I use ElScreen every time I open Emacs. May as well make a quick note about it.
I admit it. I’m still more of a Vim user. The workflow I’m used to is Vim with some tabs, usually sitting in a tmux session. When in Emacs I use ElScreen, which basically gives me tmux inside Emacs.
If you know what that means, great. If not, then pretend ElScreen is a weird way to make emacs a tabbed editor.
Install It
ErgoEmacs has a nice guide to using the Emacs package manager. With that as your guide, find and install the elscreen package from MELPA.
Start ElScreen in your init file.
(elscreen-start)Now the elscreen commands are available throughout your Emacs session.
Use It
ElScreen Usage shows many commands for ElScreen. I manage with just a few.
| Function | Keys | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Ctrl+z c | Create a new screen and switch to it. |
| Ctrl+z n | Cycle to the next screen |
| Ctrl+z p | Cycle to the previous screen |
| Ctrl+z k | Kill the current screen |
| Ctrl+z ? | Show ElScreen key bindings |
I know. A tutorial or something would be nice. But every time I start to write a tutorial for something, I think of one more detail that hasn’t been covered and the cycle starts all over again on the new detail. Just needed something here so I could shut my brain up about "why don’t you mention ElScreen?"