☼

Posts with tag: emacs

RSS feed for tag

Emacs Quick Tip: Disable key bindings with global-unset-key

Tue May 13 2025 ~ Tags: emacs

Do you also hate some of Emacs' default keybindings? Some of the default key bindings in Emacs don't really feel right for me, so I unset/remove them. Sometimes I override them with new operations. In this short article, I will show you how to yeet (remove) your unwanted keybindings.

Github Actions workflow for my Emacs config?! - Why would I even do that?

Mon Mar 31 2025 ~ Tags: emacs automation devops

Everyone and their grandma have a Github Actions workflow these days, so it should come as no shock that even my Emacs config have one. I believe having one helps you find errors quicker, and helps you avoid some of the worst pitfalls. In this article I share my experience, which might help you decide if you should have an automation pipeline for your Emacs configuration as well.

Emacs Quick Tip - Smoother scrolling

Tue Mar 25 2025 ~ Tags: emacs editor

If you are new to Emacs, you might think that the scrolling in buffers is choppy. Why is that? You are probably used to smooth scrolling in all your other editors, so why not Emacs? That is exactly what we will look at today!

24 Emacs packages and utilities to try while counting down to Jul/Christmas/Holidays

Tue Dec 17 2024 ~ Tags: emacs christmas

There are many good Emacs packages and utilities out there. Why not pick 24 of them to count down to Jul/Christmas? That is exactly what I have done here. Maybe you can find a new package or feature to play with if you have some holidays coming up?

Read documentation from the comfort of Emacs - man-pages, developer documentation and more

Sun Oct 27 2024 ~ Tags: emacs editor programming

Are you also tired of having to leave Emacs to read documentation? Whether be a simple command for your terminal (which you can run inside Emacs off course!), or information relating to the code you are working on? The good news it that you can read much of this documentation directly from inside of Emacs! No need to ever leave it again. By reading this post, I hope you will learn of a new way to get more of your information without ever leaving your favorite editor.

How I blog with Emacs - Org-Mode, Jekyll, Github Actions and interesting tidbits

Tue Oct 22 2024 ~ Tags: emacs info automation

Sometimes I get asked by various people on how this blog works. How do I actually blog with the amazing sorcerous powers of Emacs? In my mission of knowledge sharing, I will show you my workflow and tricks today. Hopefully it can be useful for you as well.

Write your own Emacs Lisp macros - a short introduction

Thu Oct 17 2024 ~ Tags: emacs programming emacs-lisp lisp

Have you ever wondered how you can write your own macros in Emacs Lisp? Or what that even mean? Macros are a very powerful tool, and one that has long history in the Lisp family of programming languages. Writing your own syntax seems enticing, and that is indeed what we will look at. We will see simple examples, as well as creating your own syntax for anonymous functions (aka lambdas).

Emacs tip: Use windmove to navigate open buffer windows

Mon Oct 14 2024 ~ Tags: emacs

Do you also move between your Emacs buffer windows in an ineffective way? Always using C-x o to switch between them after opening several? Or maybe you are using the mouse (ugh)? Did you know that you could navigate to a buffer window in the direction you want, instead of just going randomly to the next one?

Emacs package highlight - Centaur Tabs - The best tab (UI) system for Emacs!

Thu Jan 04 2024 ~ Tags: emacs editor

My relationship with tabs as a UI element is a bit ambivalent. I really enjoy tabs in web browsers, except maybe the missing option to group tabs in most browsers. In most editors and Integrated Developer Environments (IDEs) I have tried through the years, they never feel enjoyable to me. That might be because I have very specific needs and opinions on how things should work. Last autumn, I found an Emacs package called centaur-tabs and have been using it ever since. So far, it is the only tab package I have enjoyed! Continue reading to see why.

Emacs package highlight - vterm

Tue Jun 06 2023 ~ Tags: emacs

vterm, or emacs-libvterm, is a way of running a terminal inside of Emacs. It may not sound interesting at first, but it has some nice features that set it apart from the alternatives. One of these includes supporting interactive programs. It also feels more a part of Emacs than an external program, unlike alternatives like term. Read on to see more on why I prefer vterm to the alternatives and how you can se it up yourself!

Debugging GameCube applications/games (in Emacs)

Fri Jan 13 2023 ~ Tags: retro-computing gamecube programming emacs

In the last article, we discussed running Linux on your GameCube. This time we will look at debugging your regular applications/games (i.e, not running inside Linux, but directly on your GameCube). While GameCube is an older platform, it can still be interesting to explore. Some creative coders might also find the technical limitations inspiring. No matter why you find the platform interesting, you might need to debug your applications. Let's see how, and also how we can make it the most comfortable.

Mixed content HTML files in Emacs web-mode with context-aware completion and documentation

Tue Oct 04 2022 ~ Tags: emacs programming javascript

Today I'm going to show you my approach to make editing mixed html-files better in Emacs. web-mode is really good for editing mixed html files containing html, css and javascript, but doesn't provide any completion or other helpers like eldoc. In this article I will quickly show you my approach to make it more pleasant to work with.

Packages that make Emacs Lisp more pleasant

Mon Oct 03 2022 ~ Tags: emacs emacs-lisp programming lisp

Emacs Lisp can sometimes seem a little archaic compared to more modern languages. In higher level language we are spoiled with a multitude of easy string handling, list handling, pattern matching and so on. What if I told you that some packages can give you the same ease of use for Emacs Lisp? That they provide more clear APIs, give features you are used to from other languages, and/or abstract away the more tedious details.

