Emacs For Writers

Oh my name is Jai Jai Dixit and I use Emacs but I am NOT a programmer I can barely write a line of code to save my life I'm a writer and a journalist I am mainly a science writer I write about psychology I used to work for magazine cults I called you today the other thing I do is I teach writing and storytelling I have a company New York writers are tentative so that's me so what I'm going to do today is talk to you about how I use Emacs and why using that as a writer as a researcher how it helps me and the way that I think I can best explain this is by first telling you guys a story of how I came to Emacs why I liked it like what's what I would wise appealing to me and and how I sort of found my way to Emacs in the first place so here's my first computer I wasn't I guess this wasn't technically mine it was along to my father's university he's a physicist and he used to travel a lot and so when he would go away on trips he would go to Switzerland they had a big particle accelerator there sir at CERN he would go and he would do his experiment research projects there so he'd be gone for a huge at a time and this was actually before Gmail or hotmail or any of those he actually created a unix-based just like a script I guess where we actually logged into his account and then we could you know it was like a makeshift like Santa and receive email and so I actually learned to type on one of these things and then we had a you see oh yeah this is how we connected when my father was away I was gonna try to make him play the the handshake noise but I didn't figure out it incorporate that into presentation but yeah we actually it's true we actually dialed up on a dialogue telephone and then use the modem buffs and then yeah your I think you guys actually can't unfortunately I think the resolution is not great enough for you guys to see this text here's a you can read it okay so yeah ready yeah exactly that's the way it was back then right so yeah Here I am writing to my father while he's away and that's actually how I learned to type that and this thing that was also on that same terminal system which was called dungeon on our system but I guess maybe better known as Zork you want to be original maybe the original text adventure game and then after a while had I being called nice on my favorite novel which is still my favorite novel the a checkers went to the galaxy and so I actually had that game as well and so I was there like every day after school like typing typing and I but I didn't I wasn't doing any programming so even then you know by the time I actually got my first computer that was my own that wasn't just a terminal because I had no access to any of the UNIX whatever when I was using the terminal that my dad set up so this is my first computer a power book and on that if if you could like hack around on things like you know excited wasn't aware I've never heard of it so I was using Microsoft Word that's how I was running my papers and I also I used to when I was studying I would like type up my lecture notes and I would create a big outline and I would have the whole semester outline you know with each class and the topics and then ever-increasing levels of indentation for the hierarchy I think that's just how I think I always kind of thought in outlines that was kind of my mode so I was using Microsoft Word like a soft word evolved and it was you know it was fine for me for most of that time you know I didn't I don't remember mining it at the time and I didn't know that anything else was different was available and it wasn't until I more recently a few years ago now decided to write my own book to research and write my own non-fiction book psychology book about the what the psychology the unconscious mind and how we make decisions and choices about love and sex and dating all based on psychology studies so that's the book actually still working on it but once I started working on that I realized I wasn't gonna be able to do it in this I needed something I needed a better way to organize it because because the hardest but in fact still the hardest part of this process of writing this book has been figuring out this structure of the whole thing and there's like a there's so much information it's unwieldy and it's hardly is so hard to conceptualize it all in one moment in my mind all at once anyway so I needed a way to represent it and and just play it and manipulate it and so I started look I realized it he did a different solution so I did what I always do which is I went to Google and I was like well how do I hang tools for writing and I found a difference a few different solutions one of them was this tool called workflowy which I really love I still love honestly no it's just an outliner hierarchical lists everything is a list there's I think yeah I think you can do that you can you can have a little bit of text that's not you know you get a note to a list but but the main content is always in list form and you know you'll just increase the indentation as you go deeper into the concept I like this but it wasn't very it's a web-based tool it wasn't right for writing my book in it was a little bit slower and also it lacks you know I was always even though I grew up on a Mac I was always a sort of power user where I was doing a lot of keyboard shortcuts this didn't have them and I just it was almost no see drag-and-drop it took a long time I was like this going to work either to write an entire book 300 pages so again I'm googling and I found another tool Scribner I don't know if you guys have heard of this but it's an interesting tool and the way it works is here on the right pane you have the text and here you have you know like a folders and files kind of recall that like a Windows Explorer style interface in the left pane and and you can drag and drop to rearrange you know if you're like I want this section here I want to move it to the beginning of the chapter you can do that but again it's slow and it's all