2021-06-01-emacs

Here is a small summary from my journey from vim to using Emacs for (almost) everything ! After using ViM for a few years, I wanted to try Emacs. I can summarize months of trial and errors into this single sentence :

ViM users, use doom-emacs and profit

Now that I got that of the way, here are the following paths I’ve tried. I’ve summarize as much as possible to avoid a long read :

  1. Using pure emacs: I’ve started a clean .emacs.el and discovered emacs mappings and some plugins.
  2. Discovering evil felt so good to be back to vim mapping after emacs
  3. Using Purcell starter kit is quite nice but …
  4. Switching to doom emacs This made my day/month/year. Start here !!

Best plugins

I’ve put here plugins I deem essential for everyday use. I will not try to convince you but install, play with it and you should be pleased :) Also, the plugins in doom-emacs are marked as (doom).

Start here :

  • evil (doom) : ViM emulation in Emacs. No life without it. See also evil-collection (doom) for having vim mapping “everywhere”
  • Org-mode (doom) : I use it to plan my shopping, tasks, studying, movies list… Numerous tutorials are availables online but here the official documentation (quick version)

Build on it :

  • evil surround : port of Tim Pope’s surround. Edit parenthesis, quotes, tags … Super useful when you need it.
  • avy and easymotion (doom) allow you to jump easy everywhere (yes everwhere) on your screen. Replace f and / in most cases. My favorite command is to jump multiple lines at once. Doom-emacs combine the two for a middle ground
  • ivy (doom) is your everyday completion helper to change buffer, run commands…
  • magit (doom) is a git helper. It was difficult for me to adopt it for other than just commit and push but your hard work will be rewarded
  • company (doom) do your completion in emacs. Can also complete filenames (C-x C-f in doom emacs)
  • org-ref manage your bitex library with org-mode. Useful but not super intuitive. You can import books by ISBN ( which biblio.el does not do well)

Under test

  • smartparens looks very powerful to manage nested brackets, parenthesis …

Living in emacs

Here are a list of packages where tutorials can be found on the internet (or in later posts)

  • Mail : notmuch is awesome (see this post)
  • Navigation: dired (I’ve tried ranger but the default dired works better for me)
  • Facebook messenger : irc + bitlbee

What I still do outside emacs

  • PDF: pdf-tools is nice but I prefer zathura, which is faster and more configurable
  • Music (+ video) : using mpd and ncmpcpp
  • Shell : eshell is nice but fish shell is easier to deal with.

Community list

Finally, awesome-emacs is a curated list of plugins by the community