Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Emacs Bedrock: A minimal Emacs starter kit

sr.ht

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 132 posts

Re: Emacs Bedrock: A minimal Emacs starter kit

#21

Post by SloopJon »

ljm wrote: post #3

If you’re running emacs 29+ I posit you get less value out of a starter kit or framework than beforehand. Treesitter is baked in for syntax, eglot is baked in for language servers (intellisense), project and tab-bar give you scoped workspaces. use-package is baked in for downloading and configuring dependencies. Modus-themes are also built in now, so you can use modus-operandi and modus-vivendi out of the box. Two in…

I use a mostly vanilla Emacs on macOS from emacsforosx.com, and I am definitely a laggard when it comes to adopting some of these modern features. I'd love to use eglot to make Emacs as smart as VS Code, but it takes some doing, so I'm still leaning on a TAGS file for navigation.

Meanwhile, each new version seems to break something in my crusty old .emacs file. My latest frustration is that drag and drop stopped working after upgrading from 28 to 29.

I don't know if a starter kit is necessarily the answer, but there's something to be said for a batteries included approach.

Re: Emacs Bedrock: A minimal Emacs starter kit

#22

Post by geokon »

It seems like a list of nice, but most are kinda opinionated non-essential tweaks

    (cua-mode)
Well this will have the greybeards frothing at the mouth :)

that said, `cua-mode` is kinda terrible/half-assed b/c it implements a tiny fraction of what I think most people would consider "CUA". If you want a real CUA-mode use `ergoemacs`. Then Emacs will start to behave like every other GUI since the last mass extinction. It comes with a nice illustration of all the keybindings which leads to good discoverability of features. The only downside I saw was it had really slow launch times. Once you're comfortable with ELisp you can just rolled your own keybindings though

Is there some reason ergoemacs has never caught on?

Re: Emacs Bedrock: A minimal Emacs starter kit

#23

Post by ashton314 »

geokon wrote: post #22

It seems like a list of nice, but most are kinda opinionated non-essential tweaks (cua-mode) Well this will have the greybeards frothing at the mouth :) that said, `cua-mode` is kinda terrible/half-assed b/c it implements a tiny fraction of what I think most people would consider "CUA". If you want a real CUA-mode use `ergoemacs`. Then Emacs will start to behave like every other GUI since the last mass extinction. It…

> most are kinda opinionated non-essential tweaks

"That's just like uh… your opinion man." —"The Big Lebowski", I think ;-)

I'm mostly of the opinion that vanilla Emacs has some bad opinions with regards to discoverability and ease-of-use-for-newbies, which is what this starter kit is targeting.

CUA-mode is on because without it you're gonna have newbies footgunning themselves super hard right out the gate, and that's the biggest thing I want to avoid.

If you consider this setup opinionated, then great—I'll embrace that. :) I think they're the kind of opinions that help newbies.

> ergoemacs

Are you referring to Xah Lee's stuff? Or something else? I'd love to see what you're referring to—please send me a link here or on my contact page. That said, Xah himself said at one point that `cua-mode` should be on by default,[1] so I think it's good enough for this kit.

[1]: http://xahlee.info/emacs/emacs/modernization.html

Re: Emacs Bedrock: A minimal Emacs starter kit

#24

Post by ashton314 »

foobarqux wrote: post #15
ljm wrote: post #3

If you’re running emacs 29+ I posit you get less value out of a starter kit or framework than beforehand. Treesitter is baked in for syntax, eglot is baked in for language servers (intellisense), project and tab-bar give you scoped workspaces. use-package is baked in for downloading and configuring dependencies. Modus-themes are also built in now, so you can use modus-operandi and modus-vivendi out of the box. Two in…

treesitter is not exactly "baked in" too well at the moment. There isn't really auto-install/configuration of the grammars and as far as I can tell there isn't even a list of URLs for grammars, you have to supply those manually. There is treesit-auto which isn't quite there yet (why isn't treesit-language-source-alist populated automatically?) Compare with Mason on Neovim which is much closer to "everything just work…

Yeah, the tree-sitter situation needs some work for sure. I considered adding the treesit-auto [1] package, but that's not in /(non)?GNU-ELPA/, so I left it out.

> Isn't even a list of URLs for grammars

Actually there is: if you run `treesit-install-language-grammar` and answer, say, `python`, it will auto-populate with the right URL. This doesn't work with every language, (e.g. Elixir isn't on the list) but it's a start.

