How to install emacs colortheme - emacs

I found this website and downloaded the color-theme files.
It says:
Put the file color-theme.el and the
folder “themes” (with the files
color-theme-example.el and
color-theme-library.el) in a directory
on your LoadPath.
and then I checked the load path website, which says:
To add a single directory to the load-path:
(add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/site-lisp/")
My question is, where do I type this line?
If I do M-x and then type, it complains add-to-list[No match].
By the way, I am using Emacs 23.2(9.0) on Mac, a GUI version.
For the text version on terminal, I use black background seems fine, except the blue is too dark on black

An answer for newbs like me!
In Emacs 24.5.1, on mac or linux the following will work.
The following command will create a folder called themes inside your .emacs.d folder (assuming one does not already exist)
mkdir ~/.emacs.d/themes/
Now tell emacs that you have installed a themes folder. In emacs open your .emacs file, by typing the following:
C-x C-f ;;;this opens a new .emacs file or creates one if it doesn't exist
Add the following line to your .emacs file:
(add-to-list 'custom-theme-load-path "~/.emacs.d/themes/")
Now copy your theme's '.el' file to your .emacs.d/themes/ directory. A good place to find custom themes is here: emacsthemes.com
Now load your custom theme by typing the following:
M-x customize-themes ;;;now press return
Your newly installed themes should appear on the list like so:
Move your cursor to within the '[ ]' and press return to select that theme.
Enjoy emacs!

You can download Emacs 24 for Mac from here and Emacs 24 already has a built-in theming system. You can call it by M-x customize-themes and choose whatever themes you like. And you can find much more themes online. There is actually a quite nice theme called "solarized", you can use it both in GUI and command line.

I load color theme by this code:
(load-file "~/.emacs.d/color-theme/themes/zenburn.el")
(zenburn)

You should put that line in your init file. This is usually the file ~/.emacs. The .emacs.d directory is a conventional directory for storing your personal customization files. Many of the instructions for installing packages (like color theme) or explaining other parts of Emacs (like the load-path page) assume you understand the init file.
.emacs and .emacs.d are really at the core of Emacs customization. If you read up on those, Emacs will make a lot more sense. I hope that helps!

In emacs 23, I thought color theme is installed by default. If not, and you need to add that line, write it in either file ~/.emacs.d/init.el, ~/.emacs.el or ~/.emacs

Related

How to set executable path for a package on a configuration file on Emacs?

I want to use "ediprolog" package on Emacs. I followed installation and usage instruction here https://www.metalevel.at/ediprolog/ and he says:
The two most important configuration options are:
ediprolog-system, either scryer (default) or swi
ediprolog-program, the path of the Prolog executable.
So I tried C-X , customize-group , ediprolog and checked the configuration file. The files looks like this:
To be honest I have no idea how, where can I edit to add the prolog executable path ~/.cargo/bin/scryer-prolog. In addition, Emacs says You can't edit this part of the Custom buffer when I tried to type something on the file.
And as I can expected, when I run ediprolog-dwim, "view-echo" says ediprolog-run-prolog: No prompt from: scryer-prolog, probably because I don't set the path on a configuration file.
I'm noob to Emacs and the package also, sorry about that, but I'm really struggling to achieve this step. Your comments must be really helpful for me. Thanks.
Try adding the path to the exec-path variable in emacs: when emacs forks off a subshell, this variable is added to the PATH that is passed to the subshell:
(add-to-list 'exec-path (expand-file-name (substitute-in-file-name "$HOME/.cargo/bin")))

My .emacs.el file is not loading, how can I get it to load? [duplicate]

