⌨️ Editors

My heart lies with GNU Emacs. It is probably my most used tool at work because I take a crapload of notes. The pages on this site are written in Emacs in markdown (because mkdocs supports it well). Some other notes are in org format. And the bulk of my work-related notes (dating back to 2007) are in one big fat plain text file that is, as of December 2017, 26252 lines long.

I'm pretty comfortable with Vim as well. I use it for quick and dirty editing for my projects. For longer sessions I invariably swtich to Emacs.

Note

My dotfiles for both editors are at this github repo.

On a new machine I clone this repo, copy the dotfiles over and:

  • If emacs, just start it. It downloads all the packages and I'm good to go.
  • If vim, I clone vundle first, then start vim and do a :PluginInstall.

Yay!

ctags

  • ctags -R . - generates the tags file with exuberant-tags
  • works for python, c, c++ and quite a few more I think.
  • Ctrl+] jumps to definition.
  • Ctrl+t jumps back.

Compile GNU Emacs on Ubuntu

This is from here:

git clone git://git.sv.gnu.org/emacs.git
sudo apt install build-essential libgtk-3-dev libgnutls28-dev libtiff5-dev libgif-dev libjpeg-dev libpng-dev libxpm-dev libncurses-dev texinfo
cd emacs
./autogen.sh
./configure --with-pgtk
make -j8
sudo make install

Compile GNU Emacs on Centos/Fedora/RHEL

yum -y groupinstall "Development Tools" 
yum -y install gtk+-devel gtk2-devel \
    libXpm-devel libpng-devel giflib-devel \
    libtiff-devel libjpeg-devel \
    ncurses-devel gpm-devel dbus-devel \
    dbus-glib-devel dbus-python \
    GConf2-devel pkgconfig \
    libXft-devel 

wget https://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/emacs/emacs-25.1.tar.xz

tar xvJf  emacs-25.1.tar.xz
cd emacs-25.1
./configure
make
sudo make install

Disable underscore to subscript conversion in org-mode

Add this to the top of the .org file:

#+OPTIONS: ^:nil

Or set this:

(setq org-export-with-sub-superscripts nil)

Org-mode Keybindings

Basic keybindings

  • C-c C-n and C-c C-p to cycle between headings.
  • TAB on a heading to expand/collapse.
  • M-up and M-down to reorder sections.
  • M-left and M-right to change the level of a heading.
  • M-RET inside a list to create a new bullet.
    • TAB in a new bullet to indent it.
    • S-left and S-right to change the bullet-style.

Checkboxes

  • [ ] M-S-RET gives a checkbox.
  • [X] C-c C-c checks it.
    • [X] TAB for subdivisions.
    • [X] When all subtasks are checked, so is the main one.
  • [X] A trailing [] in the line preceding a list of checkboxes contains a summary (2/3 in this case).

Publishing/Exporting

  • C-c C-e for everything.
    • h o exports to html.
    • # brings up common templates.

Org-mode code blocks

  • Awk, C, R, Asymptote, Calc, Clojure, CSS, Ditaa, Dot, Emacs Lisp, Forth, Fortran, Gnuplot, Haskell, IO, J, Java, Javascript, LaTeX, Ledger, Lilypond, Lisp, Makefile, Maxima, Matlab, Mscgen, Ocaml, Octave, Org, Perl, Pico Lisp, PlantUML, Python, Ruby, Sass, Scala, Scheme, Screen, sh, Shen, Sql, Sqlite, ebnf2ps.

Set font in gvim permanently

  • Change it for the current session and verify what it is set as with this:
:set guifont?
  • Copy the string and add it to .vimrc like so:
set guifont=Hack:h9:cANSI

Separate vim settings for windows and linux

if ($OS == 'Windows_NT')
  " do someting
else
  " do something else
endif

Searching in vimwiki

Seems to be a wrapper around some vim grep functionality.

  • :VimWikiSearch /pattern/ (or :VWS /pattern/) starts it.
  • :lnext and :lprevious cycle through hits.
  • :lopen shows all hits, like emacs' M-x occur.

vim-fugitive cheatsheet

:Git # Run any arbitrary git command from inside Vim
:Gwrite # Stage the current file to the index
:Gread # Revert current file to last checked in version
:Gremove # Delete the current file and the corresponding Vim buffer
:Gmove # Rename the current file and the corresponding Vim buffer
:Gcommit # Opens up a commit window in a split window
:Ggrep keyword # Will search for 'keyword' in working copy files (excluding untracked files)

:Gstatus # Opens a status window. Open file with an enter, jump directly between files with {ctrl-n} and {ctrl-p}
:Gdiff # Performs a vimdiff against the index version of the file. Opens a vertical split window (index file on the left, working copy on the right). Navigate through hunks using {[c} for previous and {]c} for next

:Glog # Loads all previous revisions of the current file into the quickfix list.

Vim tips

  • delete trailing whitespace:
:%s: *$::
  • pull onto search line:
/ CtrlR CtrlW
  • open file name under cursor:
gf
  • increment/decrement number under cursor:
CtrlA/CtrlX

References

Larger guides from the rest of the internet are below.

Emacs

Vim