Michael Orlov: Emacs

It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. —Carl Sagan

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Chupi Emacs

To use my configuration at home, download the following archive, and see instructions below. (Download the no-symlinks archive for installation on Windows).

Using the configuration in BGU.CS

The command to run is

emacs -u orlovm &

emacs should be the latest version of emacs (if several versions are installed on the machine), which is usually just emacs, but can also be emacs-20.5, for example. (Note, there is no space between emacs and -20.5!)

The supported versions are GNU Emacs 20.3–22.x, and there is also partial support for version 20.1. There is currently no support for XEmacs. You can check which versions are available by typing emacs and hitting [Tab] at the shell prompt.

It is also possible to copy ~orlovm/.emacs to your home directory, for using Emacs on Windows systems, or for tailoring it to your needs. In the latter case, you can just put a line like

(load "~orlovm/.emacs")

in your ~/.emacs file, but then it won't work on non-UNIX systems.

Finally, in order to use the latest Emacs version on some of the Solaris machines, you should set the environment variable LANG to en_US. You can do that, for example, by adding the line

setenv LANG en_US

to your ~/.tcshrc file.

In order to use the configuration on departmental Windows NT/2000 computers, you will need to copy ~orlovm/.emacs file to your home directory, because -u option of WinNT Emacs won't work due to some filesystem problems (my home directory has permissions 711). As well, ensure that you have HOME environment variable set to your home directory (in My Computer properties). It should be O:\ or \\smb1\yourlogin. After that, the configuration should be automatically used when you run NT port of GNU Emacs.

Using the configuration at home

The configuration is currently 24 MB (7.3 MB compressed), and it consists of the ~orlovm/.emacs file and ~orlovm/.config/elisp subtree. In the subtree, there are lots of symlinks, so either copy it with cp -RP, or use tar. Alternatively, use the link above to get it archived and delivered to you on the fly.

You will then need to adjust the .emacs file for your system.

In UNIX:

• Ensure that .emacs is in your home directory;

• Change orlovm to your login in the definition of elisp-directory, and adjust the path if necessary.

In Windows:

• Extract the archive into some directory, say, C:\Config\Emacs, so that it contains the .emacs file and the .config/elisp tree.

• Edit the .emacs file and replace the whole line (expand-file-name (concat tilde-prefix "orlovm/.config/elisp")) with a path to the elisp tree - in this case, "C:/Config/Emacs/.config/elisp" (note the slash type - if you want to use backslash in a quoted string in emacs lisp, you need to type it twice).

• In My Computer|Properties|Environment (My Computer|Properties|Advanced|Environment variables in Windows XP), edit (or add) the HOME environment variable to point to the directory where .emacs is - here, C:\Config\Emacs. Or, you can add a parameter to the shortcut to Emacs executable (read its manual for that). Note: that is how you edit environment variables in Windows NT/2000, for other versions you may have to edit autoexec.bat.

• As well, make an environment variable PRIVDIR to point to the directory where various per-user settings will be kept, such as news reader groups, etc. For example, let it be C:\Config\Emacs\.private (it will be created if necessary).

• You can also set an environment variable TRASHDIR to the place where Emacs will keep its temporary files, but if not, the value of TEMP is used (it's a directory inside user's profile space on NT/2000). If TEMP is unset, too, the directory defaults to D:\TEMP.

• Finally, you may want to edit the configuration itself - start with .config/elisp/top.el (don't forget to recompile the files you change - it's in the Emacs-Lisp menu).

• Note: for execution of external programs (such as petite or pl) to work, you need the executables' directories to be in the path - edit the environment variable PATH for that purpose.

FAQ

Q: What special keyboard bindings are available?

A: Upon running Emacs, you will notice new menu, Chupi. Select it and choose Help for keys.

Q: How do I edit in Cyrillic and Hebrew?

A: Press C-F11 and M-F11 to toggle Cyrillic and Hebrew input methods, respectively. Note that you still have to define the coding system while editing (if not, you will be prompted when saving the file). For that, go to Mule menu, and select Set Coding System, Buffer File. For Cyrillic, you probably want cyrillic-koi8, and for Hebrew it's hebrew-iso-8bit.

If you already have a file in Cyrillic/Hebrew that you want to edit, you will need to use Set Coding System, Next Command in Mule menu before opening the file. Perhaps it will be more convenient to use Mule, Set Language Environment in Mule menu, that way you won't have to set coding systems each time. Note that you also have Unicode coding system, utf-8. In Unicode, you can use multiple languages simultaneously - for example, .java files are opened using Unicode coding system by default, so one could use Strings in various languages, and then compile the .java source with javac -encoding utf-8.

Q: I did something and Emacs seems to be locked in an infinite loop. How do I stop it?

A: Press C-g twice.

Q: Where does Emacs keep its per-user configuration files, like emacs.desktop, newsrc, etc?

A: The configuration uses the value of PRIVDIR environment variable as a directory name. If there's no such variable, .private directory in your home dir is used - it is created is necessary. If it cannot be created, your home directory is used instead. As well, the temporary files (such as VM crash inbox) are kept in the directory pointed by TRASHDIR environment variable, or /tmp/yourlogin if the variable is not set (D:\TEMP on WinNT).

Q: I don't like your colors. They are ugly, you obviously lack style, etc.

A: Well, if you are a girl I can say in my acquittal that your color perception is statistically some 30% better than mine. Anyway, color customization is somewhat tricky in current configuration due to the different font families assigned to different faces, but I am going to fix it in the near future, so hold you fingers! (Or use Eli Emacs, emacs -u eli - his configuration has better colors).

If you installed my whole configuration (say, at home), then you can go directly to ~/.config/elisp/customize.el and adjust the font faces (don't forget to byte-compile it afterwards).

Q: Can I use your configuration for Mail/Usenet?

A: Yes. For mail, create vm directory in your ~/.private directory (don't forget to chmod 700 it). For Usenet, copy your ~/.newsrc file to ~/.private/newsrc (if you already have it), or make a symbolic link (if you want to continue reading news with other applications). Then, you can use Chupi menu to read/sent mail and read/post articles. The mail you read with VM goes to ~/.private/vm hierarchy, initially to ~/.private/vm/Inbox. It uses regular UNIX format for storing mails, so you can copy it back to mbox or mail spool if desired.

VM can read/send multi-lingual messages, just type in Cyrillic/Hebrew and send it (MIME conversion is performed automatically).

Q: I've heard about another nice UNIX editor, VI. How does it compare to Emacs?

A: VI is a very nice editor, which extends another excellent unix editor, ED. To get a feel about it, you might want to look at the VI Torturial page (note however, that the topics covered there are somewhat advanced).

Updated: 2009-09-10 (r89)