Aquamacs, fn key is meta, panic sans 10 font, <3 fullscreen-mode.
Ask HN: Emacs users on OS X, what's your setup?
41–50 of 66 posts
Re: Ask HN: Emacs users on OS X, what's your setup?
#42Don't worry too much about standard Mac keybindings.
Emacs shortcuts will soon be wired into your fingertips and you will be efficient on any platform - windows, linux and mac. In fact, you will very soon forget about the platform and focus on your work at hand.
That's the reason old hands prefer to stick with traditional emacs keyboard interface. Dumping some Mac idiosyncrasies is a small price to pay for the freedom and power.
Re: Ask HN: Emacs users on OS X, what's your setup?
#43Carbon emacs package (latest) Aquamacs is unstable at least the last time I used it. Anything.el makes emacs feel like quicksilver (which is AMAZING!!!). I use redshank (hacked version for scheme) + quack.el + paredit.el for my main environment. I have been trying to use darcs and the wiki page for notes but I haven't gotten into it.
Re: Ask HN: Emacs users on OS X, what's your setup?
#44Bill Clementson has a nice write up on his setup that has more to do with how not to get hurt using Emacs that I have found very helpful. Not necessarily specific to OS X, but he has a few suggestions that seem helpful for OS X (like making the right apple key your meta key):
http://bc.tech.coop/blog/041024.html
http://bc.tech.coop/blog/041029.html
Re: Ask HN: Emacs users on OS X, what's your setup?
#45Question for everyone who binds the Caps Lock key to CTRL:
If you use the Caps Lock key as CTRL, then it feels pretty awkward for me to type some key combinations (like ctrl-x or ctrl-c) and still keep my fingers on the "home row".
Do you just get used to this? Do you type ctrl-x with your pinky and ring finger? Or, do you shift your hand away from the home row and type ctrl-x with your pinky and middle finger?
Re: Ask HN: Emacs users on OS X, what's your setup?
#46I use emacs in a terminal window for probably 75% of my editing, and textmate for the other 25- I have Aquamacs but couldn't get into the flow with it for some reason. I keep all the default keys for ctrl/etc, and it does help a bit that they newest macs have changed the enter key that used to be to the right of spacebar to alt. While it's not really emacs, I generally do most of my development in Eclipse- but I chan…
I tried setting IntelliJ IDEA to Emacs key bindings, but I had to switch back to the default bindings. With the Emacs-like key bindings my fingers automatically expected a lot of things to work that IDEA plainly did not support (like kill ring).
My preference when I am not using Emacs is to make a clean break so my finger macros don't run wild, often unintentionally pressing key bindings that do other things than I expect.
Re: Ask HN: Emacs users on OS X, what's your setup?
#47I seem to be the only one here who likes how Aquamacs uses both Mac and Emacs key bindings. I find myself using both. There is probably some reason I sometimes use the Emacs kill/yank/etc. vs. when I use Mac cut/copy/paste, but I'm not sure what it is. I also use Emacs in Windows and Unix at work, but I imagine it is sitting in front of my Mac that triggers the cmd key bindings in my head. Maybe it's just that, with…
I would be the same as that (I am tending to use emacs more over time, relearning things from yesteryear).
My only complaint is the startup time for me seems very slow - perhaps I should just have it running after startup ? (I then use spotlight/quicksliver to quickly open up a file in it).
Re: Ask HN: Emacs users on OS X, what's your setup?
#48I run a vncserver (from MacPorts) on my MacBook. Then inside there I do all my coding with Emacs, generally two frames side-by side. I access it via Chicken of the VNC. I set up the same vncserver setup on all the machines I do work on, and can access each one from any other without losing context. I rarely find the need to cut/paste from the OS X desktop into/out of my vnc windows, but it can be done.
Re: Ask HN: Emacs users on OS X, what's your setup?
#49One thing I find useful is the Its All Text! add-on for Firefox. It lets me use emacs as an external editor for any browser text area. Its ideal for blog entries, web mail or any filling in text in a small text entry area (like this one on HN!). In addition to giving me all the power of emacs editing, getting the text inside emacs means I can more easily use templates, save stuff off in text files etc. You need to st…
But also note that, if you used Safari, you'd get the full Cocoa (Emacs-like) text subsystem editing facilities in any text field. It's a dream come try for Emacs fanatics. (My Emacs finger habits are now 30+ years old; scary thought.)
Re: Ask HN: Emacs users on OS X, what's your setup?
#50carbon-emacs. It's my first emacs ( I never used emacs on unix or NT). Carbon-Emacs seemed to keep more with emacs' UI guidelines compared to aquamacs. Note I think I'm running carbon emacs, I run the one with the purple logo. I have the option key (windows key on this keyboard) mapped to Hyper. I use Hyper to navigate around emacs. H-(n|p|b|f) move up, down, left, or right one window in a frame H-(N|P|B|F) change th…
I also stumbled upon this yesterday, for making the rest of OS X more like emacs (or VI). OS X already has emacs keybindings for all text areas, but it is missing some functionality (backward|forward-word). OS X has a concept called input managers, which allow you to plumb in your own custom behaviour. http://subtlegradient.com/articles/2005/12/27/gus-mueller-fl... http://www.tuaw.com/2007/02/04/vi-input-manager/
Actually, Cocoa's built-in text facility has forward-/backward-word, etc. All covered in
http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/Site/Cocoa%20Text%20System....