I tried looking for the .emacs file for my Windows installation for Emacs, but I could not find it. Does it have the same filename under Windows as in Unix?
Do I have to create it myself? If so, under what specific directory does it go?
Copy and pasted from the Emacs FAQ, http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/:
Where do I put my init file?
On Windows, the .emacs file may be called _emacs for backward compatibility with DOS and FAT filesystems where filenames could not start with a dot. Some users prefer to continue using such a name, because Windows Explorer cannot create a file with a name starting with a dot, even though the filesystem and most other programs can handle it. In Emacs 22 and later, the init file may also be called .emacs.d/init.el. Many of the other files that are created by Lisp packages are now stored in the .emacs.d directory too, so this keeps all your Emacs related files in one place.
All the files mentioned above should go in your HOME directory. The HOME directory is determined by following the steps below:
If the environment variable HOME is set, use the directory it indicates.
If the registry entry HKCU\SOFTWARE\GNU\Emacs\HOME is set, use the directory it indicates.
If the registry entry HKLM\SOFTWARE\GNU\Emacs\HOME is set, use the directory it indicates. Not recommended, as it results in users sharing the same HOME directory.
If C:\.emacs exists, then use C:/. This is for backward compatibility, as previous versions defaulted to C:/ if HOME was not set.
Use the user's AppData directory, usually a directory called Application Data under the user's profile directory, the location of which varies according to Windows version and whether the computer is part of a domain.
Within Emacs, ~ at the beginning of a file name is expanded to your HOME directory, so you can always find your .emacs file with C-x C-f ~/.emacs.
There's further information at HOME and Startup Directories on MS-Windows.
It should be stored in the variable user-init-file. Use C-H v user-init-file RET to check. You can also open it directly by using M-x eval-expression RET (find-file user-init-file) RET
Open the file like this in Emacs for Windows:
C-x C-f ~/.emacs
More information in the Emacs Wiki
On my Vista box it's in C:\Users\<USER>\AppData\Roaming\
Note that it may NOT be enough to just type Ctrl-x Ctrl-f ~/.emacs and create the file.
It may be that your Emacs application uses a different place to store your init file, and if so, then creating the file ~/.emacs simply creates a useless file which your Emacs application ignores.
Also, you may want to do more than just access the .emacs init file, but you may want to know where it is, i.e., its pathname.
To get at this there are two methods:
Easy way: type Ctrl + H V user-init-file Return
Slightly trickier way:
You can find out where your system is storing its own .emacs file by:
Click options and scroll down to "Set Default Font..."
Change the font setting and click okay
On the options menu, go down to "Save Options"
When the options are saved, the system saves its .emacs file,
and you can read the file path in the minibuffer at the bottom of the Emacs screen
In Windows 7 put your init.el file in C:\Users\user-name\AppData\Roaming\.emacs.d\, where user-name is your user/login folder.
Take care so your init.el file won't be named init.el.txt. This is something Windows does if you create your file with some editor like Notepad.
On versions of Emacs on Windows above 22, it seems to have moved to
~/.emacs.d/init.el
, ~ being the value of your environment variable HOME (see Control Panel → System → Advanced → Environment variables).
The file itself might not exist. In that case just create it.
You must create an emacs initialization file. One is not automatically created.
I had a similar issue and this answer tracks down what I did.
My issue was my ~/.emacs.el file was not loading. Strange because this has always worked for me.
This question/answer helped me but I had to put my init file in the %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\.emacs.d\init.el because this is apparently the default behavior on Windows.
To troubleshoot this, I ran the following in the emacs *scratch* buffer.
user-emacs-directory
"~/.emacs.d/"
When I saw user-emacs-directory was ~/.emacs.d, I simply moved my .emacs.el file to %USERPROFILE%\.emacs.d\init.el. But this still didn't work.
