Recent content in Emacs on Lucid Manager
Emacs is known as an extensible text editor, but this is a confusing description to authors. Computer programmers refer to writing code as editing, while for an author, the term editing refers to the last stage in the writing process. A text editor is a tool to write text for computers to read. However, Emacs can be a tool for editing code and writing for humans. This article explains the basics…
The Denote package by Protesilaos (Prot) Stavrou provides extensive functionality to create, retrieve, manage and link files in plain text, Markdown and Org Mode. The most redeeming qualities of this package are its filename convention and modular simplicity. You can also use the package to access other file types, such as PDFs or multimedia files (attachments). This way, Denote becomes a…
The first step in the Emacs Writing Studio workflow is ingestion (reading, listening and watching) new content. Reading ebooks with Emacs is straightforward as it provides functionality to read several popular types of electronic documents, such as PDF and ePub. The software can also browse the web with an unobtrusive plain text browser. Emacs Writing Studio A comprehensive guide for writers…
Over the years I have tried a cornucopia of digital applications to take notes. Emacs has several note-taking packages that extend basic functionality to help you manage your solidified thoughts. This article explains how to use Org mode and the Denote package by Protesilaos Stavrou. Denote excels in its simplicity and the ease by which it can be extended. The most exciting aspect of Denote is…
A minimalist interface means that your Emacs becomes a place of rest and contemplation away from the cacophony of contemporary software, filled with buttons and functionality you don't need. Emacs is an ugly duckling that you can configure into a beautiful swan. This article further explains how to improve the Emacs user interface. These settings are obviously opinionated, so this article is, more…
Taking notes about the articles and books you read is an essential part of intellectual life. Many note-taking systems can connect to a bibliographic database (such as a plain text BibTeX file, or external software such as Zotero ). These databases are helpful when adding citations to your writings. Electronic bibliographies also help you to create and find notes related to your literature…
The Emacs User Survey was held in 2020 and 2022 . It is a bit ironic that the data was neither collected nor analysed with Emacs . This article shows how to visualise the Emacs user survey results with plain text inside of Emacs. First, we download the CSV file and then parse it into an association list. With some bespoke functions and the quirky chart package that forms part of core Emacs.…
Emacs is the Swiss Army Chainsaw of productivity tools. This venerable software tool can help you undertake almost every task in the writing process, from idea generation to writing and publishing. Experienced users say they 'live inside Emacs' as virtually all computing activities can be done in this software. This article describes a possible Emacs workflow for writers. This article is part of…
Emacs is the most user friendly piece of software ever invented by humanity. I use it for 90% of my computing tasks, including keeping my digital knowledge garden with notes. Several notes packages exist in the Emacs ecosystem, with Org Roam as the most popular and fully-featured. I have used this package for a while now, but it relies on a database and has grown a feature set far beyond my needs.…
This article describes how to install Emacs on Windows 10, including supporting packages. This article is part of the Emacs Writing Studio which explains how to use Emacs to undertake research and write and publish articles, books, and websites. This article is part of Emacs Writing Studio , a book that explains how to use Emacs to undertake research and write and publish articles, books, and…
The Emacs package Org-Roam provides a powerful tool to take notes following the idea of the Zettelkasten method. You can write notes with all the power that Emacs provides while linking your thoughts to each other and with your bibliography. This article shows how to analyse and visualise Org-Roam knowledge networks with the iGraph package and the R language. The image below shows the current…
A plain text editor helps you focus on content over form. Having said this, the default Emacs experience can be harsh on the eyes. This article describes how to improve Emacs by ricing Org mode for a more pleasant writing experience. Ricing is a term often used by hackers as the activity to make a system look nicer. The Urban Dictionary defines it as: 'To rice, or to soup up a crappy car with the…
Even with the advent of speech-to-text software, the keyboard is still the most common method to convert thoughts to text. While computers might one day even read our minds, there is something to be said about using your fingers to do the talking. Who would want their’ ums’ and’ ahs’ written down, or their uncensored stream of consciousness committed to text? Writing is as much about thinking and…
The market for productivity applications is saturated with apps and other complex systems to manage your actions. While these systems provide great functionality, the main problem is that you have to use them the way the designer intended instead of how you like to work. This article shows how to use Org mode to get things done with Emacs and configure a bespoke productivity system. The approach…
