I admit it. My Emacs usage is intermittent at best. But I do use Emacs sometimes. Still haven’t found anything to match Org for taking notes or writing posts.
So until I find something better than Org mode — which may take a while — I need Emacs. That means I need to get better at using it. That starts with configuration that isn’t a tribute to the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
use-package helps organize loading and configuring Emacs packages. I need it.
My new ~/.emacs
I start with a prelude, telling Emacs about package manager details: mainly where to find packages and to install use-package
if it isn’t already available.
WARNING
Trailing slashes are important!
melpa.org/packages/
gets a list.melpa.org/packages
does not.
Next I tell use-package that I want org.
The additional options are where the use-package
approach gets interesting to me. I can insist the package be installed with :ensure t
— or as in this case, ensure that another package be installed to meet my requirements.
:config
provides code that gets executed after org
is loaded. Pretty minimal so far, but the thing is — well, there’s a couple things:
:config
code won’t execute if the package doesn’t load; that keeps the Emacs session tidy.- All the configuration relevant to
org
is right there in one place.
So later tonight when I add elscreen and writegood-mode, I can keep all their configuration details together with minimal effort. It’s the default pattern with use-package
. That’s promising.
That’s the package management out of the way. The rest is a couple settings I already know I want, to satisfy muscle memory and streamline prose editing.
Finally is custom-set-variables
, already filling up with automated customizations. My bad habits include hand-editing these values, so I put in a reminder to stop doing that.
Done! Now let’s see how tidy I can keep my .emacs
file.
What next
Not sure, really. Install elscreen
and writegood-mode
. Maybe revisit
Rainer König’s OrgMode Tutorial videos. ox-hugo also looks pretty interesting!
Okay that last is a little disengenous. ox-hugo
looked interesting enough that I used it to write this post. I might talk about that more once I have a better idea what I’m doing.
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Added to vault 2024-01-15. Updated on 2024-02-02