Some emacs questions

ilembitov · 2009-12-08 23:21:22

Hi, all.
Recently I became somewhat enthusiastic about the idea of using emacs as a DE. Basically, my reasons are that if you consider the extensions (or modes) for emacs to be apps, they have the following advantages:

-they are all integrated from the very beginning. No need to worry about toolkits, keybindings, etc. This way you get a really flexible environment
-they are lightweight. Yeah, perhaps, it's not as fast and tiny as some C apps are. But after all, I still think that it's hard to get over some 500 megabytes for emacs and all the vital extensions with their respective dependencies
-they are usually just frontends to existing and stable libraries and tools, and such they are pretty reliable.

Besides, the upcoming (it's March 2010, right?) 23.2 should include the Xembed function. Which means, the extensions will be even more interesting. There is already a WebKit webbrowser for emacs, called EZBL (since it's based on the infamous UZBL). I expect a video player to appear some day soon, and that would really mean you can actually do everything with emacs apps. Besides, the interfaces of these modes will get more sophisticated. Actually, if you could just remove the title bar, the toolbar and open Emacs full screen and get the floating mode behaviour for the buffers (not everybody likes tiling) - it would be a full-blown DE, especially if you could use it without any additional WM.

For me, there are already almost all the apps I need:

-text editor with viper (I just don't know yet if I could get VI-like keybindings for everything in emacs). I don't know if viper has all the functions of VIM, but anyways, with Xembed one could probably get vim to work as an Emacs application. Anyways, I mostly work with human language texts, so I don't really need all those text navigation features and regexps. I just think that vi keybindings and modular approach are more efficient.

-XMPP with jabber.el

-audio with EMMS. I guess there should be more options, I am looking for a frontend to MPD

-note-taking, PIM, simple spreadsheets - org-mode

-HTML documents with muse. Or directly via markdown

-IRC with ERC

-e-mail with rmail. I know there are a lot of other options, just didn't have the time to discover those.

-web-browser with w3m at the moment, waiting for EZBL to get mature. Anyways, I do a lot of work in text web browsers.

So, there is my first question: how can I create rich formatted content in common word processor formats. .doc is unlikely, so I am looking for .odt or .rtf. I know I could use latexrtf, I know there is pandoc, I was just wondering if there is something specific to emacs. Especially a WYSIWYG one. I know there is enriched.el, which actually has all the needed features, but can't work with RTF. Is there something else?

Second question is, which WM should I pick. I intend to run emacs full-screened and not use any external apps. I know there are sawfish and stumpwm which are supposed to integrate nicely with emacs and lisp-based environment. I just don't know what benefits does this give, if all the actual window management will be done through emacs? Apart from similar configuration syntax. Another option is probably to use something extra light and stable. CWM, for instance.

Third question: is it possible to manage wifi connections from emacs? Perhaps an interface to netcfg or something? I mean, something useful to laptop users, something with an ability to scan for available connections in a cafe or a university library. If I had something like this, there would be no need for a panel with applets in the external WM.

zowki · 2009-12-09 00:01:47

I'm not an emacs user so I can't answer your first question but for your second question Ratpoison is certainly the way to go. It allows you to keep tons of windows in full screen with no clutter. As for your third question you should use wifi-select or wicd-curses (thats what I personally use) from the wicd package. Good luck.

ilembitov · 2009-12-09 00:03:48

zowki wrote:

I'm not an emacs user so I can't answer your first question but for your second question Ratpoison is certainly the way to go. It allows you to keep tons of windows in full screen with no clutter. As for your third question you should use wifi-select or wicd-curses (thats what I personally use) from the wicd package. Good luck.

That's the point - I don't need the WM to manage tons of windows. It needs to have just one opened full-screen - and that's emacs. Emacs will run all the apps and manage their windows. So basically, just any tiling WM will do fine. I was just wondering whether lisp-based WMs have any advantages in this case.

