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Show HN: Emacs Configuration Generator

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31–40 of 103 posts

Re: Show HN: Emacs Configuration Generator

#31
post #14

I like it. I installed Doom Emacs a few weeks back but had to give it up. I personally don’t like to bring in a huge config set in the beginning. I like this idea and will try to give it a spin.

The worst thing about emacs is there is no good newbie init.el that has no more than 10 packages to fix the very common starter pain points.

I don't recommend first time emacs users start with Doom. Everybody should get their feet wet with plain vanilla emacs, with evil mode turned on if they are coming from vim.

Then after a while, they should try Doom. Just to get a sense of what it can do.

Re: Show HN: Emacs Configuration Generator

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ill definitely give that a go. I feel like I NEED to learn Lisp. My college data structures prof had his own book where all the java examples had a lisp counterpart. He wouldn’t allow us to use normal Java data structures for assignments rather a lisp data structure called “cons”. Not sure how different elisp and lisp is but syntax wise they look identical to me.

If you know some Common Lisp, Emacs Lisp isn't hard to learn (and they're even closer than when I learned elisp 15-20 years ago). Some minor gotchas with literal syntax (literal arrays/vectors and chars are represented differently in each) and some differences in their standard libraries. A more major gotcha is elisp's dynamic scope, which comes up if you're used to lexical scope. https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/m…

Very cool. Thanks for the info.

https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/novak/cs31436.html

this is the book i mentioned earlier if you’re interested. e.g. of building a linked list

I might go through some of it purely in lisp for the heck of it.

Re: Show HN: Emacs Configuration Generator

#34

Quick question; I was a little confused by the fact that after asking for LSP support, and answering affirmatively, I went through a list of programming language modes to install. Shouldn't the LSP be handling that? Or what am I missing? I don't have much experience with LSP--it's something I've been wanting to get to trying out, but haven't yet.

The short answer is that LSP doesn't mean universal LSP. You still need to pick and choose which LSP servers you want to install, because they are language specific. There are dozens of them and there is no point to downloading a C++ LSP if you work in Typescript.

That and LSP just provides the intelligence for Emacs. The rest (syntax highlighting, navigation, ...) is implemented via so called "major modes" [0], that integrate various generic functionality for a specific language, and may often go beyond what LSP can provide, e.g. implementing REPL support.

[0] https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Ma...

Re: Show HN: Emacs Configuration Generator

#35

Very neat tool. Ive been getting more and more into using emacs. I like the options you provide like disabling the tool bar, line numbers etc. these are quality of life changes that probably everybody goes through. The most difficult part for me was setting up a LSP with golang. I would say it was difficult because I was trying to rush through by copying random bits from everywhere to make it work. I did eventually g…

I strongly recommend storing your config in an org file and using Babel to load the init. I find it the only way to preserve my sanity as my config grows.

Re: Show HN: Emacs Configuration Generator

#36

I discovered this project recently via some random HN post, and I've been contemplating using it to start over with my very chaotic Emacs configuration. https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude The list of features: * Improved UX, that's still in line with Emacs traditions * Sane defaults of baseline Emacs functionality * Automatic installation of many major programming modes on demand * A curated set of 3rd party packages…

bbatsov/prelude is great stuff! I've been using it since 2012 and the base system has only gotten better over the years (I've also customized it over time).

Re: Show HN: Emacs Configuration Generator

#38
post #4

Interesting, but you know what might even be better? If it could be done directly from emacs. E.g. if you start with a brand new emacs then you could paste a line into scratch, eval it, and then these question would come up, you give answers and then an emacs file is generated, written, evalled and you get your configured emacs instantly. But of course a web interface also has its advantages, it's prettier than bareb…

> Interesting, but you know what might even be better? If it could be done directly from emacs.

First, Emacs should have sensible defaults like Ctrl-c for copying and Ctrl-v for pasting.

Second, there should be a menu item to choose among particular setups. A new user shouldn't have to go through the less-than-fun process of installing a bunch of stuff to get a common sense setup.

Re: Show HN: Emacs Configuration Generator

#39
post #4

Interesting, but you know what might even be better? If it could be done directly from emacs. E.g. if you start with a brand new emacs then you could paste a line into scratch, eval it, and then these question would come up, you give answers and then an emacs file is generated, written, evalled and you get your configured emacs instantly. But of course a web interface also has its advantages, it's prettier than bareb…

> Interesting, but you know what might even be better? If it could be done directly from emacs. First, Emacs should have sensible defaults like Ctrl-c for copying and Ctrl-v for pasting. Second, there should be a menu item to choose among particular setups. A new user shouldn't have to go through the less-than-fun process of installing a bunch of stuff to get a common sense setup.

cua-mode exists and it's been argued that it should be default.

Re: Show HN: Emacs Configuration Generator

#40
post #35

Very neat tool. Ive been getting more and more into using emacs. I like the options you provide like disabling the tool bar, line numbers etc. these are quality of life changes that probably everybody goes through. The most difficult part for me was setting up a LSP with golang. I would say it was difficult because I was trying to rush through by copying random bits from everywhere to make it work. I did eventually g…

I strongly recommend storing your config in an org file and using Babel to load the init. I find it the only way to preserve my sanity as my config grows.

What advantages to find yourself having by using Org compared to say outline-minor-mode?
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