#+title: Emacs — Basic Configuration #+setupfile: ../headers #+property: header-args:emacs-lisp :mkdirp yes :lexical t :exports code #+property: header-args:emacs-lisp+ :tangle ~/.config/emacs/lisp/basic-config.el #+property: header-args:emacs-lisp+ :mkdirp yes :noweb no-export * Basic Configuration ** Early Init :PROPERTIES: :header-args:emacs-lisp: :tangle ~/.config/emacs/early-init.el :mkdirp yes :header-args:emacs-lisp+: :exports code :results silent :lexical t :END: The early init file is the file loaded before anything else in Emacs. This is where I put some options in order to disable as quickly as possible some built-in features of Emacs before they can be even loaded, speeding Emacs up a bit. #+begin_src emacs-lisp :mkdirp yes (setq package-enable-at-startup nil inhibit-startup-message t frame-resize-pixelwise t ; fine resize package-native-compile t) ; native compile packages (scroll-bar-mode -1) ; disable scrollbar (tool-bar-mode -1) ; disable toolbar (tooltip-mode -1) ; disable tooltips (set-fringe-mode 10) ; give some breathing room (menu-bar-mode -1) ; disable menubar (blink-cursor-mode 0) ; disable blinking cursor #+end_src ** Emacs Behavior *** Editing Text in Emacs I *never* want to keep trailing spaces in my files, which is why I’m doing this: #+begin_src emacs-lisp (add-hook 'before-save-hook #'whitespace-cleanup) #+end_src I don’t understand why some people add two spaces behind a full stop, I sure don’t. Let’s tell Emacs. #+begin_src emacs-lisp (setq-default sentence-end-double-space nil) #+end_src There is a minor mode in Emacs which allows having a finer way of jumping from word to word: ~global-subword-mode~. It detects if what Emacs usually considers a word can be understood as several words, as in camelCase words, and allows us to jump words on this finer level. #+begin_src emacs-lisp (global-subword-mode 1) #+end_src Changing half my screen each time my cursor goes too high or too low is not exactly ideal. Fortunately, if we set ~scroll-conservatively~ high enough we can have the cursor stay on top or at the bottom of the screen while the text scrolls progressively. #+begin_src emacs-lisp (setq scroll-conservatively 1000) #+end_src Lastly, I want the default mode for Emacs to be Emacs Lisp. #+begin_src emacs-lisp (setq-default initial-major-mode 'emacs-lisp-mode) #+end_src **** Indentation I don’t like tabs. They rarely look good, and if I need it I can almost always tell Emacs to use them through a ~.dir-locals.el~ file or through the config file of my code formatter. So by default, let’s disable them: #+begin_src emacs-lisp (setq-default indent-tabs-mode nil) (add-hook 'prog-mode-hook (lambda () (setq indent-tabs-mode nil))) #+end_src Just to go on a little tangent here: I don’t exactly /hate/ tabs, but I find them really annoying when your text editor knows only them. Sure, for indentation they work great, and they allow different people getting different settings in their text editor depending on their preferred tastes —some may prefer 2 spaces tabs, some may prefer 4 spaces tabs, some deranged people prefer 8 spaces tabs, and some monsters prefer 3! But the thing is, once you indented your code, and then you need alignment, tabs don’t work any more! Or they may on *your* text editor but not on your coworker’s! (He’s the one using 3 spaces tabs by the way). So, is the answer to use spaces instead of tabs, and screw peoples’ preferences in terms of tabs width? No, I say the answer is more moderate than that, and it might frighten or anger some of you at first: use both spaces and tabs. Now, before you lynch me on the main avenue in front of everyone, let me tell you absolutely no one should ever be mixing spaces and tabs for indentation, that would be absolutely terrible and would bring the worst of both worlds. What’s the best of both worlds then? #+begin_center /Tabs for indentation/ /Spaces for alignment/ #+end_center I haven’t found a way to automate that in Emacs yet aside from formatters’ config file, and tabs look bat in EmacsLisp anyway, so I’ll stick with spaces by default and change it where needed. *** GPG pinentry I’d like Emacs to be responsible for decrypting my GPG encrypted files when in Emacs. This can be done with the following line. #+begin_src emacs-lisp (setq epg-pinentry-mode 'loopback) #+end_src *** Programming Modes First off, my