Emacs

Originally published 2021/10/27. Updated to include the .xssessionsrc point I run pretty often into this issue, so this is a checklist for me. Issue being, that I cannot use Compose key sequences to type out the characters I need. Case in point being, the apostrophe ’ and the quote marks “” , ‘’ that I use, all the live long day. Make sure that emacs is running as a service. It runs in your user, so check status with systemctl --user status emacs.service Do the normal computer user thing. Restart the service.systemctl --user restart emacs.service.1 Make sure the system is UTF-8 everywhere. (en_IN.UTF-8 does not work for me. Make sure it’s en_US.UTF-8) One place that Emacs looks is the .xsessionrc file in the home folder. These are the contents of mine. My Emacs refuses to let the compose key sequences work, unless it’s present LC_NUMERIC=en_US.UTF-8 LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8 LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8 LC_NAME=en_US.UTF-8 LC_ADDRESS=en_US.UTF-8 LC_TELEPHONE=en_US.UTF-8 LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=en_US.UTF-8 LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8 PAPERSIZE=a4 LANGUAGE=en_US LANG=en_US.UTF-8 if [ $DISPLAY != ":0" ] then export XAUTHORITY=${HOME}/.Xauthority fi This should do the trick 99% of the time. ...

Did I not just write about this, the other day with Emacs? I did, but Pycharm seems to have the same affliction. Pycharm, just like Emacs, stubbornly refuses to accept my Compose key combinations. Which means … you guessed it, no ‘,”,“ or ’ punctuation and all the other affordances, Compose gives me. Considering that I need both, Pycharm as well as Emacs in my life, it behooved me, that I go solve this too. ...

I want to leave VS Code behind me and move to using Emacs for mostly everything I write in the long haul. Emacs is the editor I use to putter around for any text editing I need to do, but most of my long form writing and coding were done in VS Code. And the more I use it (VS Code, not Emacs), the more uncomfortable I get, no matter how nice and shiny it is. ...

Whenever Emacs saves a file, it makes a backup of the original. So if I had a file.txt and I make changes and save it, Emacs firsts backs up the original to file.txt~. While I love this functionality, and it has saved me from a pickle more than once, I don’t love the way my folders get polluted with ~ files all over the place. My blog’s drafts folder had hundreds of these. ...

Unlike #100DaysOfCode, I am not quite giving up on Emacs. Rather that it has turned out to be a habit that has fit in, quite well, and I don’t need this accountability any more. I use it for most of my prose (not code, yet.) This post, is in fact, written in Emacs :) I have not gained any modicum of knowledge by any means. But I have enough muscle memory and immersion, to make sure I will continue using Emacs for most writing I do. ...

Practiced moving around with the Emacs keys for 30 mins