drag-and-drop with the mouse and I didn't like that and also it's just so I don't know it seems hectic to me it seems it didn't seem a you know it wasn't like the kind of this is also when you know distraction free writing environments were becoming popular and I was like this is kind of like the opposite it's just like it's all distraction and it's so cluttered visually and I didn't I didn't enjoy using it I was just felt like it was you know I had this problem overwhelmed with with thinking about my enormous book subject and I think I felt like this wasn't helping I felt like this was like making me feel more anxious about how much information there was and trying to wrangle it all into a coherent outline and hierarchy so I didn't I decided I didn't want that either and between work Chloe and Scrivener I kind of I was like I kind of could describe what I wanted I knew what I wanted I was like fully they were tool that were kind of like halfway between workflowy and Scrivener and if it did this and so what I did my next step was I realized we need a better solution so I if my first line of defense was Google didn't help me so I went on to the forums and this headline by the way I said man is onion onion headline man almost falls into world of DIY mustard enthusiasts and thoughts not how he starts you know he's googling for like the best kind of mustard and then he finds his forum about mustard he starts posting it reads all the threads about different kinds of mustard and he starts posting he becomes an active using a certain moment he's like what am i doing wow this isn't me what am i doing and that's for sure happened to me with a bunch of different things like I could be saying here giving a presentation about different kinds of blenders and the best blenders for green smoothies you can also make soup with them and but Blendtec vs Vitamix and all the prices because when I decided to buy a blender I just be care so I did it again that's what I do I guys I became an expert on it so I win when I went into the forums and I posted my post about this is where it all began this is my original email and I'm going to read it to you because I think this is you know this is the turning point for me the its first of all it's not a forum called f1 or software calm I was like I'm getting out liners is a good place to start and the subject is out wanting the left pane text in the right and here's the text of what I wrote is there a Havering one is there an app that displays keyboard editable hierarchical structure in the left pane and text editing slash word processing in the right pane I'm looking for a Mac or web-based app that will allow me to create and modify hierarchical structure I'm so specific right it looks like that's like I may as well just say on my like dream wish list of all the things that I want modify hierarchical structure in the form of multi-level bulleted lists in the left pane and do text editing slash word processing in the right pane I wish I could combine workflow in Scrivener into one tool the good thing about Scrivener it displays the high critical structure in my document in the left pane with headers sub headers sub sub headers and displays a text editor of slash word processor in the right pane the problem with Scrivener creating new sections movie sections around nesting one section beneath another etcetera is cumbersome every time you want a new level of the hierarchy you have to choose new text like Mouse dragging on medicine to the menu name it and use the trackpad not the keyboard to drag it to where you want blah blah blah the good thing that we're Chloe so here and I want a tool that's like workflow a quick keyboard based editing modifying so he's describing exactly what I want right and I got a bunch of responses and none of them were very helpful like here's this guy who says I used morning for this sort of thing and I fed it well-suited you can year did I don't know if it's available for the Mac though development has been scarce and erratic in recent years you can try it for free somebody else is like Opie that's me it's asking about something that's hard to find in modern outlining applications even harder on Macs most at and he describes what I want he's kind of like yeah you're not going to find it there's something called mad about I agree with another poster that tree is a good option to try though the notes are in line and not in a separate right-hand pane as the original poster requests so never walk there but then okay but then I get this email from somebody named JB from who says who says you can do this in emacs org-mode by using indirect buffer vertical split screen and visibility cycling everything is handled by a hotkeys it's available for Mac I frequently work in this mode for longer documents what this is possible oh my god I was like I can't believe that somebody just designed a tool that's exactly what I want little did I know it'd have to basically design it myself all right say customize it to make it into what I over a period of years but yeah so I write back immediately JB from emacs org-mode sounds like a great solution I'm intrigued it also looks a little complicated but right under statement it played life but if it indeed does exactly what I'm describing then I'm going to take on a learning curve I've downloaded the emacs org-mode can you describe how to set it up to do this or direct me to a resource that will so he tells me so I do I install it and this is I go I want you guys to hear this email because this is me at the beginning as a non programmer a non you know if ever unikz once I've just been using Microsoft Word my whole life and Scribner and you know Gmail as I say hey Joseph thanks for the tip about emacs org-mode oh so this is later I've installed it he sent me his email address and so now emailing him so I'm Rabbani Nym thanks for the tip about you next org-mode it looks a little scary but I'm ready to try it out I'm trying to get started and I've gotten stuck wondering