Again: definitely needs some more work.

[1]: https://github.com/renzmann/treesit-auto

Re: Emacs Bedrock: A minimal Emacs starter kit

#25

Post by weikju »

ashton314 wrote: post #20
weikju wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes me want to try out a config from scratch again.. but.. need.. to.. get.. work.. done....

The --init-directory flag with 29.1 makes this easy. :)

still won't prevent me from wasting time on configuring from scratch though. I think I'll wait... LOL. Maybe.

Re: Emacs Bedrock: A minimal Emacs starter kit

#26

Post by G3rn0ti »

viksit wrote: post #10

yes But can someone please tell me how to get typescript auto complete like vscode (eg auto import, linting) that also works for jsx. running tests. oh and simple auto complete. i couldn’t get that to work with https://github.com/viksit/prelude/blob/master/init.el as someone else said - need to get work done :))

For good autocompletion you‘ll need both an autocompletion framework and a language server client.

I am still using „lsp-mode“ as a language server client which works well for me and it comes with „company-mode“ integration for good autocompletion:

https://emacs-lsp.github.io/lsp-mode/page/lsp-typescript/

Later that day I can paste you the relevant lines out of my init.el.

Starting with Emacs 29 you can also use the treesitter mode „typescript-ts-mode“ for better syntax highlighting an navigation.

Re: Emacs Bedrock: A minimal Emacs starter kit

#27

Post by geokon »

ashton314 wrote: post #23
geokon wrote: post #22

It seems like a list of nice, but most are kinda opinionated non-essential tweaks (cua-mode) Well this will have the greybeards frothing at the mouth :) that said, `cua-mode` is kinda terrible/half-assed b/c it implements a tiny fraction of what I think most people would consider "CUA". If you want a real CUA-mode use `ergoemacs`. Then Emacs will start to behave like every other GUI since the last mass extinction. It…

> most are kinda opinionated non-essential tweaks "That's just like uh… your opinion man." —"The Big Lebowski", I think ;-) I'm mostly of the opinion that vanilla Emacs has some bad opinions with regards to discoverability and ease-of-use-for-newbies, which is what this starter kit is targeting. CUA-mode is on because without it you're gonna have newbies footgunning themselves super hard right out the gate, and that'…

yeah Xah Lee's ergoemacs. You should give it a try.

I don't think we disagree. cua-mode is better than nothing.. but just enabling CUA feels kinda lazy bc it's easily improved

from Xah Lee himself：

http://xahlee.info/emacs/emacs/modernization_cua-mode.html

Re: Emacs Bedrock: A minimal Emacs starter kit

#28

Post by weikju »

drw3 wrote: post #13
rashkov wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been running this on one of my desktops in an effort to wean myself from spacemacs and doom. I generally like it but the one thing I’m really missing is the spacebar concept from spacemacs / doom. Anyone know a way to shoehorn that in? Or any tips for how to do without it?

Why do you want to wean yourself off them?

not OP, so personal opinion here:

Starter kits are usually opinionated, have too much in them that I may not want, I may want to do things differently, and like was said in a sibling reply, I would also want to understand my own config better...

Re: Emacs Bedrock: A minimal Emacs starter kit

#29

Post by Guthur »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #12
michaelsbradley wrote: post #2

bbatsov's prelude is another nice kit to get started with and learn from: https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude https://prelude.emacsredux.com/en/latest/

I'm a casual emacs user for 30 years. Decided to give prelude a try after reading this... 2 minutes in: "" keybinding is discouraged! Use instead." Ok, well, then. Time to uninstall.

It's very much worth taking it as true.

I was in the same position as you initially and it took a week or two to get the muscle memory but it's so smooth to navigate using keys near the home row compared to arrow keys.

Re: Emacs Bedrock: A minimal Emacs starter kit

#30

Post by G3rn0ti »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #12
michaelsbradley wrote: post #2

bbatsov's prelude is another nice kit to get started with and learn from: https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude https://prelude.emacsredux.com/en/latest/

I'm a casual emacs user for 30 years. Decided to give prelude a try after reading this... 2 minutes in: "" keybinding is discouraged! Use instead." Ok, well, then. Time to uninstall.

I feel you. I am using both cua mode and arrow keys proudly even after a decade of using emacs. Sometimes convenience is more important than keyboard efficiency. I learned to avoid (or even turn off) cua-mode where necessary (e.g. when recording key board macros).
Post reply on HN