Its been a while since I mentioned Crafted Emacs. The last update was back in July! There have been a few updates, a PR was submitted to update the straight.el configuration to use the newer version. There were a few other updates as well, mostly around some fixes needed in different places, and some additional documentation updates. I won't go into all of these on this post, instead I'd like to focus on the new module based on the book “Mastering Emacs”¹ by Mickey Petersen.

I bought this book way back in 2015 mostly to support the author and because, well, who doesn't need another book about Emacs, right!? The cool thing, this is more like a subscription because Mickey Petersen keeps updating the book with each new release of Emacs. Which is pretty cool, if you ask me. He also writes an article here and there to demystify common areas of Emacs and provide some example configuration as well. Between the book and the articles, there is a lot to learn and benefit from on the Mastering Emacs site.

A few months back, David Wilson and Mickey Petersen got together and worked out a cool deal that helps support the System Crafters YouTube channel. Basically, if you buy the book using this link, a portion of the proceeds go to the channel. And Mickey sells a book. And you get to benefit from a ton of really good information. Everybody wins!

It had been a while since I read the book. After the news just mentioned, I got inspired to read it again and put together a module for Crafted Emacs based on the book. The really cool thing the book highlights is the amount of built-in stuff immediately available for use. He goes over a number of configuration elements and covers the absolute basics every user needs to understand when using Emacs. Its like the built-in tutorial only better! The built-in tutorial does get you up to speed quickly in terms of basic operations, but the book expands on that information (repeating it in some ways) and does a great job of explaining how to go about configuring Emacs with very little actual Emacs Lisp knowledge and usage.

Of course, as this is a Crafted Emacs module, I will pretty much only use Emacs Lisp. I'm sure you aren't surprised. Not only did I use the book as inspiration, I also reviewed a few articles, notably the following:

• Understanding Minibuffer Completion
• Demystifying Emacs' Window Manager
• Wordsmithing in Emacs

Some highlights:

(customize-set-variable 'completion-cycle-threshold 3)
(customize-set-variable 'tab-always-indent 'complete)
(customize-set-variable 'completion-category-overrides
                        '((file (styles . (partial-completion)))))
(customize-set-variable 'completions-detailed t)
(if (version< emacs-version "28")
    (icomplete-mode 1)
  (fido-vertical-mode 1))

(when (version< emacs-version "28")
  (defun crafted-mastering-emacs-use-icomplete-vertical ()
    "Install and enable icomplete-vertical-mode for Emacs versions
less than 28."
    (interactive)
    (crafted-package-install-package 'icomplete-vertical)
    (icomplete-mode 1)
    (icomplete-vertical-mode 1)))

This bit uses the built-in completion settings. With Emacs 28, uses fido-vertical-mode which is in contrast to vertico as defined in the crafted-completion module. For users with Emacs versions before 28, provide a form to possibly install icomplete-vertical-mode if desired, otherwise just continue with icomplete-mode.

The completion-cycle-threshold value is set low. If there are 3 or fewer completions, hitting the TAB key will cycle through them, more than that and a *Completions* buffer pops up.

(add-to-list 'display-buffer-alist
             '("\\*Help\\*"
               (display-buffer-reuse-window display-buffer-pop-up-window)
               (inhibit-same-window . t)))

(add-to-list 'display-buffer-alist
             '("\\*Completions\\*"
               (display-buffer-reuse-window display-buffer-pop-up-window)
               (inhibit-same-window . t)
               (window-height . 10)))

(add-to-list 'display-buffer-alist
             '("^\\*Dictionary\\*"
               (display-buffer-in-side-window)
               (side . left)
               (window-width . 70)))

This bit configures some windows. For *Help* windows, keep using the same buffer, for *Completions* windows, make the max height 10 lines tall. This last one is to avoid having a lot of completions take over the entire screen. The former is to avoid the buffer proliferation that occurs when using the helpful package installed when using the crafted-ui module. The last bit of window configuration moves the definitions window to the left side of the frame.

(define-key global-map (kbd "M-#") #'dictionary-lookup-definition)

There is a keyboard binding provided to call the dictionary to get the definition of the word a the point as well.

I turn on winner-mode, also provided in the crafted-windows, but unlike that module, no additional keybindings are provided. The default keybindings are CTRL-LEFT or CTRL-RIGHT to undo or redo layout.

(with-eval-after-load 'ispell
  (when (executable-find ispell-program-name)
    (add-hook 'text-mode-hook #'flyspell-mode)
    (add-hook 'prog-mode-hook #'flyspell-prog-mode)))

Spell checking is turned on in different modes if there is a suitable spell check program, either ispell or, better, aspell. No keybindings are provided, but the default of CTRL-PERIOD might conflict with Embark if you have that installed and configured.

Finally, there are a couple of functions available to install dumb-jump and hydra. The dumb-jump package is useful for jump-to-definition situations, and hydra allows for creating a “menu” of keys to use so you don't have to remember every keybinding. Just use a single “leader” key and the menu will pop up. This is similar in concept to how the transient package works, which is used by the magit (and others) package.

A nice feature of this particular module is you can really simplify your Emacs configuration to nearly this:

(require 'crafted-defaults)
(require 'crafted-mastering-emacs)

and have a very reasonably complete Emacs configuration. Notable missing features are configurations for Org mode and any specific configurations for the various programming languages. Crafted Emacs has other modules which provide some of those features, but you'll need to fill in the blanks where functionality is missing.

Shameless Plug

If you enjoy configuring Emacs and tweak yours often, you might consider giving Crafted Emacs a try. I'm sure you'll find some rough edges, and when you do, I invite you to open an issue, or submit a pull request. Or, maybe you won't find any rough edges and this will be just the thing you need. I'm not holding my breath on that just yet.

If you enjoy crafting your computing experience, from hacking on Emacs, your Linux/Mac/Windows configuration, maybe your Guix or NixOS home configuration, or whatever it is… consider joining the SystemCrafters community!

Tags: #emacs

Footnotes

¹ See the Mastering Emacs website for more information.