if you can help me I've installed Emacs and her go Emacs on my Mac now I need to install org-mode I did not really have no idea I downloaded org-mode and I'm trying to install it the documentation simply says to install or mode edit the make file type make then make install to create the PDF in HTML documentation files type make doc but where am I supposed to take these things in terminal I do that there was not a light on my laptop called terminal I was like in terminal do I somehow type them into pmax itself or do I get a prompt any map so I can type commands this is yeah yeah I think that's right is it yeah that sounds right um so that was me where do I take these things I don't even know I was definitely wanted I was definitely one of these guys but you know everybody has to start somewhere so over time I figured it out eventually I got it working I don't know how well you can see this but this is me I'm wanting my book using org-mode and I eventually figured out how to do exactly the thing that I originally described with two panes with text in the right and my outline which is editable in the hierarchical and I can move a can move headings around the hierarchy using just the keyboard and so I did it um ya know this is one big document actually so those are headings that I have though they're actually heading in my you know that are going to be in the book to they're like yeah so those are closer headings and you know this is where these headings is a gourd mode I can alternate I'll demo or go in a bit I'll show you how that works but it works exactly as I wanted to I have like you know a second I'll open Emacs and I'll show you guys what I do and how I do it but it works for what I wanted to do one of my tricks too is is I don't know if you guys can see these are don't even call them hashtags doctor works right of course why did I write I actually comment my writing this thing you know like you guys comment your code you're like oh this is trying to do this or couldn't figure this out or what you say here I'm saying I have a I have a pretty brief this better and then here I had a sentence and I said what's an on cycle to myself right all the comments are just myself what's a non psychobabble way of saying individual differences and then I'm going to find out the answer that all uncommented when I actually change the text right so I still don't really know what I'm doing here's that I like this from xkcd he says this is how I feel all the time one person says keep in mind that I am self-taught so my code may be a little messy that person says sure let me see I'm sure it's fine and another looks of the code and says wow this is like being in a house built by a child using nothing but a hatchet in a picture of a house it's like a salad recipe written by a corporate lawyer using a phone autocorrect that only new excel formulas it's like someone took a transcript of a couple arguing at IKEA and made random edits until it compiled without errors and he says okay I'll read this all guys so that's me most of my code that I have is I don't because I am now just started to learn how to programming next list but up until this point is just me basically either you know googling as I do and copying code snippets that and you know experimenting with them to see if they do what I want or posting questions on Stack Exchange saying like hey I want to do this anybody know how and then you know tricking other people too into writing code for me so that's where I am with it works people always answer um and yeah it's complicated I'm sure you guys call yeah I'm sure you guys have seen this many times he may be nice learning curve I'm still working actually one that I like even better than this is I once a blog post that it was called how to learn Emacs in ten years only ten years oh my god I got a son up so yeah I'm still I'm still working on it one of the reasons I'm here is to like learn more but I'm definitely a good company okay so this is George RR Martin's museum acts Georgian our garden who wrote writes he's not finished he was reading the Game of Thrones series he uses a what's it called he uses a word star where'd it go I had a really cool yeah word star yeah yeah there's word star I kind of I kind of like to imagine now so I'm not the only writer who doesn't use Microsoft Word there's other you know there's a time-honored proud tradition of writers who use other text-based tools so here's word star which an old dos text editor and that's what george RR martin uses on perform processes so there you go yeah exactly you know the keys yeah yeah I haven't tried it I don't know I'm Emacs is doing what I wanted to do so so I'm not gonna I'm not going to dive in but I like the idea that I'm yeah I'm kind of like him I mean you know so arthur c clarke i used to use word star as well i think he he might have there's a thing where he's like i would like to thank without this I wouldn't have been but I don't it was a dedication a book but he basically maybe it was the dedication he like dedicated a book to word star and then another person is Neil Stevenson who actually does use Emacs and he has this quote I don't know if you guys so he's like the you know he's the archetypal writer he uses Emacs his quote is the engineer hours that this is from a larger essay called in the beginning was the command-line the engineer hours that in the case of Microsoft Word were devoted to features like mail merge and they build to embed feature length motion pictures in corporate memoranda were in the case of Emacs focused with maniacal intensity on the deceptively simple assuming problem of editing text if you are a professional writer ie someone else is getting paid to worry about how your words are formatted and printed Emacs outshines all out of their editing software and approximately the same way that the noon of that noonday Sun does the stars it's not just bigger and brighter it simply makes everything else vanish so he really lovely nice there's word star