Neheb · 2009-12-09 00:05:05

Don't know about the first two, but in a worst case you can run shell commands from emacs and controll the wireless that way.

pogeymanz · 2009-12-09 00:08:12

ilembitov wrote:

Second question is, which WM should I pick. I intend to run emacs full-screened and not use any external apps. I know there are sawfish and stumpwm which are supposed to integrate nicely with emacs and lisp-based environment. I just don't know what benefits does this give, if all the actual window management will be done through emacs? Apart from similar configuration syntax. Another option is probably to use something extra light and stable. CWM, for instance.

You don't need a WM at all if you just want to run one app full-screened.
http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2009/11/29 … plication/

chpln · 2009-12-09 00:11:05

I've been living in Emacs for a few years now -- it works wonderfully. Though, I have to admit, I still need to leave it sometimes for a graphical web browser and fully-featured terminal.

ilembotiv wrote:

Actually, if you could just remove the title bar, the toolbar and open Emacs full screen and get the floating mode behaviour for the buffers (not everybody likes tiling) - it would be a full-blown DE, especially if you could use it without any additional WM.

Everything except the floating buffers (Emacs windows?) is already possible.

.emacs:

;; Remove GUI elements
(scroll-bar-mode -1)
(menu-bar-mode -1)
(tool-bar-mode -1)

.xinitrc:

# Use Emacs as 'WM'
exec emacs -fs

ilembitov wrote:

-XMPP with jabber.el

bitleebee + rcirc/erc is rather nice too.

ilembitov wrote:

-audio with EMMS. I guess there should be more options, I am looking for a frontend to MPD

EMMS works well enough with MPD once its setup. There are some other options for MPD, though I've not tried them (easily locatable on emacswiki.org). I use EMMS with ogg123 and vlc.

In response to your questions:
1) I don't know of any word-processor formats which are well supported. There seems to be preliminary support for ODT and RTF, but not much more.

2) I've used StumpWM for a year or two in tandem with Emacs. In the end, the problems (crashing, broken features, perceived(?) slowness, binary size, etc.) outweighed any advantage it had from being implemented in CL. I would certainly choose a tiling WM for managing Emacs frames. I now use XMonad.

3) It is possible. I don't believe an extension currently exists for managing netcfg, though I'm sure this would be trivial to implement.

ilembitov · 2009-12-09 00:12:35

"exec emacs -fs"
That really makes emacs run as a WM? That's just way too cool!!!

Trent · 2009-12-09 04:28:11

For clarification, -fs makes Emacs run in full screen mode. It doesn't perform any window-managing functions (title bar and window resizing, for example), but it'll do the trick if you don't need to run any other X apps.

ilembitov · 2009-12-09 06:51:19

Trent wrote:

For clarification, -fs makes Emacs run in full screen mode. It doesn't perform any window-managing functions (title bar and window resizing, for example), but it'll do the trick if you don't need to run any other X apps.

I got it, that was my original request. I was just amazed by the idea that no external WM is needed here.

Pank · 2009-12-09 12:08:12

question 1:
you could use the export facilities of Org-mode. It exports docbook, html and LaTex among others.

urist · 2009-12-09 15:49:30

ilembitov wrote:

Trent wrote:
For clarification, -fs makes Emacs run in full screen mode. It doesn't perform any window-managing functions (title bar and window resizing, for example), but it'll do the trick if you don't need to run any other X apps.
I got it, that was my original request. I was just amazed by the idea that no external WM is needed here.

There is. X comes with a default. TWM, I think it is. If you follow the beginner's guide, you will see this when testing your X config.

Although, since it comes with X, I guess you're correct in that there's no need for an "external" WM.

pauldonnelly · 2009-12-09 20:34:06

urist wrote:

ilembitov wrote:
Trent wrote:
For clarification, -fs makes Emacs run in full screen mode. It doesn't perform any window-managing functions (title bar and window resizing, for example), but it'll do the trick if you don't need to run any other X apps.
I got it, that was my original request. I was just amazed by the idea that no external WM is needed here.
There is. X comes with a default. TWM, I think it is. If you follow the beginner's guide, you will see this when testing your X config.
Although, since it comes with X, I guess you're correct in that there's no need for an "external" WM.

