I use emacs, which might be thought of as a thermonuclear word processor […] emacs outshines all other editing software in approximately the same way that the noonday sun does the stars. It is not just bigger and brighter; it simply makes everything else vanish. —Neal Stephenson

This repo is to build my Emacs configuration. The plan is to start with the simplest vanilla config and gradually add features. Note that this configuration will, at least at first, assume Emacs version >= 29. For example, assuming that modus themes, eglot, and use-packages are built-in.

Currently I’m using the “legacy” config contained in my dotfiles by default. Starting with Emacs 29, it is easy to run different configs so I start the one in this repo with:

emacs --init-directory ~/code/nucholab/emacs-config &

Where that argument is the path to where I’ve cloned this repo. For using the terminal version of this config I end the command with the -nw flag instead of the &.

• [ ] Emacs tutorial
• [ ] System Crafters’ Emacs from Scratch series
• [ ] Peter Prevos’ Configure Emacs series
• [ ] Emacs For You
• [ ] Literature from Craig Finseth
• [ ] Mike Zamansky’s Using Emacs series [0/81]
• [ ] Zzambino’s configuration comments
• [ ] Mastering Emacs book and blog
• [ ] The Plain Text Computing Environment
• [ ] Minimal setup for R
• [ ] ESS documentation
• [ ] Learn Emacs in 10 years
• [ ] Distrotube video series (Derek Taylor)

• Lambda Emacs
• tecosaur
• NANO Emacs
• Karl Voit’s config
• Scimax
• Emacs Live
• better-defaults
• jeremacs
• Derek Taylor’s Configuring Emacs
• see other configs here.

[…]

Emacs has so much power that nobody will ever master it completely. You can always be a stronger user with Emacs. With a “simple” editor like pico or notepad, you will quickly master it completely, which means that it will not allow you to grow further. Sure, it will take a new user a little longer to be productive with Emacs than Pico, but by starting with Emacs he will have an editor that will grow with him for the rest of his life.

[…]

20 MB is 1 cent worth of disc space. For that 1 cent, you get the most powerful text editor in the world, an IDE that supports more programming languages “out of the box” than all other IDEs in the world combined, the most feature-rich News and Mail reader ever, a web browser, a calendar that knows more cultures than you have heard of, and your own personal psychotherapist. If you think 1 cent is too much for a text editor that has been specially optimized for every text processing need in your remaining life, you ought to reevaluate your value system.

[…]

What you call “Windows” is just one of many window systems that has come in and out of fashion during the lifetime of Emacs. Emacs (in one version or another) has supported most of them, SunView, NeWS, X10, X11 (Open Look, Athena, Motif), PM, Win32, Mac. Emacs has provided a sound foundation that has allowed programmers to be productive with all these, and will also provide a foundation for whatever window system will be hot tomorrow.

What Emacs doesn’t do is to give up that foundation in order to follow the latest trend. Instead, it incorporates what is good and compensates for the rest. This – of course – will make Emacs feel “old” for the followers of hype, but the wise will see its intrinsic power and lasting value. —Per Abrahamsen