OpenQuestions

How to send arguments to mudraw with doc-view? I don’t really know how to do this. I could possibly hack my way using doc-view.el, but my previous excursions show me that I can deal with simple stuff, and something more complex takes me days off my actual job. I know that DocViewMode can set customizations for ghostscript, for instance, but setting them for mudraw is not possible yet. I managed to do a static change that allows me to have inverted colors (look at the ,"-I"):

(defun doc-view-pdf->png-converter-mupdf (pdf png page callback)
  "This function was modified to have inverted colors"
  (doc-view-start-process
   "pdf->png" doc-view-pdfdraw-program
   `(,(concat "-o" png)
     ,(format "-r%d" (round doc-view-resolution))
     ,"-I"                                        ; ← change is here
     ,pdf
     ,@(if page `(,(format "%d" page))))
   callback))

I think that this can be useful to someone (what I did and what can be done).

When clicking on a file in the speedbar tree, is it possible to activate that frame when the new buffer opens. For me, the speedbar window remains active

I’m going from a previous version to 23. The conversion to mbox seems fine. Except: no headers will display. Instead there is an error message that ‘ Search failed: “ “ ‘ A lot of other stuff doesn’t work as well, but this is critical. Any clues please?

I’m a novelist working with large prose text files, and an emacs newbie who’s very enthusiastic about org-mode. I’m trying to add some customizations to my init.el file, but so far I have failed. I’ve found some .el files for these kinds of things, but can’t seem to get it all together into my elisp and init.el files in a way that results in the desired behavior. Any help would be much appreciated! Apologies if I’ve done poorly in this wiki … new to this, too. – Steven Arntson

Automatic startup in org-mode

The problem is that Emacs starts with the scratch buffer, wich has no file attached. Even if we put it in Org Mode, you’d loose anything you type if you forget to save (and Emacs won’t remind you of that because the scratch buffer has no file attached).

It would be better for you to simply open a default file when you start Emacs, perhaps?

(find-file "~/NOTES.org")

Or, alternatively, use org-mode for all text files if you don’t want to use the .org extension?

(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.txt\\'" . org-mode))

Automatic startup in visual-line-mode

Assuming you want this for all text based modes:

(add-hook 'text-mode-hook 'turn-on-visual-line-mode)

Numbered backups created with each save: file01, file02, file03, etc, or similar

(setq version-control t)

This enables what is called “numbered backup files”. From the manual:

Numbered backup file names contain `.~’, the number, and another `~’ after the original file name. Thus, the backup files of `eval.c’ would be called `eval.c.~1~’, `eval.c.~2~’, and so on, all the way through names like `eval.c.~259~’ and beyond.

Enabled n-dashes and smartquotes (typopunct-mode?)

Personally, I use the following to switch org-mode buffers between German and English depending on the buffer content:

(add-hook 'org-mode-hook 'my-org-init)

(defun my-org-init ()
  (when (require 'typopunct nil t)
    (save-excursion
      (goto-char (point-min))
      (if (> (count-matches (regexp-opt '("der" "die" "das") 'words)) 3)
	  (typopunct-change-language 'deutsch)
	(typopunct-change-language 'english))
      (typopunct-mode 1))))

If you only care about English, you can probably just stick to the following:

(add-hook 'org-mode-hook
  (lambda ()
    (typopunct-change-language 'english))
    (typopunct-mode 1)))

Visible marks for whitespace, tabs, and hard returns

Maybe something like the following?

(global-whitespace-mode 1)

Alternatively, for org-mode only:

(add-hook 'org-mode-hook
  (lambda ()
    (whitespace-mode 1)))

Thank you--I will try these! ~s

I want to give some elisp code to a friend. When he loads my code into his environment, is there any way for him to know when one of my functions has the same name as — and is thus inadvertently redefining — a function that has already been defined? Ideally the file loaded is either source “.el” or compiled “.elc”

Common Lisp has packages to prevent name collisions, and the file loader also warns when any function is redefined. I don’t think emacs lisp has the first feature, but hoping there’s a built-in solution something like the second.

I’m aware of Elena’s defadvice to defun solution (Sat, 27 Nov 2010), which seems to work for source files but not compiled files; and, messing with defun makes me nervous (sorry).

Thanks much, Fred

Refer to DocViewMode and edit “Doc View Resolution”. – ArtTaylor

M-o (or Alt-o, if you prefer) is what you need:

    M-o runs the command sr-synchronize-panes, which is an interactive compiled Lisp
    function in `sunrise-commander.el'.

you can always press h in any of the panes in SC to get a full list of all the currently available bindings.