No, if you exec Emacs in your .xinitrc, TWM will not be run. TWM only runs by default if you don't have an .xinitrc.

Ranguvar · 2009-12-10 03:41:04

ilembitov wrote:

I still think that it's hard to get over some 500 megabytes for emacs

Don't worry, those more involved in the Church of Emacs can teach you their methods for proper Emacs use, and bring you up to speed

/stupid_teasing

urist · 2009-12-10 03:46:06

pauldonnelly wrote:

urist wrote:
There is. X comes with a default. TWM, I think it is. If you follow the beginner's guide, you will see this when testing your X config.
Although, since it comes with X, I guess you're correct in that there's no need for an "external" WM.
No, if you exec Emacs in your .xinitrc, TWM will not be run. TWM only runs by default if you don't have an .xinitrc.

You learn something new every day here. Thanks for the correction.

nixpunk · 2009-12-10 13:16:57

But how do you launch Vim from within Emacs?

chpln · 2009-12-10 13:37:05

nixpunk wrote:

But how do you launch Vim from within Emacs?

M-x term
Run-program: vim
..: line 0: exec: vim: not found

Process terminal exited abnormally with code 127

Works just fine.

HashBox · 2009-12-10 19:41:58

And I think

M-x ansi-term

works even better

Also, if you decide to use viper-mode, make sure you grab vimpulse.el to go with it. It makes a HUGE difference as it adds many common Vim features on top of the Vi emulation. With it I can almost use Emacs in place of Vim.

Keveam · 2009-12-15 03:01:03

Full Documentation: http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/

Tips&Tricks: http://emacs-fu.blogspot.com/

Knowledge Aggregation: http://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/

madalu · 2009-12-15 12:07:53

Keveam wrote:

Full Documentation: http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/
Tips&Tricks: http://emacs-fu.blogspot.com/
Knowledge Aggregation: http://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/

And of course there's the always helpful emacswiki:

http://www.emacswiki.org/

OT: I really do love both vim and emacs and use them both zealously,
but I must say that one thing that really shines about emacs is
the community. I suppose this is because emacs is in fact a lisp
operating system and that thousands of packages available it (email,
pim, newsreaders, pdf viewer, etc.). So the idea of just plopping exec emacs -fs in my .xinitrc is really intriguing. Thanks for the idea, folks...

Arch Linux

#1 2009-12-08 23:21:22

Some emacs questions

#2 2009-12-09 00:01:47

Re: Some emacs questions

#3 2009-12-09 00:03:48

Re: Some emacs questions

#4 2009-12-09 00:05:05

Re: Some emacs questions

#5 2009-12-09 00:08:12

Re: Some emacs questions

#6 2009-12-09 00:11:05

Re: Some emacs questions

#7 2009-12-09 00:12:35

Re: Some emacs questions

#8 2009-12-09 04:28:11

Re: Some emacs questions

#9 2009-12-09 06:51:19

Re: Some emacs questions

#10 2009-12-09 12:08:12

Re: Some emacs questions

#11 2009-12-09 15:49:30

Re: Some emacs questions

#12 2009-12-09 20:34:06

Re: Some emacs questions

#13 2009-12-10 03:41:04

Re: Some emacs questions

#14 2009-12-10 03:46:06

Re: Some emacs questions

#15 2009-12-10 13:16:57

Re: Some emacs questions

#16 2009-12-10 13:37:05

Re: Some emacs questions

#17 2009-12-10 19:41:58

Re: Some emacs questions

#18 2009-12-15 03:01:03

Re: Some emacs questions

#19 2009-12-15 12:07:53

Re: Some emacs questions

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