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diff --git a/personal/phlog/23-07-18-emacs.txt b/personal/phlog/23-07-18-emacs.txt deleted file mode 100644 index f59db3f..0000000 --- a/personal/phlog/23-07-18-emacs.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,60 +0,0 @@ -Using Emacs -=========== -18 July 2023 | https://www.mounderfod.online/2023/07/18/using-emacs.html - -This post is being written in Emacs :) - -What? ------ -Emacs is, according to its own website: - -"An extensible, customizable, free/libre text editor and more." - -Basically, its one of the oldest text editors to exist, is (technically) entirely keyboard-based, and manages to combine simplicity with -power. In short, its great and Im going to talk about it now. - -Why? ----- -Why am I using Emacs? Well, theres a few reasons: - -- Id heard of it before and it sounded cool -- Its complex enough that it would present an interesting learning curve, but not so difficult as to discourage me -- Its useful for editing posts and HTML like this -- It ships with Tetris built in (need I say more?) - -How? ----- -I went to the website and downloaded it. My laptop currently uses Windows, and Emacs is made by GNU so as -expected I was berated for my choice of OS: - -"To improve the use of proprietary systems is a misguided goal. Our aim, rather, is to eliminate them." - -But I wasnt going to concern myself with GNUs plans for world domination; thats a problem for another day. The install was fairly simple, like any other -application, and upon running the program I am greeted with a pleasant menu screen. - -Now it was time for me to learn how to use Emacs. Emacs is primarily keyboard-based, as it was developed at a time where not all computers had GUIs at all, -let alone mice to interact with them. As such, and also due to its age, it has its own set of keybinding patterns which are overall very different to that -of most applications. For example, saving a file in MS Word is Ctrl-S, while in Emacs it is C-x C-s, which means Ctrl-x followed by Ctrl-S. Youll notice that in -this example, two keybindings need to be pressed to perform one action. This is common in Emacs, as there are lots of commands and not many keys, -and there are even some commands that dont have keybindings and must be invoked by pressing M-x (M meaning Alt) and then typing the command name out. - -This was all a bit complex for me to understand at first, but I quickly got the hang of it (as I had done with the more standard keybinding patterns that existed -elsewhere in the computing world). - -Customising Emacs ------------------ -Now that I had gotten the grips of Emacs' basic usage, I needed to tailor it to my own needs. My plan was to use Emacs for editing Markdown posts (such as this one) -or HTML files, and my website is hosted on GitHub, so I needed something to cover both bases. - -For the latter, there was already Emacs VersionControl, but this was a generic version control tool -and wasnt tailored to the specifics of Git. Therefore, I did some googling and came across Magit. A few more googles educated me in how to add the package -repository it was in and how to then install the package (M-x package-install RET magit RET), and I was quickly able to clone, commit, and push to the website -repository. Perfect! Now I needed to improve my Markdown editing experience. .md files are text, and so I could edit them as normal in Emacs, but then I wouldnt -be able to enjoy things such as syntax highlighting and easy access to various formatting options without typing them out manually. Again, a quick google found -markdown-mode, and within moments it was installed. The package adds a major mode to Emacs - Emacs is mode-based, meaning that there are modes of editing which -result in different functionality of the editor for different purposes - in this case, the markdown mode (enabled with M-x markdown-mode) provides syntax -highlighting and commands to automatically paste in the syntax for links, etc. - -And that was it! -I had installed, learned to use, and configured Emacs and could now use it to edit blog posts for this very website (or Gopher phlog, if youre reading it on that -mirror). Next I shall get it set up for developing my Python/Java projects - Ill keep you posted! |