ashton314 / amethyst

An elegant Emacs setup optimized for non-technical writers

About Me

I'm picky about my programming languages—I like exploring new languages and technologies and learning what kind of trade-offs they offer. More about me on my blog.

I'm a PhD student at the University of Utah advised by Ben Greenman.

What are you interested in?

Right now I'm working on pushing the boundaries of what macro systems can do. I also enjoy writing compilers in Racket and tinkering with type systems. I frequently tweak my Emacs configuration, and occasionally do some light web development with Elixir.

Where do you work?

I work as a research assistant at the University of Utah. You can see my employment history on my résumé on my blog.

What's the deal with the username?

I picked this username when I was in high school. My biggest claim to fame back then was knowing 100 digits of pi, so I appended the first three digits to my username. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

amethyst's Issues

Suggestion

Suggestion: add company-mode to the kit.
It will atract more users.
By the way, I fixed the font issue jut changing it to "Source Code Pro"
Have you seen this classic video as well?
Emacs For Writers
https://youtube.com/watch?v=FtieBc3KptU

Great job!
Congrats.

You have to provide the font

It hangs, because the font is not provided with the config file.

set-face-attribute: Font not available: #<font-spec nil nil Input\ Mono nil nil nil nil nil 14.0 nil nil nil ((:name . "Input Mono 14") (:user-spec . "Input Mono 14"))>

Prefix variables and functions

Unlike racket, ELisp doesn't have namespaces unfortunately. The top-level is typically reserved for Emacs provided functions. Unfortunately, with a top-level global namespace you can run into issues without prefixing quite quickly.

The community has a convention of prefixing their functions with namespaces; double-dash for private functions and a single dash for public one. For example, straight might expose a function like straight--private-thingy and straight-public-thingy.

Two suggestions: use command keys, check for existence of fonts

@ashton314
Love the idea. I also use Emacs for prose writing (apart from coding Elisp). I feel that this avenue you are treading is under-explored and I would love to see how your approach (and rougier's) will evolve.

I was not sure if you wished to see suggestions coming as an "Issue"; if this is not appropriate, I apologize.

Two humble suggestions, if you would like others to use emacs-writer.

1. Use command keys for Quick Links

This format works even for Org Mode (it's a discovery for me, thanks to trying your scratch buffer. Thank you).

Paste .................. \\[yank]

This way, when CUA Mode is on, "Paste" (and others) will show the correct keybinding (see an image from my scratch buffer below).

2. Use (x-list-fonts font) for font existence check

I do not believe Fira Mono is common for non-programmers.
x-list-fonts can be used to check existence of a font. The idea is taken from the resource linked below.
It might be a good idea to put a check. If a font does not exist in the computer, I believe writer_entry.el will fail and may discourage non-technical users.

Source: https://github.com/kjhealy/emacs-starter-kit/blob/master/init.el#L44-L66

Don't use the `*scratch*` buffer for the splash screen.

Taking a quick glance over your code, you have a hack around which is meant to wait until the scratch buffer is loaded. This is because the scratch buffer isn't really meant for a custom splash screen; there's an easier way to do that for more fine-grained control.

Here is a snippet of code which you can copy and paste into your init.el to illustrate how to use the variable.

(defvar my-splash-buffer (get-buffer-create "*my splash*"))

(defun my-splash-screen ()
  (interactive)
  ;; `with-current-buffer` means everything inside
  ;; the block happens inside `my-splash-buffer`
  (with-current-buffer my-splash-buffer
    ;; We enter a nice message :)
    (insert "Hello")
    (newline)
    (insert "World")
    (newline)
    ;; Moves it back up to the start, no kludge needed!
    (goto-char (point-min))
    ;; Usually we inherit from `special-mode`, but anything is fine. Setting it to `read-only` is probably useful here though.
    (special-mode)
    ;; We return the my-splash-buffer for the next part
    (current-buffer)))

;; Switch the users to startup using it - the #' means we point
;; towards the appropriate function
(setq initial-buffer-choice #'my-splash-screen)

The relevant docs can be found using the web here or using info-lookup-symbol , normally bound to C-h S, under the symbol initial-buffer-choice.

Font error

git clone https://github.com/ashton314/emacs-writer.git
emacs -q -l writer_entry.el
Here's the error I get after running these commands:
set-face-attribute: Font not available: #<font-spec nil nil Input\ Mono nil nil nil nil nil 14.0 nil nil nil ((:name . "Input Mono 14") (:user-spec . "Input Mono 14"))>

Don't use inline lambdas for hooks

In this bit of code here, you're using an inline quoted lambda for hooks.

The issue with that, is that it tends to be quite hard to introspect the hook variable with describe-variable, usually bound to C-h v, or remove the hook with remove-hook.