OTOH if all you want is to rename one or more files, the easiest way is to do it in place: press C-x C-q to enter editable mode, change the name of the file(s) and press C-c C-c to commit your changes, or C-c C-k to discard them.

Hope this helps. Cheers. j.a.

1. You put EmacsLisp code that you write to customize Emacs in your init file, which is ~/.emacs by default. Use `C-x f ~/.emacs’ to create or access (edit) your init file.

2. For customization of faces and user options, you need not write EmacsLisp code if you don’t want to. Instead, use ‘M-x customize-face’ and ‘M-x customize-option’. The Customize user interface takes a little getting used to, but using it instead of hand-coding EmacsLisp is generally preferable (type-checking, safer initialization and updating).

3. When you use Customize, your preferences are saved by default to your init file. If you also have hand-coded code in the same file, this can be asking for trouble (error prone). You can instead have Customize use a separate file, by setting variable ‘custom-file’ and then adding this to your init file (typically at the end):

  (load-file custom-file)

To set ‘custom-file’, put this in your init file (before the ‘load-file’):

  (setq custom-file  "/the/path/to/my-emacs-custom-file.el")

Variable ‘custom-file’ is an option, but it is (exceptionally) usually better to set it using Lisp code (in your init file. The reason is that Customize will save its value to your ‘custom-file’! IOW, chicken & egg: ‘custom-file’ tells Emacs where your customizations are saved, but if you save the value of ‘custom-file’ itself only in that file then Emacs still won’t know where it is!

4. As an alternative to putting a lot of code in your init file, you can put it in another Lisp file (extension .el) and then load that file from your init file. For example, put the code from DuplicateLines in a file my-emacs-code.el and then add this to your init file:

  (load-file "/the/path/to/my-emacs-code.el")

5. You can also set variable ‘load-path’ to a directory to search for Lisp code, and then use ‘load-library’ with just the library name (‘my-emacs-code’), instead of using ‘load-file’ with an absolute file name.

6. If you end up with a large Lisp file (e.g. `my-emacs-code.el’), you can byte-compile it. If you use ‘load-library’ the byte-compiled version (e.g. `my-emacs-code.elc’) will be loaded instead, and when invoked that code will be faster.

7. Emacs doc and help are your friends. In particular, ‘C-h i’, choose ‘Emacs’, then ‘i’ to look things up in the index. Using ‘i’, look up, for instance, ‘init file’ (Init File) and ‘custom-file’ (Saving Customizations).

HTH – DrewAdams

Using the UnicodeFonts package it is quite easy to set up very sophisticated fontsets in emacs but it is a lot of work and takes quite a lot of time. Emacs uses the fontset like one enormous unicode font with glyphs from many others. It would be nice if the results of this work could be made available to other applications. Is there any way of doing this e.g. by using emacs as a font server or running other applications inside emacs (not necessarily in an emacs window)? Has anyone looked at anything like this?

Perhaps I should add that I use an Ubuntu Linux system and have had quite a lot of C and Common Lisp programming experience in the dim and distant past so I might be able to tackle the problem myself. Can anyone give any pointers as to where to start?

Thanks in advance – Bernard Hurley

Is it possible to scroll the ispell Changes buffer? And is it possible to select from the buffer other then by the keyboard? If you use the “l” option and search in the Ispell Alternative Dictionary you can get an enormous list of words that doesn’t fit on the screen (hence the need for scrolling) and some of the choices use really obscure characters (hence the problems with choosing from the keyboard.) I am not a mousey-clicky person myself but this is one case where being able to use the rodent would be really useful.

Thanks – Bernard Hurley

Hello!

I’m using Emacs in Supercollider mode, which opens two buffer windows automatically, and makes them equal size. I would like to have one of them bigger then another every time i’m starting emacs with -sclang option… is it possible to put something like (enlarge-window SCLang:workspace 10) or any other thing which will resize buffer window after it created? thank you!

--

Check out the documentation on the variables ‘default-frame-alist’ and ‘initial-frame-alist’. My need was the opposite, I wanted all my frames the same – but Emacs will treat the first frame differently than the rest, which should be good news for you. In my .emacs, I have something like

(setq default-frame-alist ‘((width . 154) (height . 44)))

and you could add in

(setq initial-frame-alist ‘((top . 1) (left . 1) (width . 80) (height . 55)))

as the documentation suggests.

– TomBaker

My keyboard layout is Turkish Q. I want to use emacs for latex so I need to type backslash extensively, but it is situated at an awkward Alt-Gr combination on my keyboard, so I want to swap it (and also brackets and braces) with Turkish characters that I don’t use since I type in English.

