Suppressing left-side continuation arrows in emacs on Windows 7 - emacs

I'm using Emacs 22.3 on Windows 7, launched via runemacs.exe (not from a shell command line). Lines that are too long for the window wrap (good!), with an arrow glyph at the end of the line (I'm used to '\', but ok) -- and also with a matching arrow glyph at the beginning of the wrapped line. I've not seen that left-side arrow before and I'm finding it distracting. How do I get rid of it?
This appears in all modes (so far). The word "wrap" does not appear in my .emacs file, which is pretty lightweight (mostly font sizes/colors and key mappings). I've searched Google and found plenty of advice about how to turn off line-wrap, but that's not what I want. I just want a different visual rendering of line-wrap.
I noticed, while removing .emacs entirely to verify that nothing there is to blame, that by default the thin "columns" where these arrows appear are a slightly different background color than the main window. In my configuration I've set background and foreground colors and those apply to this part of the UI too. A solution that changes the background color under the arrows would probably also work; my problem is that they appear to be part of the text to me.

(setq-default visual-line-fringe-indicators nil)
(setq-default fringe-indicator-alist '(
(truncation left-arrow right-arrow)
(continuation nil right-curly-arrow) ;; left-curly-arrow
(overlay-arrow . right-triangle)
(up . up-arrow)
(down . down-arrow)
(top top-left-angle top-right-angle)
(bottom bottom-left-angle bottom-right-angle top-right-angle top-left-angle)
(top-bottom left-bracket right-bracket top-right-angle top-left-angle)
(empty-line . empty-line)
(unknown . question-mark)))
ALTERNATIVE method when using visual-line-mode defined in simple.el:
(setq visual-line-fringe-indicators '(nil right-curly-arrow)) ;; left-curly-arrow

Related

How to disable Emacs auto moving command to right?

I'm using the most recent version of Emacs on Windows 7. Let's say I type the following code in my .emacs:
;test|
| means the cursor position. Now if I press Enter, the text will be moved to the right and it will look like:
;test
How to disable this feature?
This is done in accordance with the Emacs Lisp style guide:
Comments that start with a single semicolon, ';', should all be aligned to the same column on the right of the source code. Such comments usually explain how the code on that line does its job. For example:
(setq base-version-list ; There was a base
(assoc (substring fn 0 start-vn) ; version to which
file-version-assoc-list)) ; this looks like
; a subversion.
If you use two or more semicolons you will see other behaviour:
Comments that start with two semicolons, ';;', should be aligned to the same level of indentation as the code. Such comments usually describe the purpose of the following lines or the state of the program at that point.
...
Comments that start with three semicolons, ';;;', should start at the left margin. We use them for comments which should be considered a “heading” by Outline minor mode.
...
Comments that start with four semicolons, ';;;;', should be aligned to the left margin and are used for headings of major sections of a program.
The automatic indentation is done by electric-indent-mode. If you wish to disable it entirely, put something like
(electric-indent-mode -1)
in your init file. You could also disable it for specific modes using something like
(electric-indent-local-mode -1)
in the appropriate init hooks.
Simply using two semi-colons as suggested by the style guide should also prevent the behaviour, which will let you benefit from electric-indent-mode on other code.

Emacs - How to keep text formatted to other editors?

I'm a beginner with emacs. Altough I'm finding it amusing and challenging, I still don't know some basic things, like, when I open a text or a piece of script wrote in another editors, emacs don't show the text formatted properly (missing all tabs, all text left-aligned) and vice-versa.
Also, when I copy a link with emacs with M-w, my clipboard is still empty and I can't paste it in a browser. I already did my "homework". I've read the tutorial and I'm almost finishing the manual and didn't see anything to address that.
tnx in advance.
Some editors, like Intellij IDEA for example, will indent code based on how they understand it and not based on how it was actually indented, there's no Emacs mode that operates in the same way, not to my best knowledge. If you were using something like Eclipse or MS Visual Studio before - then you probably just have a different size of tab character (this is why some programmers insist on indenting code with spaces rather than tabs). But the width of the tab character is adjustable. In order to customize it you would:
add in your initialization file (usually .emacs file in your $HOME directory, you can create one, if it is not there yet):
;; makes tab character as wide as four space characters
(setq default-tab-width 4)
though some other major editing modes override this variable, you would need to tell what language you are dealing with to get better instructions.
Clipboard, see this answer: How to copy text from Emacs to another application on Linux if you are on Linux, then likely you need to set x-select-enable-clipboard to t.
Aligning text to the right (or left for LTR languages) is not possible in Emacs, as far as I understand. You could align block of text, if you split it into lines and align on the line ends, but that would mean aligning by adding spaces at the beginning - something you don't really want to do.
Tabs should work (you might need to fix the width). Use mouse to select to the clipboard, or use CtrlInsert to copy and ShiftDelete to cut.
Assuming emacs has picked the right mode for the file - it usually does - you can press C-x h to select all, then TAB to indent all selected lines. What other editors are you using, and what platform(s)?
As for the clipboard issue, some builds of emacs work correctly with the native clipboard, some don't. You might want to investigate CUA mode.