and george RR martin and closing note for this part of the story that's george our garden uses word star and just richard summit just just saying just throwing that out there I mean I mean coincidence I don't know okay so that's how I found my way to Emacs and what I was looking for so I guess now what I'll do is I'll fire up our favorite text editor and get a window and show you guys a little bit and I'll make this part interactive so you guys should you know I didn't this is I didn't plan much for this part I figured you guys could just ask me what what you want to know so first of all that presentation you just saw it was written in Emacs this is something called or George or HTML slideshow and so yeah you see this is the this is org and you can put in images a lot of these are just images it's pretty full tool for me for me this is an alternative I guess not to Microsoft Word with the PowerPoint you know instead of having to I mean how annoying is it to to like paste an image in and then have to like drag it to the right place and then resize it with the resizing thing I don't wanna do any of that I want can I just like pace at URL with one keystroke exactly exactly that's why you see max so yeah there's my presentation you know you guys didn't see this but some of these actually had notes which only driven much being scheduled so that's how I view presentations oh here's an article that I wrote about something called downtown project details don't matter but you can see okay here's here I'm kind of like outlining and writing stuff extras like that's kind of like a place where I put in notes that I've cut actually I have a tool Patrick I showed Patrick days before the tool called a lot of times I'll find text that I'm like I know this should this isn't go here I don't this probably just should be deleted but I don't know I definitely wanted to lead it necessarily and I don't want to have to rely on version control to go back and find if I need it later so I could just delete it and or what I can do and then be lost forever or I'm a tool called palimpsest mode where with one keystroke it gets sent to the very bottom of the file so that's how I that's what those headers well extra are just I send unneeded text unwanted text to the bottom and then it's not a new article except itself yeah it's just me my name and so the answer your question from before about you know moving headers I can just like take one of these and just move it around try just with a piece of keyboard so if I want this X at the beginning it can go there easily let's see I couldn't pro but in fact I wanted those numbers in yeah I added those numbers this is actually done so as a very final step when I was exporting to work is I have to file in Microsoft where I added those numbers like as part of the text show to show them that I wanted the numbers to be in the act you know I could have done that with automatic you know numbering here but then I didn't want to bother to be like no export for all the others and but I just thought it would be easiest but yeah I'm sure that we automated too but yeah here's I'll show you how I export because this is important okay so this is the presentation actually just gets exported to HTML and that's what you saw the presentation there was in chrome here's a business plan that I wrote for my for my company that where I teach writing we teach writing and storytelling so this is again an org mode and I wanted to comment something I could this should expand it whatever I want to say and then I can export either to HTML here it is a window actually they just try doing it again with that window focused export I added a little JavaScript and stuff that I didn't write that I found to do a table of contents yeah thankfully my Savior so here it is in HTML and I can also this is the cool part too is I can go back to my same source and I can export through latex attack Trojan lot text yeah according to Leslie then I don't I don't right I don't write on to add a hack attack actually just I heard somebody on Fiverr calm we can hire people for five dollars to do as a template for me the tech this is taking a long time to process I can probably just feather it is you see that yeah so there's my business plan and it comes with a total table of contents and appendix and headers and I designed I designed this in a told them exactly what I wanted him to basically I designed an HTML and CSS and I was like do this in the tech and so he did so yeah actually this export the same stores and then obviously there's so many other things that I can do I don't even know where to start but you know I could do like insertion I could search across files which I could not do microsoft word and replace across files Microsoft words just searching a place interfaces horrible it's all the focus always goes to the wrong place you have to Mouse to different one down you know type to the you know move the cursor to the front of the line and then it just seems too long to do anything and then it's only it's only for that one file and you also can say if you have different you know it always defaults to print preview mode or print layout mode and I don't want that I just want draft mode like just text like with new max it right but you can't there's no global setting for always open in draft mode you can't do it you have to every time you open a file Microsoft Word doc X whatever you have to go mouse over and like choose draft mode instead it just got to be such a pain and I didn't do that anymore guilt anymore so you next s what I want like an yeah if I want to I can easily do miles but window thing and yeah I can yeah I can do like I can make this and what is a clone indirect buffer other window so now these are independent so this one gets expanded this one stays the same or I think I can actually just what's a call to zero in and make it so that this is my whole like buffer is displaying only this subtree so that's helpful to organ why there's nothing around oh yeah it