First in my .emacs file I tried (global-set-key (kbd “ş”) “\”) with no results. Then as a trial I tried (global-set-key (kbd “ş”) “i”) still without luck. Then (global-set-key (kbd “i”) “ş”) did work to my suprise, but (global-set-key (kbd “i”) “\”) didn’t. After much googling I tried using the octal code for \, and I got (global-set-key (kbd “i”) “\134”) to give me a “\” when I press “i”. But of course I need the “i” and I want backslash on another key. It appears that somehow (kbd “ş”) is not understood for some reason, and when I tried to put in the octal code I found for “ş” with C-x = it again didn’t work, probably because it was a 7-digit-long thing. So in short it appears that I can assign Turkish characters to other keys, but not vice versa.

Any explanations of this behaviour and a solution would be much appreciated. (Note, I am very much a noob with both emacs and my debian)

I have installed emacs 23.1 on a Vista (64) machine. Quite strangely, the files I create with emacs are not visile by the standard Windows programs (cmd, explorer, notepad), though I can access them with emacs and other program (I found out when creating an Xmingrc file in \Program Files (X86)\Xming. Xming reads Xmingrc, while Windows Explorer, dir and notepad do not. However, notepad anot save a file named Xmingrc in the same position. Also I have “show hidden and system files” in my explorer prefs, so that should not be the problem. the nly difference I see between “visible” files and “ghosts”:in dired, ghosts are listed as belonging to me; regular files belong to “Administrators”. Any idea?

I will do so. Since my post I found that I can “Run as Administrator” as a workaround. It appears that the ACL of newly created files is too strict for most tasks (at least that’s my take: if I log in as a different user, I cannot access the files created by emacs as my principal login with anything). Now what’s weird is that most other programs started as that very same user cannot access the file - so, it is impossible to icacls it. Looks as much a Vista bug as an Emacs bug…

You’re trying with the mouse I presume? Are you using TransientMarkMode or PcSelectionMode already? Seems like these modes should offer what you want or close to it. If you were using the DefaultKillingAndYanking commands you could change their behavior by AdvisingFunctions. – AaronHawley

Some elisp libraries that you will almost always use are dumped into the Emacs executable, for faster startup. For those libraries, you cannot just modify the .el file and byte-compile it, you have to redump Emacs as well. files.el is one of those, but python.el is not. I’d suggest not editing the .el files that are distributed with Emacs directly - instead use ‘advice’, or redefine functions in your .emacs after requiring the feature.

I am having a problem with the color-themes with GNU Emacs Version 22.1 on Windows Vista. I have the following code in my .emacs file and am able to load any color-theme I want:

(add-to-list 'load-path "c:/GNU Emacs/site-lisp/color-theme-6.6.0") (require 'color-theme) (color-theme-initialize) (setq color-theme-is-global t)

However, after opening a java file the java generics are not properly colored. I know this because I can directly compare with the examples at http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~maverick/GNUEmacsColorThemeTest/index-java.html . My emacs color display of the exact same java code does not match the display on the webpage. It appears that the disparity between the displays is centered around java generics tags.

I would like to config Emacs so that all indentation is done with tabs, with four-space wide tab stops. (I’m workin in PHP but have been testing in C mode and I suspect the same answer will work in both places.)

What I’m getting (where . indicates a space and _ indicates a tab

    foo();
    ....if (x == y) {
    _       bar();
    ....}
    }

What I would like

    foo();
    _   if (x == y) {
    _   _   bar();
    _   }
    }

.emacs contains

    (setq c-basic-offset 4
        tab-width 4
        indent-tab-mode t)

    (setq tab-stop-list '(4 8 12 16 20 24 28 32 36 ))

I’m using 21.4.1 with version 1.2.0 of php-mode.el. (Not sure which version of c-mode.)

One more tip. You don’t have to manually type the list of tab stop columns. You can generate a custom list of tabs stops after you have configured ‘tab-width’ with the built-in ‘number-sequence’ function:

    ;; Generate a list of 200 tab-stops every `tab-width' columns.
    (let ((tab-stops 200))
      (number-sequence tab-width (* tab-width tab-stops) tab-width)))

200 tab stops are good enough for a terminal that is very wide. I haven’t seen a terminal with more than 800 or 1600 columns yet, and I suspect it’s going to be very difficult to scroll horizontally in such a terminal, so this should be enough for quite a while. — GiorgosKeramidas

This documentation hints at this being possible (as does the Wikipedia comparison of editors, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Comparison_of_text_editors). But the documentation for it on this wiki contains two links, of which one is broken (http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Multiple-Displays.html) and one is to work in progress (SubEthaEmacs). So, is this very useful feature in, or is it out? And if in, where is the documentation?