definition of what makes a “programming mode” doesn’t exactly fit mine, so on top of ~prog-mode~, let’s add a few other modes. #+name: line-number-modes-table | Modes | |------------| | prog-mode | | latex-mode | #+name: prog-modes-gen #+header: :cache yes :exports none :tangle no #+begin_src emacs-lisp :var modes=line-number-modes-table (mapconcat (lambda (mode) (format "%s-hook" (car mode))) modes " ") #+end_src **** Line Number Since version 26, Emacs has a built-in capacity of displaying line numbers on the left-side of the buffer. This is a fantastic feature that should actually be the default for all programming modes. #+begin_src emacs-lisp (dolist (mode '(<>)) (add-hook mode #'display-line-numbers-mode)) #+end_src **** Folding code Most programming languages can usually have their code folded, be it code between curly braces, chunks of comments or code on another level of indentation (Python, why…?). The minor-mode that enables that is ~hs-minor-mode~, let’s enable it for all of these programming modes: #+begin_src emacs-lisp (dolist (mode '(<>)) (add-hook mode #'hs-minor-mode)) #+end_src *** Stay Clean, Emacs! As nice as Emacs is, it isn’t very polite or clean by default: open a file, and it will create backup files in the same directory. But then, when you open your directory with your favourite file manager and see almost all of your files duplicated with a =~= appended to the filename, it looks really uncomfortable! This is why I prefer to tell Emacs to keep its backup files to itself in a directory it only will access. #+begin_src emacs-lisp (setq backup-directory-alist `(("." . ,(expand-file-name ".tmp/backups/" user-emacs-directory)))) #+end_src When using LSP with Typescript projects, my =tsconfig.json= or its equivalent would constantly get polluted with symlinks going through my home directory, creating some horror imports. This is because the server tries to import some files through the symlink of the backup of the file I want to import. By forbidding Emacs to create symlinks for backups, we should avoid this problem. #+begin_src emacs-lisp (setq backup-by-copying t) #+end_src It also loves to litter its ~init.el~ with custom variables here and there, but the thing is: I regenerate my ~init.el~ each time I tangle this file! How can I keep Emacs from adding stuff that will be almost immediately lost? Did someone say /custom file/? #+begin_src emacs-lisp (setq-default custom-file (expand-file-name ".custom.el" user-emacs-directory)) (when (file-exists-p custom-file) ; Don’t forget to load it, we still need it (load custom-file)) #+end_src If we delete a file, we want it moved to the trash, not simply deleted. #+begin_src emacs-lisp (setq delete-by-moving-to-trash t) #+end_src Finally, the scratch buffer always has some message at its beginning, I don’t want it! #+begin_src emacs-lisp (setq-default initial-scratch-message nil) #+end_src *** Stay Polite, Emacs! When asking for our opinion on something, Emacs loves asking us to answer by “yes” or “no”, but *in full*! That’s very rude! Fortunately, we can fix this. Note that the configuration changed in Emacs 29. #+begin_src emacs-lisp (if (version<= emacs-version "28") (defalias 'yes-or-no-p 'y-or-n-p) (setopt use-short-answers t)) #+end_src This will make Emacs ask us for either hitting the ~y~ key for “yes”, or the ~n~ key for “no”. Much more polite! It is also very impolite to keep a certain version of a file in its buffer when said file has changed on disk. Let’s change this behaviour: #+begin_src emacs-lisp (global-auto-revert-mode 1) #+end_src Much more polite! Note that if the buffer is modified and its changes haven’t been saved, it will not automatically revert the buffer and your unsaved changes won’t be lost. Very polite! *** Misc Let’s raise Emacs undo memory to 10 MB, and make Emacs auto-save our files by default. #+begin_src emacs-lisp (setq undo-limit 100000000 auto-save-default t) #+end_src #+begin_src emacs-lisp (setq window-combination-resize t) ; take new window space from all other windows #+end_src ** Personal Information Emacs needs to know its master! For various reasons by the way, some packages rely on these variables to know who it is talking to or dealing with, such as ~mu4e~ which will guess who you are if you haven’t set it up correctly. #+begin_src emacs-lisp (setq user-full-name "Lucien