does get reflected yeah because it because it has to the same file being there you go so I just look for some service I know if you saw that I move products and services to before I could have something right or you know Carol this will be a more obvious example take the appendix and I'll move it to the beginning so now when I there you go my appendage is the first thing so that's easy and then I can search and replace reg reg X Rose excerpts and I reg X is it reg X or reg ex is reg ex yeah better here actually okay some people say programming JavaScript okay so so so I'm a I'm not a sophisticated user report mode but I've used it to write a few presentations for export the beaver yeah when I use it like couple heading is asterisk space yeah using something called or bullets mode just a little bit cleaner because I figured the easiest way or I think it the easiest way to display all these was with indentation and coloring you know I can I can move this in or you know these are different heading levels but and why do I have you know I didn't like scriptor because it had all that clutter so why do I want extras like what's the utility of displaying the bullets but I could if I wanted to just like different stickers that you had oh yeah I mean I do so many things in emacs that is again it starts in two words I do email my compose email I just got this is not much mode but I thought I got working so you know what of it I mean I would say actually the one of the most important things is you know just customizing key bindings so that I'm unbelievably fast moving around the screen and so that when I never do have to work in Microsoft Word I'm like why has everything so slow like Andy I can't get to where I want to go because you know as you guys all know you get the muscle memory in your fingers so just being able to move around text is probably the biggest thing the and I have customized those key bindings to work for me and to be consistent with using a Mac and some things that I was used to things like that oh yeah let's see what else um would you say that they could use like no not at all every I have everything customized heavily so I mean so those that export I mean one export HTML all of that is giving customized three bunch of stuff here's one a like in Google from within Emacs you guys have seen the yeah what good new go yeah I think I mentioned that to you last time yeah exactly so you guys have all seen you know you can just choose a you can you can google something and then opens in from you can feel something for within Emacs and opens in chrome what if I don't want to leave feedbacks at all I can just Google something and get it displayed in or mode a lot of times I don't need to actually you know surf around and read a million things I can just you know I just might need the first sentence of the top hit or something and it tells me what I need to know let's see what else did I show you I do a lot of I do a lot of a browse mode stuff so this is something that I've been working on sort of like the big thing about this you guys see what I'm doing I typed k-space yo g TG phase ad space th space s space and face and so you know it's really fast can't do that in Microsoft Word I just got to an ad in you know as soon as I with I think this is my first red radiation or it's like why am i typing the longer ago you know I know what I'm going to say development DBT right because there's no time I ever need to side BC and have it stay as BC so from now on BC means because I just kept on adding abbreviations and now I just have probably hundreds of them yeah how do i define abbreviation to me max I have a file here where not all of these are mined some of these are autocorrect Corrections that I imported from a bunch of lists but you know a lot of them are so here GA expands to gain I mean by itself expands to go FY expands to funny FX to for example yes the number at the end refers to how many times it's been a vote invoked how many times it's been used so so the word cheaper go to another 91 but if I find like the there's nine thousand seven to twelve times I didn't have to type the word good because it got abbreviated so yeah I do have carpal tunnel syndrome that's part of why I justify this insane system of creating everything it's called a bred a breed mode yeah yeah cool yeah I haven't found a okay collaborate yeah I mean what I usually just do is is I export to HTML and I copy paste and I put it in an hour yeah I just append yeah I usually don't I don't have a situation where I have an ongoing collaboration with somebody if I did that I'd probably use Dropbox and make them you know read the org-mode source or something but usually I just send somebody something they send it back I got it I send it again and when I do that I usually just pace it an email it's the easiest thing so I work in work mode and then I paste something into a gmail window or I just use my Emacs email to do that automatically there's orgh orgh mime HTML where it takes you know your sub tree and automatically generates a HTML email and sends it yeah that's kind of cool if if I want to type something like BC without expanding yes yeah I can just type I bound halt space or I guess I should say meta space to insert space but don't expand so yeah yeah yeah I I do use github I'm again I don't really know what I'm doing but and it's just in it but but I figure this is really matter that much because it's just me you know I don't have collaborators that I'm collaborating with it's just me but here's like well can I have their and consolidated a lot deleted stuff and solving proposal simplified record structure it's a good work on this day twelve days ago cool good and into a farm I was looking at your page Wow I cracked the structure that was a good day but yeah Here I am just saw this to me I don't I don't mean anything complicated so I'm just doing you know I'm treating it like a way to just do a snapshot whenever I but then also instead of having to what I do what