How do I get aquamacs to show a solid and blinking cursor?

How do I get aquamacs to show a solid and blinking cursor?
http://aquamacs.org/
With a lot of work we managed to get it to show a hollow and blinking box, instead of just a blinking vertical line, but that is often just too hard to see.
This works with NT Emacs:
(blink-cursor-mode)
Should work with Aquamacs, too.
If the cursor is not a solid box (here, by default, it is), add
(setq-default cursor-type 'box)
You might want to backup the unidentified file in which the setq-default is to be added, in my case the ~/.emacs* file I edited was replaced in total by something that did not include my setq addition and eliminated some other non global section (I had two non global sections before my cursor change, now I have one).
¿Perhaps the Aquamacs emacs config to be edited is contained elsewhere?
In Aquamacs, a convenient way to set up a filled box
cursor globally is to use the command:
M-x customize
Then in the search box in the customizations buffer,
type in "cursor type" and press the search button.
The cursor requested is called "box".

Emacs remember text selection

I decided that I was ready to try something new, after a few years of using gEdit for most of my coding needs, and try to learn using Emacs. I knew this would be difficult, as I have heard how complex Emacs can be, but I was lured by its power. The hardest thing has been getting used to writing ELisp in the .emacs file to change things about the editor. I can't currently do it myself, but I have found a few helpful snippets here and there to change some options.
One thing I have been having a lot of problems with is getting Emacs to remember the text I have selected after a command. For instance, I commonly highlight a section of code to mass indent it. However, if I do this in Emacs, it will move the selected text only once before unselecting all of the text. Does anyone know a way around this?
Anyway, I apologize for what seems to me to be an easy question, but after an hour of Google searching and looking around here on SO, I thought it was worth asking. I have a few more questions about Emacs, but I will save them and ask separately after I get this straightened out. Thanks!
UPDATE
A few people have asked about what mod I am using and what type of text I am entering. While I don't know much about Emacs modes, I am editing a pure text file at the moment. Something like this:
Hello, I am a simple text file
that is made up of three separate
lines.
If I highlight all three lines and hit TAB, I get this:
Hello, I am a simple text file
that is made up of three separate
lines.
This is great, however, if I use C-x C-x like some suggest below to reselect the text and hit TAB again, I get this:
Hello, I am a simple text file
that is made up of three separate
lines.
I hope this helps!
FWIW, here is the reason for the behaviour of your newly-added example. (I'm not 'solving' the issue here, but I'm posting it to demystify what you're seeing.)
This was determined with emacs -q which disables my customisations, so the following is default behaviour for emacs 23.2.
You are in text-mode. You should see (Text) or similar in the mode line at the bottom of the screen, and C-h m will tell you (under the list of minor modes) "Text mode: Major mode for editing text written for humans to read." Emacs decides (by way of the auto-mode-alist variable) that it should switch to text-mode if you visit a filename matching certain extensions (such as .txt).
In text-mode pressing TAB with a region highlighted causes indent-according-to-mode to be called on each line of the region in sequence. The slightly convoluted path to finding this out starts at C-h k TAB, which tells us that TAB is bound to indent-for-tab-command, which in this instance calls indent-region -- that function name is not stated explicitly in the help, but can be seen in the code -- which checks the buffer-local indent-region-function variable, which is nil, and: "A value of nil means really run indent-according-to-mode on each line."
indent-according-to-mode checks the indent-line-function variable, which has the buffer-local value indent-relative.
Use C-h f indent-relative RET to see the help for this function. (Read this).
Although you probably won't yet have had the experience to know how to check all that (or necessarily even want to!), and fully understand everything it tells you, this is an example of how the self-documenting aspect of Emacs enables a user to figure out what is going on (which then makes it feasible to change things). I essentially just used C-h k (describe-key), C-h f (describe-function), and C-h v (describe-variable) to follow the documentation. Looking at the source code for indent-for-tab-command was as simple as clicking the file name shown as part of its help page.
I suggest doing the following to help see what is happening when indent-relative runs on each line:
M-x set-variable x-stretch-cursor t
M-x set-variable ruler-mode-show-tab-stops t
M-x ruler-mode
Now for each line in turn, put the cursor at the very start of the line and press TAB. You'll end up with all three lines indented to the first tab-stop ('T' in the ruler).
Now repeat this -- again, ensure you are at the very start of each line, in front of the existing indentation.
The first character of the first line (which is currently a tab) is once again indented to the first tab-stop, as there is no preceding line for it to examine.
Next, the first character of the second line is indented to match the position of the first non-white-space character of the preceding line. Because the first character of the second line is also a tab, the actual text of the second line is pushed one tab further along.
The third line follows suit. Its first tab character is lined up with the first non-white-space character of the second line, with the same relative effect as before, giving you the final state in your example.
To emphasise, note what happens if you now put enter the line "a b c" above the existing lines, then move back to the start of the next line (what was previously the first line) and press TAB. The first tab character will now be indented in line with the 'b'. Provided that the indent-tabs-mode variable is true (meaning you have actual tab characters), then this will have no practical effect on the position of the words in the line, as 'indenting' a tab with spaces will not have an effect until the number of spaces exceeds the width of the tab (but that's another kettle of fish entirely!)
All this really means is that text-mode in Emacs doesn't behave the way you'd like it to in this situation. Other major modes can do completely different things when you press TAB, of course.
As is invariably the case with Emacs, things you don't like can be changed or circumvented with elisp. Some searching (especially at the Emacs Wiki) will frequently turn up useful solutions to problems you encounter.
Try typing C-x C-x after Emacs unselects it.
Then, instead of hitting tab (I never knew that tab does what you said! That's totally whacked.), do M-8 C-x C-i. Pity it's so many keys, but it ought to do what you want -- namely, shove everything over 8 columns. Obviously replace the M-8 with something else if you want some other number of columns.
What I usually do is simply type C-x C-x (exchange-point-and-mark) after a command that deactives the region.
How are you indenting, and in which mode?
The indentation rules in any programming mode should generally just get it right. (If they don't, that's probably more indicative that you want to configure the rules for that mode differently, but I suspect that's a different question which has been asked already).
If you're in text-mode or similar and just using TAB, then I can see the problem.
Note that if you're using indent-rigidly (C-x C-i, or C-x TAB which is the same thing) then you can repeatedly indent the same region simply by repeating the command, even if the highlighting has disappeared from view.
You can also use a prefix arg to indent-rigidly to make it indent many times. e.g. C-u C-u C-x C-i (easier to type than it looks) will indent 16 spaces (4 x 4, as the prefix arg defaults to 4, and it multiplies on each repeat). Similarly, M-8 C-x C-i indents 8 spaces. This is fine in some circumstances, and way too cumbersome in others.
Personally I suggest putting (cua-selection-mode 1) into your .emacs and using that for rigid indentation. Trey Jackson made a handy blog about it. With this, you can C-RET to start rectangle selection, down as many lines as you need, TAB repeatedly to indent the lines, and C-RET to exit the mode.
While the rectangle is active, RET cycles through the corners. For left-hand corners, typing inserts in front. For right-hand corners, typing inserts after. For the single-column rectangle, bottom counts as 'left' and top counts as 'right' for this purpose.
Trey's blog lists all the available features (or look in the source file: cua-base.el)
Be warned that indentation in Emacs is generally an unexpectedly complicated topic.
You can do this with something like the following:
(add-hook 'text-mode-hook (lambda ()
(set (make-local-variable 'indent-region-function)
(lambda (s e)
(indent-rigidly s e tab-width)))))
Then selecting a region and hitting TAB. will indent the region by a tab-width. You can then exchange point and mark with C-x C-x and hit TAB again to repeat.
I do, however, agree with the previous answers that suggest using indent-rigidly directly.

