Emacs Beginner Notes

on emacs, editor, tools, productivity, and tutorial

As a Windows programmer and a beginner with vim and markdown, I suddenly entered another “world” with OS X, Emacs, and org-mode, and encountered some pitfalls that I’m recording here.

Installation

  • macOS
    brew install emacs --with-cocoa
    brew linkapps emacs

    Then reopen iTerm2, type emacs to run emacs in the terminal.
    Emacs will also appear in Applications.

Pitfalls

  • On Windows 8.1, emacs 24.4 displays some Chinese characters as “squares”. Add the following line to the .emacs file (or prelude’s init.el file):
(set-fontset-font "fontset-default" 'gb18030 '("Microsoft YaHei" . "unicode-bmp"))
  • When both .emacs file and init.el in .emacs.d folder exist, only the .emacs file takes effect. 
    When using prelude, you need to delete the .emacs file (How to make both effective?)
  • On OS X 10.10.1 (English interface), using brew to install emacs in terminal, Chinese characters display as question marks.
Switch system to Chinese to fix. (How to fix without switching? Not interested in researching for now)

  • Meta key issue in terminal or iterm on OS X

    • In terminal
Terminal -> Preferences -> Profiles -> Keyboard
At the bottom, select "Use Option key as Meta key"
  • In iterm
Preferences -> Profiles then select current profile -> Keys
At the bottom, select +Esc for both
Left option key acts as : +Esc
Right option key acts as : +Esc
  • How to find the location of the .emacs file (especially on Windows)
    C-X C-F ~/

Notes

git clone git://github.com/bbatsov/prelude.git path/to/local/repo
ln -s path/to/local/repo ~/.emacs.d
cd ~/.emacs.d

Copy prelude_modules.el from samples and start emacs.

  • About evil and Chinese input method

    • Switching Chinese input method and vim’s various mode switches is too awkward (this is also one reason I wanted to try emacs)
    • You can still enable evil when writing code
Enable or disable evil-mode
M-x evil-mode

  • Swap capslock and ctrl on OS X

    • System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Keyboard -> Modifier Keys (bottom right)

  • Key repeat speed

    • System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Keyboard -> Adjust key repeat (to fastest)

  • Installing monokai theme I really like the monokai theme

M-x package-install
monokai-theme

M-x customize-theme
Select monokai, then save settings, and you're done.