I continued with expand-file-name as shown below:
(expand-file-name user-emacs-directory)
"c:/Users/pats/AppData/Roaming/.emacs.d/"
Got to love how Windows works. (not) So I moved my emacs.el file to the %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\.emacs.d\init.el and this worked. The file was now being read. But I got other errors because my initialization file loaded other (personal emacs) files (in ~/myenv/emacs/*.el.
Warning (initialization): An error occurred while loading ‘c:/Users/pats/AppData/Roaming/.emacs.d/init.el’:
Hum... Seems like all my files ~/myenv/emacs/*.el would need to be moved in order for this to work but I didn't want to do that. Then I realized that because the HOME environment variable was not set, emacs was performing its default behavior.
SOLUTION
Once I set my windows HOME environment variable to %USERPROFILE% everything began to work like it has for the past 25 years. :-)
To set the HOME environment variable, I typed WindowsKey+"edit environment variables for your account" to open the Environment Variables dialog box, and entered HOME=%USERPROFILE%.
Now my emacs initialization file .emacs.el is is back to its rightful place $HOME/.emacs.el and not in %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\.emacs.d\init.el
To be fair, if Windows had just one place to put files for user installed packages the solution of making HOME=%USERPROFILE\AppData\Roaming might be acceptable, but because some applications use %USERPROFILE%, some use %USERPROFILE\AppData\Roaming and others use %USERPROFILE\AppData\Local it just makes it difficult to know where to find your configuration files.
I prefer having everything in my %USERPROFILE% or $HOME directory.
Another similar question was here:
Emacs init.el file doesn't load
As kanja answered, the path to this file is stored in the user-init-file variable (or if no init file exists, the variable contains the default value for where to create it).
So regardless of which of the possible init file names you are using, and which directory it is in, you should be able to visit your init file with:
M-: (find-file user-init-file) RET
Or display its full path in the echo area with:
M-: (expand-file-name user-init-file) RET
On Emacs 23 and Windows 7 it only works if you set:
HKCU\SOFTWARE\GNU\Emacs\HOME
After Emacs 27.1, emacs has started respecting the $XDG_CONFIG_HOME. The init file or the init directory can now be found in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/emacs/init.el.
In Windows $XDG_CONFIG_HOME could translate to %LOCALAPPDATA%.
In any case you can use the following emacs variables to find out the location of the your initialization file by M-x eval-expression
user-init-file
or the emacs configuration directory
user-emacs-directory
I've found that Emacs 22 will occasionally open either "C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\.emacs", or just "C:\Documents and Settings\username\.emacs" on my XP machine. I haven't found an explanation for why it occasionally changes it's mind.
~ will always point to whatever the current instance of emacs thinks is HOME, but kanja's tip (C-h v user-init-file) will always tell you what ~/.emacs actually maps to.
On Windows 8.1, if Emacs is started from Windows Explorer, a shortcut or from cmd console it uses C:\Users\<USER>\AppData\Roaming.emacs init file. When I start Emacs from PowerShell, Emacs looks for its init file in C:\Users\<USER> folder. The fix to this issue was to set the HOME user environment variable (Control Panel\System and Security\System->Advanced system settings->Advanced->Environment variables) to C:\Users\<USER>. After this change, no matter how I start Emacs, it uses the same init file (see the accepted answer of this question)
On Windows XP it's:
C:\Documents and Settings\yourusernamehere\Application Data\
There is a list of directories based on your Windows version and extra information:
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Windows-HOME.html
For WIndows7& Emacs26.3:
if HOME environment is set, then the .emacs file should be in that folder.
otherwise, it should be in c:\.
In both cases, if .emacs is not there, _emacs should be used.
This is because we cannot create .emacs file according to the windows file naming rules.(but we can download or copy it from somewhere else).