Taking notes is an important activity for all creative work. Recording your thoughts and ideas or somebody else’s ideas is 2a foundational activity whether you write scientific articles, novels or whatever else. Emacs Org mode has some useful functionality to take notes, which can be further extended with the Org-Roam package . This article explains how to take notes in Emacs and configure the…
Most people believe that the first step in becoming more productive is finding the perfect suite of software tools to manage the vast amounts of information we consume daily. I also used to hop from application to application to perform what I needed—jumping from the action list to my schedule, onward to the word processor and spreadsheet, PDF reader and so on. Wouldn't it be nice if there was one…
Emacs has a reputation for being hard to use. This article crushes that myth and describes getting started with Emacs without any configuration. Once you understand the basic principles, you will soon play the software like a virtuoso plays the piano. Emacs will take some getting used to because the first version of the software was released almost forty years ago. Although Emacs is one of the…
Commercial software is usually good at doing one thing really well. You write documents in LibreOffice Writer or Google Docs. You create presentation slides in PowerPoint or Keynote and manage tasks with Trello or Todoist. If you are lucky, the developers let you change the configuration to customise the software’s behaviour and optimise your workflow. In most cases, however, you are bound by the…
Authors need three resources: imagination, writing skills and the work of other writers. A common advice for authors to improve their writing is to read a lot. Keeping track of all the books and articles you read can be daunting. This article describes how to manage references and bibliographies with Emacs BibTeX mode. The biblio package helps searching internet databases and add literature, and…
When I developed my first website in 1997, I wrote HTML in a plain text editor. When discovering WordPress when it was first released, I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread because it allowed me to create websites without managing individual HTML and CSS pages. Unfortunately, WordPress has become bloated, and the online editor is inconvenient. Last year, I bid farewell to WordPress…
The world is full of distractions, especially when focusing on writing. Most writing software is littered with icons and options to change the document’s design. Distraction-free writing tools remove distractions from the screen, so they become more like electronic typewriters that let the author focus on content over form. This article shows how to use Emacs Or Mode for Distraction-Free writing,…
Emacs Org mode is an ideal tool for writing without distractions because working with plain text allows you to focus on content instead of design. While writing articles and books in plain text is pleasant and productive, it is not ideal for sharing your work. The Org mode exports your work to PDF leveraging LaTeX, to a website, to a word processor document, an ebook and many more formats. This…
Working with Emacs means that you will need to access, create files and manage files on your drives. Emacs comes shipped with dired (pronounced dir-ed ), a potent file manager. This article explains the basic principles of using dired and shows how to manage files with Emacs to organise your hard drive. Emacs Writing Studio A comprehensive guide for writers seeking to streamline their workflow…
Emacs is a powerful text editor that lets you manage your life and be creative and productive with text. This focus on text does mean that Emacs cannot help you managing and editing images. This article shows how to view and manage images with Emacs using the image-mode and the built-in image-dired package by Mathias Dahl and Stefan Kangas. Emacs Writing Studio A comprehensive guide for writers…
This article contains proposed solutions to the exercises in section 1.1 of Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) by Abelson, Sussman and Sussman. MIT hosts video lectures to accompany the book on MIT OpenCourseWare . The textbook uses the Scheme dialect of Lisp. I have written these solutions to help me learn Emacs Lisp (Elisp). Some of the solutions are derived from the work…
Finding interesting content on the internet can be like sifting your way through a piles of garbage to discover something valuable. Social media can be fun and engaging, but the cacophony of irrelevant content driven by dark algorithms is disheartening. RSS and Atom let you subscribe to the websites and blogs you enjoy, without having to subscribe via email. A feed is an XML file on a web server…
One of the main advantages of free software is that it runs on almost any platform. Google's Chromebooks are somewhat of an exception because of its restricted application access. Emacs is not available as an application within the app store. However, the foundations of Google's Chromebook are Linux, which makes it an ideal platform to use Emacs. Although Emacs does not run natively on a…
Music is a great tool to boost your productivity. Playing the transcendental music of J.S. Bach or Sepultura's screeching heavy metal soothes the soul while writing. Scientists have studied the psychological effect of background music and found that it can improve episodic memory, intelligence, and verbal and visual processing speeds. Emacs might be known as a text editor, but you can also play…
I started my first website in 1996 with hand-written HTML. That became a bit of a chore, so for about fifteen years, WordPress became my friend. WordPress has been great to me, but it is slowly becoming a pain to keep updating plugins, security issues, slow performance and the annoying block editor. I am also always looking for additional activities I can do with Emacs. Hugo takes a lot of the…