I fixed the broken link with a simple Google search. You should try it next time if you find a link which doesn’t work.

In the meantime http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/CollaborativeEditing has been updated and may be worth another try.

I’ve got the W32 variant of Emacs installed onto a flash drive however I’m not sure how it’s going to handle the home directory when run off the drive. Has anyone gone to any lengths to try to get emacs to behave nicely in MS-Windows off of a flash drive? I like to be able to use the tools I’m used to (or at least growing used to) portable and available no matter where I find myself working.

You can try setting up a .bat file to first set the HOME environment var to the flash drive, and then launch emacs. That should just about do the trick.

You can also do the setup inside the .emacs file instead. http://at-aka.blogspot.com/2006/06/portable-emacs-22050-on-usb.html describes adding it to your site-start.el, but I’ve used the code (with small modifications) in my emacs.

Is it possible to save the undo list of a file, to another file ( say to myfile.undo )? Together with GotoLastChange, it would allow quickly finding the places in the file you were working on, when you last saved it

Thanks!

My guess is that this is possible to do. It would involve hooking into the save and load hooks of a file, and reading/writing buffer-undo-list. If hte file got modified outside of emacs, the undo-list would be out-of-sync though. --JonathanArkell

Aquamacs newbie here. I can’t seem to easily find help on user-defined syntax highlighting for any file types. For example I work with a program called Ox, with .ox extensions. The command ‘decl’ is often used for declaring variables. Given my text is green, how I would I go about making ‘decl’ come up blue in .ox files to distinguish the command? Edited to add: simply put, I’m looking to add a new option for .ox files under File>Change Buffer Mode… , that highlights Ox syntax like decl, while, for, if,…etc.

When running find-grep-dired or find-name-dired, files with executable permissions display control characters around the file name like this:

    -rwxr-xr-x   1 user  users  75383 Aug  2  2005 ^[[1m^[[31m./web/lib/application.js^[[m^[[m

It appears that the buffer is trying to colorize the output, though this is not only an aesthetic problem; it also prevets me from opening the file. I have global-font-lock mode enabled, which works in all other contexts. I cannot find any variable or customize option that governs this. Is this a problem with my emacs setting or my terminal? I am running GNU Emacs 22.0.50.1 through Terminal.app on Mac OS X.

Is there a way to get this to run on 10.3, or build it for 10.3? I have 10.3.9. My Emacs (9.0rc1) crashes for lack of libncurses.5.4.dylib. (Of course that may only be the first missing library.) Fink only has up to 5.3. If I copy the library from my copy of 10.4, there is just another broken dependency within libncurses. If I symbolic link “libncurses.5.4.dylib” to “libncurses.5.dylib”, the loader refuses to be tricked. Does Emacs actually depend on anything new since libncurses.5?

I use CarbonEmacs, it works great. Get it here for 10.3.9. – SebastienRoccaSerra

When using ‘menu-bar options mouse-set-font’ I select (for instance) Andale-medium-11 from the gui. How do I determine what that font name is so I can add to my Preferences.el file or use as set-default-font for that name?

Can I bind defuns to joystick buttons or movements somehow? --ShaeErisson

Is there a popup input dialog box for Emacs and/or XEmacs, which returns the string that a user enters?

You can mark an area with mark-sexp or ThingAtPoint or mark-enclosing-sexp (from ThingAtPointCommands). However if you want to edit within this region while it’s marked, you may want to use BasicNarrowing after you’ve marked a region. --AmitPatel

It turns out this is apparently peculiar to Markdown Mode. If I drop into Text Mode, the fill works fine.^[As it is, as soon as I add a footnote in this format that extends beyond a single line--and that includes no end brackets within it--then Emacs refuses to fill it, either automatically or on ‘M-q’.] I read the manual on filling, and while it was helpful on certain other counts, it didn’t give me any insight into why this might be happening. Any other suggestions? – Brian

Question: How do I a search and replace on multiple files from within Emacs?

Answer: Multiple strategies exist, and are listed at CategorySearchAndReplace.

Question: Can I be shown the list of open buffer windows as tabs?

Answer: Yes, see CategoryBufferSwitching.

Question: Can I fill paragraphs like AutoFillMode does, but to the width of the frame rather than to ‘fill-column’?

Answer: Yes, see WordWrapping.

Question: Is it possible to tunnel info to emacs via SSH without using X11? I prefer using the built-in emacs version shipped with OS X within Terminal.app. Though, when I “ssh -X” it opens the server’s version & config for Emacs within an X window on OS X. Is there a way to bypass X11?

Answer: Yes: ‘emacs -nw’ starts a new text-only Emacs session.