I used to do which is save a file and have it called article underscore v1 article underscore b1 - draft article v1 draft - shorter I can - cut a lot you know said having to do that and let me make you play now I can just as I go and there's stuff that I don't want I don't even want to send to the end of the file using concepts so I can just delete it knowing that it's all here and I'll make a notation that I deleted stuff like deleting unnecessary stuff and then you know I can go back and find that stuff I was a friend of mine just told me that I could be more sophisticated actually use a tag like like a gift tag delete so that like would then know whenever I delete a bunch of stuff so yeah I do use good and also things struct a backed up to my Dropbox and I you know do external hard drive back house so whatever riders have they tried to the doctor he's nasty interesting you know I don't really know random people in coffee shops always say oh my god what are you doing are you coding or sometimes you know one time I tweeted a saying I tweeted the photo of me here yeah I was saying I was like stand up one night writing and so this is me using work mode and working in my book and I tweeted it the photo and you know one frontrunner friend a friend of mine said what is that that looks like that looks like coding her husband works for Google so she knows I guess they're shocked but I haven't really I mean I haven't had an opportunity to nobody just really asked me in detail to take them through the workflow and how it works I think you guys interested in it and regular writers are fine with Microsoft Word cards for the sweet pears outlined five panels let's talk about yeah so I've got a laptop and then external display sitting above oh yeah so you're not a team axe evangels telling Rex a call man just workflow it just programs best I spent you know I spent so many hours every week you know googling stuff hacking 'listen you know Excellus code and trying to get things working and then debug since I don't know I'm doing good lucky things that don't work that I don't you know I wouldn't recommend it to somebody who's there if they're fine with it and you know there other tools for writers where I wouldn't recommend anybody use Microsoft Word but there's a tool called env alt people know that um I could maybe even fire that up I think I probably have it okay this is a great tool for writer this is yeah okay yeah so what this is is this is markdown and I have a bunch of yeah so if I type a B then it narrows with BB it narrows I had the PR so here it's son yeah and in there is its we call an incremental search and so it's a really fast way to search one directory for all your text files or if I say if I have searched something that doesn't exist that I can just search for it and then I can start writing it and then it gets created as a new text file in that directory so it's super fast easy way for writers keep track of a bunch of files and find whatever they want quickly its marked down you know worked on this good support for a lot of things - it's not as powerful as any of this stuff but most writers probably don't need it but this is a good way to you know solve the problem of finding things across vile novel and those problems that I mentioned the beginning you just hand out to export from this to PDF no I'm not I don't use this I was just saying if if I was going to recommend if somebody if somebody said to me if a writer said to me hey I'm not a tech person but I Microsoft Word is too slow what should I do I would probably say you said the old I wouldn't say go on to this life path of learning how to use Emacs because realistically I know that it you know it would take so much time and then take over their life and I don't know if I could want to be responsible for another writers lost productivity in that in that way had why had a long research I use a great question I use so within a within it or buffer obviously I can just you know search with I search there's also a helm swoop so that if I type or helm Swift will do it will show me all of the occurrences of a string within my current buffer and I can also you know and there's all the stupid commands I think this might the one that I just invoke might be just this buffer or maybe it's all open buffers yeah so it shows me all currencies and all open buffers of my string or if I want to go further with that I can use I think this is Sai there are grep or inner or it's I'm going to replace it with a G a G you guys probably know all of these things as like the UNIX tools that they are I'm just kind of like I go so this is helm AG so I use helm and this is searching for within directory and obviously I can specify the direct you know that's why default helm search which I have banter single-piece row which is to search within the directory that the current file is in but obviously you know worst case I can go to our rep and specify exactly what I want to search for and we're right so or maybe we're just asking to check does he know about CREP so yeah yeah yeah oh yeah I'm going to show you guys another thing which is come big fish oh maybe it's not - there's a fish mode what's that know there's a movie called something fish so who knows what that is no don't yes it is some big fish I have a file called that it is called a fish why did they come up with spotlight okay here um so all right so text so if I type a screenplay this is pretty cool this is something okay here's a regular here's a screenplay this is the actual screenplay - that would be big fish it's just text but there is a mode of Emax mode called phantom mode where it takes that and in formats it automatically as a screenplay and unlike other screenwriting tools where I would have to you know highlight this and then go to menu and say okay this is character and then this is dialogue right with the menu which is how other screens will still are or maybe there's key source to do it but you have to specify it manually this just