emacs not picking up my init.el file on windows

I have my emacs.d folder located at:
C:\Users\<loggedin_user>\AppData\Roaming\.emacs.d
In this folder, I have my init.el file but it is not being picked up by emacs.
Is there another step I am missing, do I need to set an environment variable or something?
When I enter C-x d ~/ RET I end up at
C:\Users\<loggedin_user>\AppData\Roaming\
If I move the init.el file there, it is still not picked up. I have a deliberate error in the file that is not causing emacs to crash when it is opened.
Most likely you have an old ~/.emacs file somewhere else which Emacs ends up using in preference to the other one.
You probably want to check the value of user-init-file which will tell you which file Emacs ended up using as "the ~/.emacs file".
I suggest you report this as a bug, requesting that when several files are found as possible init file, Emacs should not just pick the first and ignore the others but should at least emit a warning about the fact that it ignored the others.
This is tricky on Windows 10 but I solved since I was suffering from same issue.
I created an Environment Variable called HOME with the path C:/user/<username> in the box "User variables for " create a new one
Just open with double click any file that is by default opened with Emacs and it will take few seconds to load then take changed on the init.el
create an init.el with just one line of code like:set-background-color "honeydew"
to test this, first before doing something more complex.
Hope That It Helps!
On Windows, Emacs is started with some Properties defined, found when you right-click the executable on your windows system. There you can define the
execution-directory, e.g. "C:\Users\loggedin_user\" (in parantheses)
where emacs executes
and looks for the .xemacs (.emacs) directory, where it find its init.el. (I had to create an .emacs File in my Windows Home Directory, which is defined in the Windows HOME Environment)
And where you can define the startup instructions (like (setenv "HOME" "c:/Users/Username/") ) etc.
If you configure that, the next time, emacs starts from the directory, you defined, with the initialisation-file
Windows 10 and Emacs 27.1 could not find .emacs.d: one more possibility, in my case %HOME% was set like HOME=%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%. This redirection seems not to work and emacs was using literally C:\Users\<loggedin_user>\%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH% for searching .emacs.d. I did not dare to edit %HOME% but created link:
C:\Users\username> cd %HOME%
You perhaps need to remove some files in C:\Users\<loggedin_user>\%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH% which emacs already created.
Create link:
C:\Users\<loggedin_user>\%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%> mklink /d .emacs.d ..\.emacs.d

Elpy and pylint: where should a pylintrc file be placed in order to customize pylint for Emacs?

I would like to remove the 80 characters per line limit when pylint is checking files in Emacs (I am using the Elpy package for Emacs). I am on Debian Wheezy, and I'm using the backported Emacs24.
I checked the docs out here regarding the pylintrc hierarchy: http://docs.pylint.org/run.html#command-line-options, and tried placing a pylintrc and a .pylintrc file in my working directory with no luck. I also tried putting a .pylintrc in my home directory, again with no effect.
I suppose the question might be asked, "what is my working directory when I call pylint from inside Emacs?". I don't have a good answer to that question...
Where should the pylint configuration file be placed? Should it be .pylintrc or pylintrc?
create file:
~/.flake8rc
[flake8] ignore = E501
#max-line-length = 160
AFAIK emacs flymake is using flake8 by default (?)
Try putting it in:
~/.config/pylintrc
If the ~/.config directory doesn't exist, create it. If that doesn't work try:
~/.pylintrc
You can place the .pylintrc wherever you like and then tell Emacs what to use with...
(add-hook 'python-mode-hook
(lambda ()
(setq flycheck-python-pylint-executable "~/.local/bin/pylint")
(setq flycheck-pylintrc "~/.emacs.d/settings/.pylintrc")))
I found this answer on the Emacs Stackexchange flycheck cannot find module for pylint and on my system ~/.emacs.d/settings/.pylintrc is a symlink to the rc file from work repository.

How to set Emacs theme?

I am new to emacs and wondering how I would get it to load a theme of my choosing (http://lambda.nirv.net/m/files/color-theme-chocolate-rain.el)
I am on ubuntu, and have no idea what I am doing (yet :P) in regards to Emacs, for the most part.
This should work (you probably need to change color-theme-tty-dark to color-theme-chocolate-rain:
;; Enable a color theme
(require 'color-theme)
(color-theme-initialize)
(color-theme-tty-dark)
Download the theme folder or download the '.el' file.
Since you are on ubuntu you'll need to copy the '.el' file in to your theme-load path.
Or create your custom theme-load path as follows
Make a directory ~/.emacs.d/themes
Open the '.emacs' file in emacs
enter the following line at the end of the file
(add-to-list 'custom-theme-load-path "~/.emacs.d/themes")
after copying the '.el' file, add the following line in the .emacs file
(load-theme 'theme name)
e.g. (load-theme 'gotham)
Save the file and restart emacs.
Here you go: http://www.nongnu.org/color-theme/.