"I find myself once again in that deep, dark, endless rabbit hole of Emacsland, but something is different this time. I don’t want to leave as I did last time, at least not for now. I think I’ve seen the light of the Cathedral of Holy Emacs, and I want Emacs to be part of my writing experience from now on."
The first encounter
In late August 2019, I finally removed Windows 10 from my personal computer and installed Linux. I had enough of Microsoft's increasing telemetry, data mining, invasion of privacy, and the general deterioration of the Windows operating system. I wanted to use my system without a corporation or organization monetizing my personal data. Shifting to Linux opened my eyes to a new world of open-source software, countless Linux distributions, and alternative applications to those I had on Windows. For instance, Adobe and MS Office programs are not available for Linux. Eventually (though not at the very beginning of my Linux journey), I encountered Emacs.
So, what is Emacs, you might ask? According to its website, it's an “extensible, customizable, free/libre text editor—and more.” And oh boy, is it much more than that! With Emacs, you can code, write emails and documents, search the internet, watch videos, and journal. You can export your documents to beautiful and legible academic PDFs, play games, use it as a terminal, and so much more. However, I am not the type of Emacs user who delves into all its functionalities. I primarily use it for writing prose and articles, taking advantage of its flexibility. Some people practically live their digital lives in Emacs. I use org-roam for notes and journaling occasionally, but my main use is for writing text for humans. With my second attempt with Emacs, I wanted to see if it was possible to use this fascinating piece of software as a writer, old-fashioned word cruncher, producing articles, short stories and other texts.
One of the reasons I love Emacs is that it is free/libre software, meaning you have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, and improve it as you wish. It’s free as in “free speech,” but you also don’t have to pay for it.
Another reason I appreciate Emacs is its reliance on keyboard shortcuts instead of a mouse and menus. This is probably the major reason why people (myself included) find Emacs difficult, due to the steep learning curve. Microsoft Word is easy because you can start writing immediately without any tweaking. But with Emacs, once you master the relevant shortcuts, you can write much faster. You can open two windows and work simultaneously without using the mouse. This is why Emacs fascinates me. It makes me focus on my writing, and once I set it up the way I want it, it gives me a sense of importance for the document I’m writing. It might sound silly, but it works.
This is how this article looks in my Emacs with spacemacs-light theme.
When I first tried Emacs (and Vim), I saw its potential and power, and I wanted to use it actively. However, exploring its vast capabilities almost broke me mentally. Let me tell you why. Emacs isn’t just a regular IDE or text editor. As I mentioned earlier, it demands your full attention, time, and hard work to just scratch the surface of its abilities. I love learning new things, especially those that interest me, and I’m usually good at allocating the necessary time and energy for that. I did all of that with Emacs, but it demanded more. I had to dive into the endless rabbit hole of Emacsland, and soon enough, I ended up feeling lost. One article led to another video, and processing all that information took many hours. I had to step away, or I would have gone mad. I might be exaggerating a bit, but maybe not.
Return of the Ashamed One
So I left Emacs, lost my initial configuration file (init.el), and moved on to its arch-enemy—Vim. After some time, I left Vim as well because it’s just as nerdy and difficult to adapt to a writer’s needs. I returned defeated to standard text editing solutions such as LibreOffice Writer, Mousepad, and MarkText. I lived a happy life in the endless sea of text editing oblivion. But, you see, when you live in oblivion, it’s bliss until you start questioning if there is a better, more efficient way to write stories and articles. I was always searching for a text editing program that would give me superpowers.
My reanimated ignorant but happy life lasted until about two weeks ago, when YouTube’s horrendous and exploitative algorithm suggested Emacs to me again while I was watching random videos on my TV. I remember thinking, “Hm, hello, long-lost friend. Why is YouTube suggesting Emacs now again?” I had no choice but to click on that video and then a bunch more, and here I am again.
I find myself once again in that deep, dark, endless rabbit hole of Emacsland, but something is different this time. I don’t want to leave as I did last time, at least not for now. I think I’ve seen the light of the Cathedral of Holy Emacs, and I want Emacs to be part of my writing experience from now on. After watching some enlightening videos about Emacs, how to start using it with a writer’s perspective, and how to configure Emacs to make it personal, I could finally see its power and how it can make me more productive than ever. My primary goal is to be more productive. Procrastination and distraction have always been my Achilles’ heel since I started serious writing in the late 1990s. I write meticulously and slowly because I think before I write. Stream of consciousness is not my thing. Ergo, I am a bonafide deluxe dilly-dallier.
My init.el
After studying what other, more experienced Emacs users have done, I have started configuring my own personalized configuration file, init.el. After countless tweaks and changes, I have settled on my current version, though it will most likely change many times. At the moment, I am using the Silkworm and Spacemacs-light themes. I also have Doom themes installed, with Doom-solarized-light and Doom-wilmersdorf being my favorites.
I am using DejaVu Mono as my primary font but have also tried fonts such as Iosevka, Liberation Mono, Inconsolata, and FireCode Nerd Font. Some fonts don’t work well with formatting in org-mode, especially for displaying tables. So I stick to DejaVu Mono for now because it works and isn’t too hard on the eyes. Ideally, I’d like to use a font that resembles Garamond.
I have also installed Doom-modeline, which gives me relevant and useful information about the file I’m working on, such as word and line count and file format. The package org-bullets makes headlines much prettier than vanilla Emacs, and I use Olivetti mode to center the text with only eighty characters per line. With the shortcut ‘Ctrl+c g,’ I can activate or deactivate Writegood-mode, which checks my text for weak words like “many,” “quite,” and “very.” With the Dictionary package installed, the shortcut ‘Ctrl-c w s d’ lets me look up definitions for words, while Powerthesaurus (‘Ctrl-c w s p’) provides definitions, synonyms, antonyms, and related words. One feature I am increasingly fond of is clocking timestamps. I can clock in (‘Ctrl-c Ctrl-x Ctrl-i’) whenever I begin writing and clock out when I stop. When I finish a text, I can use the org-clock-report command to get exact information on how many hours and minutes I worked on it. I’ve even included a package that generates automated Lorem Ipsum text if I need it (though I haven’t yet). The only thing missing in my basic configuration is spell-checking, which I plan to add with the ispell package, and I will be good to go.
This shows when I worked on this article and how much time I spent writing it. The table below shows the total time. This is such a great function!
Out of the rabbit hole
My goal now is to stop the constant tweaking of my Emacs setup and searching for better configurations, new packages, and cool resources. There are so many interesting videos on YouTube and fascinating articles, essays, and tutorials on Emacs that one could spend an ocean of time exploring them. However, I hope to avoid that for the most part. Right now, I feel like a member of a cult that doesn’t want me to leave—not that I want to leave. Not this time. But if you don’t hear from me (my sane and sound self) in some time, please check on me. And send help.
Comments: 0