parses it because it's text and it's a very predictable structure parses it and then it converts it all into you know screenplay formatted yeah yeah it's just text I could actually so so here it says another patch Sam sympathetically then it just his tie I mean if I wanted to I could edit give edit the actual string by a big fish and say whatever that's a nonsense and then it rusts who's you know here know the big fish is a different yeah yeah it would have been so much better oh my god so fountain fountain smoke and in fact fountain is a format that is available for for example it's available for you know other text editors that to markdown also so you can use fountain to parse text from lots of different sources not just Emacs but yeah MX has the same way DX has a markdown mode it has a fountain mode I pose yeah um I found something that I mentioned to a few people here recently called poetry mode poetry mode which is kind of cool because yeah this is a home with syllables you see what it's doing on the left it's counting syllables in which if you it's actually really useful because you're either counting on your fingers or you have something like this so that's kind of cool um and then there's also a way to this is called uh it's not in it's like kind of retired but it's called poetry mode I know the guy and he said that he gave up on it but he said it was astronomically more complex to calculate syllables than he was anticipating and just like all the time just calculating figuring out the syllable counter and then he's like okay I need to stop work on this but I can also use this a function in poetry mode which I had not down to a keystroke which is rhymed poetry word which takes the word at points and rhymes it haha yeah you know it would be more helpful actually if there were a way Ken there is a street in these villagers Iceland air Sinclair Sinclair billionaire there's one I thought it would be cool to actually keep this pane open and just automatically rhyme rhyme whatever word is at the end of a line we were talking there's actually yeah so that's poetry mode what gives that but yeah there's nice poetry mode so I don't know I do everything in in accent I'm okay there's something that I want to do that it's not working then I google and try to find a mode to do it or maybe I try to convince with you guys to to write it for capture yeah here or capture a command post or a troll see see so what to capture template and then I can you know I have different this these are different files you guys are seeing the inner workings of my brain these are different files I can choose one here's a capture buffer and just this is just a simple one where I can you know today and then you know I can I can write text and then I can hit a keystroke a control C control C and then it captures it and puts that file away and then if I open that file it has all of these ones that are categorized my diary entries essentially yeah I have been getting crashes recently which I can't figure out and you know actually max crashes where there's no back trace because because all I see is the finder and we're DMX good yeah so I recently added that yeah why you choose regularly back so I started with up wake up by an automatic Scott and then at a certain point became at a certain point when I started doing a lot of customizing and taking code from 4s you know for ticking code from places I found online or asking people to help me with things every time I ask a question on Stack Exchange and said okay I'm using aqua Max and I trying to do this it's not working how do I do it they would always get mad at me and be like well why are using it I'll come back to the first place you should be using GNU Emacs and so eventually I switched but I definitely already implemented all the functionality that aqua max has into new me max that didn't come with like yeah like aqua max says it has some smart functions where like if you are you know cutting and pasting text or deleting by word it doesn't leave extra it doesn't leave extra spaces can you eat max by default does so I created something where it fixes the space and there's a very nice man called just one space that so kill word and then run just one space and when it's wasted space things like that alchemax has a lot of great things I don't but it became easier to use the one everybody else was using no I don't I don't do that I the way that I've been keeping track of well actually that's a good question how do I keep track of references I thought I have a little I think I just threw up a grab mode and type you know I might have I might have deleted a house I recently there it is okay a footnote so I can add a footnote and then when I yeah I don't know and then when I export that becomes a footnote right so that's what I've been doing just adding footnotes as I go and then I have a bibliographical essay where I actually write in prose the section about maid preferences comes from a paper by whatever you know and I have that in prose and I because I'm not writing a thesis where it needs to be in a certain format figure the easiest way is just to write notes that's what people do these days it's write notes saying where you find different stuff oh no it's not at all no that's right yeah oh sorry actually I'll hold you right there but - as a follow-up to that question you know because of course you know keeping traffic citations is important if I get something online for instance I have a tool that will or a tool but uh just a function pack okay that will okay that didn't work that was not a very good example because it's just it's Google because but what if I you know what if I googled something there in the beginning was the command line and so from here if I'm on this page this is Neal Stephenson's essay and let's say I'm copying a sentence from it first of all I can I can yeah I can do this you can say I can add block quotes and I can put in block quote and then here on a source and I have a keystroke that runs something