My Emacs Writing Setup

Doom Emacs

Doom Emacs

I decided to use Doom Emacs. When I first started I actually spent a few days trying to start from scratch, by following some tutorials and installing a few plugins I was able to get something pretty good, but the ceiling or limit to what Emacs can do is so high. I resisted it a bit at first, but I eventually made the decision to offload the work on creating a crafted Emacs experience people who have been this for years, and with that decided to install Doom Emacs.

Plugins

Here’s a subset of the plugins I’ve enabled in Doom Emacs related to writing:

• zen
• undo
• syntax
• grammar
• markdown

A lot of what you need from Doom Emacs is enabled by default.

One of Emacs default behaviours I didn’t like was how moving the cursor up or down would skip wrapped lines.

To fix that, I needed to add this to my config.el file

(map! :nv "j" #'evil-next-visual-line
      :nv "k" #'evil-previous-visual-line
      :nv [up]   #'evil-previous-visual-line
      :nv [down] #'evil-next-visual-line)

Shortcuts

There’s a plus and minus to using a keyboard driven application. On the plus side, you can execute commands and navigate very quickly. But the negative is that until these commands and actions become muscle memory, things are very slow.

One thing I appreciate about Emacs is how you can search through every available command by using the hotkey M x or (Alt + x). It helps, but the there are so many actions you need to learn the hotkeys for. I tried saving all the shortcuts i thought would be important in Obsidian.

Finding/Saving Files

Key	Description
SPC SPC or SPC p f	Jump to file in project (like Atom/Sublime Text’s goto-anywhere)
SPC . or SPC f f	Explore files in current directory
SPC f S-f	Jump to file under current directory (recursive)
SPC f s	Save file
SPC f S-s	Save file as (prompts for location)
SPC o p	Initialize or toggle treemacs
SPC o P	find and focus the current file in the treemacs window

Leaving Emacs

Key	Description
:qa	Quit Emacs
:wqa	Save all buffers and quit Emacs
SPC q q	Quit Emacs
SPC q r	Restart Emacs and restore session

Search (and Replace)

Key	Description
SPC / or SPC s p	Search across current project
SPC s S-p	Search another project (prompts you to select one)
SPC s d	Search in current directory (recursive)
SPC s S-d	Search in another directory (recursive)

Buffer Management

Key	Description
SPC , or SPC b b	Switch to another buffer
SPC < or SPC b S-b	Switch to another buffer across workspaces

Window Management

Key	Description
SPC w s	Split the window horizontally
SPC w v	Split the window vertically
SPC w d	Delete current window
SPC w {h,j,k,l}	Select window in direction (left, below, above, right, respectively)
SPC w {S-h,S-j,S-k,S-l}	Swap current window with window in direction
SPC w {C-S-h,C-S-j,C-S-k,C-S-l}	Move current window to edge of frame in direction
SPC w u or C-w C-r	Undo or redo last change to window configuration
SPC w o	Enlarge current window. Again to undo.
SPC w m m	Delete other windows. Again to undo.
{N} C-w |	Change width of current window to N (a number)
{N} C-w _	Change height of current window to N lines

Font Size

Key	Description
C--	Decrease font size
C-=	Increase font size
C-+	Reset font size

Writing

Key	Description
SPC t z	Toggle Zen mode
SPC t Z	Toggle full-screen writeroom-mode
g s SPC	Jump to character
M {up, down}	move section up or down
z n	Create indirect buffer and narrow it to current sub-tree
z N	Widens narrowed buffers
SPC m s n	Narrow buffer to the current sub-tree
SPC b c	Clone indirect buffer
SPC b C	Clone indirect buffer to another window
SPC w d	Delete current window

Modifying Text Objects

Key	Description
c t [char]	Change until target character
c i w	Change inner word
c i "	Change inner quotes
c a "	Change around quotes
D,d $	Delete from cursor to the end of the line
C,c $	Change from cursor to the end of the line
x	Delete a single character under the cursor
r	Replace a single character and stay in Normal mode.
o	Open a new line below the current one and enter Insert mode.
O	Open a new line above the current one.
>	Right indent
<	Left indent
=	Indent text
~	Invert case of character
u	Undo.
C-r	Redo.

Jumps

Key	Description
w	Jump to the start of the next word.
e	Jump to the end of the next word
b	Jump back to the start of the previous word
0	Jump to the absolute start of the line
^	Jump to the first non-blank character of the line
$	Jump to the end of the line
f [char]	Find the next occurrence of a character on that line
%	Jump between matching brackets
:[number]	Jump to a specific line number
C-]	Jump to tag under point