2010-03-08

Favorite Emacs Customizations

Somebody asked me the other day what Emacs customizations use. My response was that I don't use many customizations in Emacs because it would require me to carry those customizations around with me. However, I thought I would make a list, since this will be useful in the future when I am - again - using a vanilla Emacs install and want to make all the customizations at once, at startup.

Option Configuration

column-number-mode: HIDE
scroll-bar-mode:OFF
tool-bar-mode:OFF
auto-fill-mode:ON
transient-mark-mode:ON
global-font-lock-mode:ON

Major Modes

sgml-mode
html-mode
php-mode
js-mode
css-mode

sgml / html modes are commonly installed by default, now, and I've seen a couple installs where php-mode and one or more of javascript-mode (or js-mode) and css-mode were also installed "out-of-the-box"

These modes are all defined by Elisp (.el) library files (usually compiled to .elc files). Once the library files are installed (e.g. in /usr/lib/perl/<ver>/site/ or /usr/share/emacs/site or whereever), they can be loaded using M-x 'load-library' command.

These libraries can also be loaded from your .emacs file and made to use a 'hook' function that auto-loads the appropriate mode based on the file extension cue for the source language of the file.

Links