Emacs

• June 29, 2018

  Aspell does not work anymore with the new Emacs 26.1 for Windows: hunspell to the rescue

  I downloaded the newest version of Emacs (26.1) from Vincent Goublet’s homepage., and run into the problem that my spell-checking of documents doesn’t work anymore. I use ispell and Aspell but the new version of Emacs needs Aspell 6.0 which is not available for Windows. After some googling, I found a good replacement: hunspell. Now I can check my spelling again:

  

  I added the following code in my .emacs file (I found it somewhere on the internet).

  (setq ispell-program-name "C:/Program Files (x86)/hunspell/bin/hunspell") ;; "en_US" is key to lookup in `ispell-local-dictionary-alist`, please note it will be passed to hunspell

  … Read the rest “Aspell does not work anymore with the new Emacs 26.1 for Windows: hunspell to the rescue”

• July 3, 2015

  Automatic operator formatting mode in Emacs

  Emacs has a nice new mode called electric-operator developed by David Spepherd. It helps when you write code by formatting all operators in a predefined way. For example, in R it adds spaces around the operator signs, when you write 1+1, this is automatically converted into 1 + 1.

  You can define your own way of formatting for other modes. For gams-mode you add the following to your .emacs file

  Lisp

  (require 'electric-operator) (apply #'electric-operator-add-rules-for-mode 'gams-mode electric-operator-prog-mode-rules) (electric-operator-add-rules-for-mode 'gams-mode (cons "=E=" " =E= ") (cons "=G=" " =G= ") (cons "*" #'gams-mode-*) (cons "**" " ** ")) (add-hook 'gams-mode-hook #'electric-operator-mode)

  … Read the rest “Automatic operator formatting mode in Emacs”

• February 11, 2015

  Column guide in Emacs

  Many professional editors have a column guide. For example, below you see in the Powershell editor a veritcal line at column 80.

  

  This marker comes in handy, if you want to print your files. In Emacs I usually check for the column 80 in the status line.

  

  However, I usually forget to check, and when I print out stuff or publish, I got line breaks where I don’t want them. Passing the 80th column for comments is not a problem, as a simple Ctrl-q forces Emacs to break the lines nicely and add comment symbols at the beginning.

  

  But after … Read the rest “Column guide in Emacs”

• February 5, 2015

  Using file templates in Emacs

  A good practice in modeling is to place information related to the project your are working on, the subject, the data and your personal information like E-mail address at the top of your file. In Emacs you can define skeleton functions that will prompt for the information and put it in the file. Below is an example for a file with as comment symbol “**: (the $Id: $ is for my version control system, that automatically will add the information on the last commit in this line).

  

  Below you see how to make a function using skeleton. As I don’t … Read the rest “Using file templates in Emacs”

• October 31, 2014

  Using Org-mode to keep track of your project files

  For every project I work on I have a org-file. Every file has the following structure:

  • Tasks
  • Repeat
  • Wait
  • Notes
  • Calls
  • Reading

  I use remember-mode to capture tasks, notes and calls. Under the heading “Repeat” are tasks that are repeated on a regularly base. Under “Wait” are reminders for things I wait for (like a reply on an e-mail, an order, a call, etc.). These waits are also captured using org-remember (I have written about that in an earlier post). Under the heading “Reading” I have links to papers I am currently reading (using Bibtex; see an earlier post on … Read the rest “Using Org-mode to keep track of your project files”