-grep   )   (   define-key   evil-ex-map  “f”   'helm-projectile-find-file )    ;;;; I wept with joy about this in:   ;;;; http://www.mycpu.org/emacs- - magit-magic /  (   define-key   evil-ex-map   “m”   'magit-blame   )  



   
   Helm-Projectile 

	
			
	
			

		
			
			
					
			
		





 I cannot understand why people are not running on the streets just pinching their scalps because they are stark raving mad with joy, because that’s how  helm-projectile  makes me feel.  Github  
   Demo   
     




 ()   require   'helm-projectile ) 
  (



   define-key   evil-ex-map  
 "g"   'helm-projectile-grep   )   (

   define-key 
  evil-ex-map  “f”   'helm-projectile-find-file )     
   Doom Themes 


 Since this is aesthetics based, it is very subjective. So skip this section if you are happy but if you like what you see in the screenshots above, continue. 
  Doom Themes  helped me setup a “modern” looking Emacs. I get bored from time to time about using the same looks on my  Emacs  (feel like there’s some room for psycho-analysis there). So I kept looking for “that one theme” on Emacs. I used the  zenburn  theme for a long time. But I eventually realized that I Actually like contrasting font but not with colors that are too sharp. Enter  Doom Themes , in particular,  doom-molokai  which apparently mimics the look and feel of the Modern  Atom  IDE. The bare minimum setup required for the above setup is presented here. I use a modified version of this  stolen 

 from the Internet. 




 ()   require   'doom-themes   ) 
   (



   require   'indent-guide 

   (


   indent-guide-global-mode   (   set-face-background   'indent-guide-face   “dimgray”  )   ; Global settings (defaults)   (   setq 
   doom-themes-enable-bold  (t t  (if ; nil, bold is universally disabled         doom-themes-enable-italic  t  ; if nil, italics is universally disabled   ; Load the theme (doom-one, doom-molokai, etc); keep in mind that each  ; theme may have their own settings. 
  (   load-theme  'doom-molokai  (t   ; Enable flashing mode-line on errors   (   doom-themes-visual-bell-config  ; Enable custom neotree theme   (   doom-themes-neotree-config 
 ; all-the-icons fonts must be installed!    (   require   'doom-modeline 

   (   doom-modeline-mode  
 (1) 
   Rtags 

 I know I have written a couple of posts mainly about  rtags :  here  and  there  
   Reading Email in Emacs with MU4E 

 This really deserves a complete post to itself. The configuration this requires is sort of non-trivial (my case at least). Lack of good Email Clients on Emacs  has  had been one of my long time peeves, sorry  Gnus . Apparently I was not alone, and someone else (thankfully, smarter and more skilled) felt this needed to be solved too.  mu4e  along with  offlineimap  have given me an in-Emacs solution to writing emails that I actually enjoy. 
           

    Read More