Programming Kotlin in Emacs - Redux 2022

Sat Sep 24 2022 ~ Tags: programming kotlin emacs editor

Last year I wrote a blog post about the basics of using Kotlin in Emacs. Since then, some new developments have happened, including some new features have been added to the Kotlin langauge server. I also got some questions regarding which Eamcs packages I like using when developing Kotlin code. Let's answer some of the questions not answered last time, and see what Kotlin Language Server and Kotlin Debug Adapter can do!

Emacs Lisp debugging tips

Fri Aug 05 2022 ~ Tags: emacs emacs-lisp programming

Have you ever gotten weird errors in an Emacs Lisp package? Something like "wrong type argument" or similar shown in the minibuffer? At first glance, these seem kind of cryptic. Where do they come from? Can I get a stack trace? What arguments are functions called with? Today I will show you how to answer these questions!

Debugging GameBoy Advance (GBA) programs/games in Emacs

Mon May 09 2022 ~ Tags: retro-computing programming gba emacs

There are not many articles on debugging GameBoy Advance C code around the web, and most of them seem to be about debugging in VSCode. While VSCode is good, it is far from the awesomness that is Emacs! Debugging GBA code with Emacs is far easier than you would think, and in this article I wills how you how.

5 reasons I LOVE Emacs

Mon Dec 20 2021 ~ Tags: emacs editor

Maybe you have seen Emacs articles around the internet, and wondered "why do people love this editor so much?". I can't answer for everyone, but in this post I will give you some of my reasons. Emacs is almost a way of life for me, and I have it open and use it every day. To make this article short and sweet, I will limit it to 5 reasons. Maybe you will end up starting your Emacs journey?

Fun (and useless) things you can do in Emacs!

Tue Nov 30 2021 ~ Tags: emacs

December is soon here, and with it some of us will have holidays. Why not use some time to try weird and fun things in Emacs? Today I will share with you exactly that! There are games, weird modes, screensavers and more! A few games are actually built into Emacs, if you didn't know. And if you want more games inside Emacs, there are some more out there! Continue reading to learn more, and see other useless things you can do with Emacs!

Emacs package highlight - Try

Sat Nov 20 2021 ~ Tags: emacs

Today I'm going to do something slightly different, focus on one Emacs package at a time! I want to highlight one of my most used packages; Try. At first glance, Try might seem like a weird package to feature. It let's you try an Emacs package. So what? Doesn't just using M-x package-install or use-package in a scratch buffer let me do the same? Not exactly. Those will also download the files to your .emacs/elpa (or similar directory). Then they are persistent between runs, and you have by definition installed them, not tried them. What Try does different is download to a temporary directory, which is deleted once you exit your current Emacs session. That means it won't slow down your Emacs startup, or take up your "valuable" disk space.

Small tips for a better Emacs experience

Mon Nov 15 2021 ~ Tags: emacs

There are many small tricks that can make your Emacs experience better, and in this article I will show you some of my favorites. To make it short and easy for beginners to experiment with, I will keep them simple. Don't let that fool you, these can really improve you experience (even if you have been using Emacs for a while!). Maybe you will find something that you really enjoy here?

Scripting on the JVM?!? JBang and Kscript!

Wed Nov 10 2021 ~ Tags: programming kotlin java emacs

Did you know that you can use Java and Kotlin for scripting? In this post I will introduce you to my favorite ways of doing scripting on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), which is JBang and KScript. Some people may not enjoy Java projects as much because of all the verbosity (big project structures), so small scripts may make the languages more approachable and less intimidating. Being able to easily handle all external dependencies in the same file (no extra configuration files!) is also a big bonus. Lately I've heard from several people that they did not know about JBang, so I guess that might be true for KScript as well. Hope this post will provide you with some information on them, as well as good links to get started!

Programming Kotlin in Emacs (including KScript!)

Wed Nov 03 2021 ~ Tags: programming kotlin emacs editor

Some people, including myself, grudgingly used IntellIJ IDEA for Kotlin programming for a long time, maybe because we didn't think the Emacs tooling was up to speed. Well, it is, and we can finally use the best editor of all time (Emacs) to do Kotlin programming! Today I'm going to show you basic setup (and share some links), so you can also use Emacs for Kotlin programming! I made the switch this summer (reasons for waiting so long below), will you make the switch too?

Emacs packages that make me happy (and hopefully make you happy as well!)

Fri Oct 08 2021 ~ Tags: emacs editor

Today we are going to look at fun packages for Emacs that makes me happy! These packages may not be the most useful, but add the extra flare to make your editor feel more like home. This might not come as a shock, but I'm a big fan of individualized solutions instead of the classical "one size fits all" approach like many big IDEs have (e.g, IntelliJ IDEA, Eclipse). Customizing, even if it's just smaller things, can make your experience more personal and make you more productive. I feel almost naked when I try to use some other editor than Emacs, as nothing even come close. Emacs can be configured the way I want it, in other words: a setup that works for ME, and not necessarily someone else. (My love for individualism may not come as a shock after my longer article on Ayn Rand).

Essential software for Mac OS X

Mon Oct 04 2021 ~ Tags: macosx emacs

Mac OS X is probably one of my favorite operating systems these days, even though it has some major drawbacks (weird security for applications not from the App Store comes to mind). In this post I will share some of the software that I really can't live without. These picks will be general purpose, so nothing like Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro or similar special purpose software (though it might relate slightly to programming in some peoples view, even if that is not my view). Whether you are a new user of OS X, or a more advanced user, maybe you will get some tips to make your experience better?

Recommended Emacs packages

Mon Sep 13 2021 ~ Tags: emacs editor

This year I've been improving my Emacs configuration, which got me thinking of which packages are actually worth keeping. There are several that are language-agnostic, so you can use them no matter what you edit in Emacs. These are the ones I will focus on here. To make it simple and not too long, I will focus on four packages you should add to your config :) (there are off course many more interesting ones!).