Display same file successive pages on Emacs split screen

I've done this before, years ago, so I know the answer is out there. However the google-space is heavily polluted with namespace collisions, especially new user guides.
This is what I'd like to do in Emacs 21:
Split the screen on a given file buffer (C-x 3).
As I page through the first screen (C-v), the next page of the file is automatically displayed on the second.
To be clear, the next line in the file after the last line on the left screen should be the first line on the right screen, always.
Any help?
You might be looking for follow-mode
It is minor mode that combines windows into one tall virtual window.
You want scroll-all-mode
scroll-all-mode is an interactive compiled Lisp function in `scroll-all.el'.
(scroll-all-mode &optional arg)
Toggle Scroll-All minor mode.
With arg, turn Scroll-All minor mode on if arg is positive, off otherwise.
When Scroll-All mode is on, scrolling commands entered in one window
apply to all visible windows in the same frame.
Set up the windows appropriately, and then turn on scroll-all-mode, and from then on all windows scroll together
If follow-mode doesn't work, you could define your own macro, something like
(defun align-windows ()
(set-window-start (other-window) (window-start))
(scroll-other-window))
Then either use this (along with scroll-down) instead of C-v, or rebind C-v to that, or add
advice to scroll-down.
You can start Follow mode and setting up a basic two-window layout using
M-x follow-delete-other-windows-and-split RET.
it is from http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/FollowMode