Cartier-Tilet" user-real-login-name "Lucien Cartier-Tilet" user-login-name "phundrak" user-mail-address "lucien@phundrak.com") #+end_src ** Visual Configuration The first visual setting in this section will activate the visible bell. What it does is I get a visual feedback each time I do something Emacs doesn’t agree with, like trying to go up a line when I’m already at the top of the buffer. #+begin_src emacs-lisp (setq visible-bell t) #+end_src It is nicer to see a cursor cover the actual space of a character. #+begin_src emacs-lisp (setq x-stretch-cursor t) #+end_src When text is ellipsed, I want the ellipsis marker to be a single character of three dots. Let’s make it so: #+begin_src emacs-lisp (with-eval-after-load 'mule-util (setq truncate-string-ellipsis "…")) #+end_src With Emacs 29.0.50 onwards, a new frame parameter exists: ~alpha-background~. Unlike ~alpha~, this frame parameter only makes Emacs’ background transparent, excluding images and text. #+begin_src emacs-lisp (add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(alpha-background . 0.9)) #+end_src *** Modeline Modules I sometimes use Emacs in fullscreen, meaning my usual taskbar will be hidden. This is why I want the current date and time to be displayed, in an ISO-8601 style, although not exactly ISO-8601 (this is the best time format, fight me). #+begin_src emacs-lisp (require 'time) (setq display-time-format "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M") (display-time-mode 1) ; display time in modeline #+end_src Something my taskbar doesn’t have is a battery indicator. However, I want it enabled only if I am on a laptop or if a battery is available. #+begin_src emacs-lisp (let ((battery-str (battery))) (unless (or (equal "Battery status not available" battery-str) (string-match-p (regexp-quote "N/A") battery-str)) (display-battery-mode 1))) #+end_src This isn’t a modeline module per se, but we have an indicator of the current line in Emacs. And although it is useful, I also often wish to know which column I’m on. This can be activated like so: #+begin_src emacs-lisp (column-number-mode) #+end_src The following code is, as will several chunks of code in this config, borrowed from [[https://tecosaur.github.io/emacs-config/#theme-modeline][TEC’s configuration]]. It hides the encoding information of the file if the file itself is a regular UTF-8 file with ~\n~ line ending. Be aware the ~doom-modeline-buffer-encoding~ variable is usabel here only because I use the Doom modeline as seen below. #+begin_src emacs-lisp (defun modeline-contitional-buffer-encoding () "Hide \"LF UTF-8\" in modeline. It is expected of files to be encoded with LF UTF-8, so only show the encoding in the modeline if the encoding is worth notifying the user." (setq-local doom-modeline-buffer-encoding (unless (and (memq (plist-get (coding-system-plist buffer-file-coding-system) :category) '(coding-category-undecided coding-category-utf-8)) (not (memq (coding-system-eol-type buffer-file-coding-system) '(1 2)))) t))) #+end_src Now, let’s automate the call to this function in order to apply the modifications to the modeline each time we open a new file. #+begin_src emacs-lisp (add-hook 'after-change-major-mode-hook #'modeline-contitional-buffer-encoding) #+end_src *** Fonts I don’t like the default font I usually have on my machines, I really don’t. I prefer [[https://github.com/microsoft/cascadia-code][Cascadia Code]], as it also somewhat supports the [[https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/][IPA]]. #+begin_src emacs-lisp (defvar phundrak/default-font-size 90 "Default font size.") (defvar phundrak/default-font-name "Cascadia Code" "Default font.") (defun my/set-font () (when (find-font (font-spec :name phundrak/default-font-name)) (set-face-attribute 'default nil :font phundrak/default-font-name :height phundrak/default-font-size))) (my/set-font) (add-hook 'server-after-make-frame-hook #'my/set-font) #+end_src *** Frame Title This is straight-up copied from [[https://tecosaur.github.io/emacs-config/config.html#window-title][TEC]]’s configuration. See their comment on the matter. #+begin_src emacs-lisp (setq frame-title-format '("" "%b" (:eval (let ((project-name (projectile-project-name))) (unless (string= "-" project-name) (format (if (buffer-modified-p) " ◉ %s" "  ●  %s - Emacs") project-name)))))) #+end_src