called or Mac link grabber or something like that and then this is actually now or linked with the URL and the title of the page that gets inserted automatically and I forgot the keystroke but I have a function that actually pastes creates of loveboat pastes and then type source and then grabs the URL automatically so that can be handy too I have so many things like this every time yeah I'm Pro I feel like I feel like I can let you guys in this way which isn't every time I do anything that's remotely tedious oh my guys got to be way to automate this and then I spend ten times as long probably to find a solution in Jamaica matically so I have so many things like this oh yeah you had a question sorry coming back oh I should probably have changed that before I'm in precision I I just found you know oh yeah okay this is because I switched from so where do you get your Emacs if you use a Mac I was getting it from a website called Emacs for Mac OS X calm and I was downloading that and then I was reading on lines people were saying well you know it's much better than that is this like railway cat Emacs because it has better font rendering blah blah blah as the ability to you can swipe things so I can swipe from all these frames frame into frame just by swiping look at that and there's a book as you know oh I can also I guess what's this I can pinch to I can pinch to shrink the text and I can what's the other the pinch I can do I can do this can do this to zoom so it has this and also the type of the fonts do look better because the and it has like some kind of you know RGA that'd be something something so there like I was switched so then I did and then I found that unlike nearly max where the title of my file in the old days with what I use really nice my file document DFC would go up here but that didn't happen with the railway cat Emacs instead it just said Emacs the top which is useless why do I need that and I have different final dozen at different times so I googled it and there is a thing that said to set the name of her file what's it called the title of the window title bar just modify this function modify this variable I should say like sent to you variable whatever was to this and here's the wild card thing there's no other words for all of these or the actual file name and if you want to insert other string you can so then I was just playing around with it and right now it says hey bro to supply this file is called document up txt or something like that where a document that TF sees with the title alright I was just having fun with myself yeah yeah yeah you know that one another thing that I use by the way is I this is called buffer stack this is so yeah this is so save so much time because instead of having to use Microsoft Word and like oh I want to open this file I can just page through them using I have it down to command right and left so these are all my relevant buffers and then things that are you know compiled windows or you know okay I could actually see out yeah these things mortgage n does scratch messages shell command out but PDF output I have those set to not be tracked by buffer stack so that when I'm gauging through I only see the ones that are interesting to me right so that's useful I have a recent files thing that this is hello recent open files so that's useful just my most recent files I have remembering all these things I have down to command back slash it opens the last file that was open in one keystroke so it can you know if I launch and if I close a file it can also close the file a and F and if I'm like ah that actually I can I can open it again so big fish kill buffer closes or I open it again one keystroke that's useful I have projectile inserting to use which is yeah within this project all the files and then they're of that right so that's useful and then somebody asked me something well you let you write something nice right yes so I do I could have it online I also have more than one I split it into two files originally when I was using aqua max so these want this is shared which is shared between Nui Max and alchemax and then another one called pneumatic startup which is just Kleenex although I don't use alchemax anymore so I could consolidate them and then I got but then I started splitting up again like I've cosmetics here which is like things like you know different fonts and color themes and things like that and oh yeah the other thing is as you can see I have my Emacs / config files in order boat right so these are these are our headings and our actually here's a better one because I have headings and subheadings yeah so these are tickets you isolated I did a thing so that I could have both a killer ring and a paste and like oh s ten paste so if I copy text from the web that's I can paste that but that's different from if I kill something so I can still copy and paste the same text on the web but if I want to paste it then I can paste separately from the Kilrain so those are separate so actually have two which actually comes in really handy yeah I should probably didn't do all that yeah I'm good any other questions I can share the github repository with my config files and then you guys can look at the map you said and you can fix and clean up the code because I don't have good thank you guys

Channel: thoughtbot

Views: 117,595

Rating: 4.8981724 out of 5

Keywords: Emacs (Software), Software (Industry), Author (Profession), thoughtbot, Writer (Profession), Literature (Media Genre)

Id: FtieBc3KptU

Length: 61min 6sec (3666 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 07 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/Trevoke]

And here's his emacs settings :)

https://github.com/incandescentman/Emacs-Settings

[u/pimiddy]

Excellent talk, with many little snippets and packages I need to check out now.

[u/[deleted]]

[deleted]

What is this?

[u/frosch03]

i always wonder, why sophisticated editors arent used much more by people, who work with a lot of text, like writers