Re: [O] Using Org/babel for Emacs config files
t...@tsdye.com (Thomas S. Dye) writes: I've been working with Nicolas Goaziou's new LaTeX exporter recently and the gap between Org mode and AucTeX has narrowed considerably. Thats of course always true for Org-mode, and often the problem isn't really in the software, but sits in front of the computer and is not up-to-date or forgot how to do it. The new exporter is *really* nice. Agreed ... -- cheers, Thorsten
[O] Using Org/babel for Emacs config files (was: OT: Learning ELISP)
Hi! * Jonathan Arkell jonath...@criticalmass.com wrote: I am a huge advocate of using org files and literate programming in your config files. Great. I am not completely convinced to convert my config to org/babel but I am not oppose either. Not sure, if there are that many advantages, that it is worth my effort, that's all. A few reasons why: - Makes it easy to logically group sections of your init and configuration Well, this is also possible with pure elisp and comments. Folding is a different topic tough. - Agenda tags search on your initialization file? Yes please! Extremely useful for those cross-cutting bits. I have tags like keybinding, osx and linux, and working on others as appropriate. Hm. Interesting but I guess this is not my use-case (except for :keybinding:). I do use (when (system-is-linux) ... ) and similar all over my configuration. Although I am a huge fan of tagging, I don't see the use when editing my emacs config (yet). - Add TODOs to your init file. I am using ~/org/mainfile.org - * shorts - ** TODO do this :hostname: all the time. Also for my config tasks. No worries: I do see your point but I like to have all my sysadmin-tasks combined in mainfile.org/shorts. So maybe this is just me. Here is my example, but I stand on the shoulders of giants: https://github.com/jonnay/emagicians-starter-kit Thanks for sharing! One thing which I would appreciate would be that it is more easy to write documentation (including URLs; outside of elisp sections) in org. Naive question: Are there any performance issues with not being able to compile my config.org to config.elc as it is possible with config.el files? -- Karl Voit
Re: [O] Using Org/babel for Emacs config files (was: OT: Learning ELISP)
I also have my Emacs configuration in org mode and it is really great. Before moving to an org-mode initialization file I had multiple elisp files and the main initialization file loaded the individual files. But having everything in one place with the outline and search powers of org-modemuch better. You can even put todos there if you want. There are many benefits of using tags in your initialization. You can, for instance, put a Keybinds tag in all headlines that change some keybindings. You can put a Flymake tag in all headlines configuring flymake for the different programming languages you use. If you need to locate the flymake configuration specific for python, for instance, all that is necessary is to do a tag search for the Flymake and Python tags. Note that Emacs does not evaluate your initialization org-mode file directly. It tangles all elisp blocks in that file to an elisp file and then load that elisp file as usual. The tangling can be slow if you have many blocks, but it only does that once after editing the org-mode file. Therefore, you don't get a performance hit by having your initialization in an org-mode file. You can also take advantage of this tangle process. For instance, I have a Themes headline where each child headline configures Emacs with a different theme. I set the TANGLE property of all of these headlines to no except one. Then Emacs will use that theme. You can easily enable/disable big parts of your configuration like this and I find it easier then commenting and uncommenting different parts of an elisp file. For visual feedback, I like to add the COMMENT keyword in the headlines where I have set the TANGLE property to no. -- Darlan At Wed, 23 Jan 2013 15:40:35 +0100, Karl Voit wrote: Hi! * Jonathan Arkell jonath...@criticalmass.com wrote: I am a huge advocate of using org files and literate programming in your config files. Great. I am not completely convinced to convert my config to org/babel but I am not oppose either. Not sure, if there are that many advantages, that it is worth my effort, that's all. A few reasons why: - Makes it easy to logically group sections of your init and configuration Well, this is also possible with pure elisp and comments. Folding is a different topic tough. - Agenda tags search on your initialization file? Yes please! Extremely useful for those cross-cutting bits. I have tags like keybinding, osx and linux, and working on others as appropriate. Hm. Interesting but I guess this is not my use-case (except for :keybinding:). I do use (when (system-is-linux) ... ) and similar all over my configuration. Although I am a huge fan of tagging, I don't see the use when editing my emacs config (yet). - Add TODOs to your init file. I am using ~/org/mainfile.org - * shorts - ** TODO do this :hostname: all the time. Also for my config tasks. No worries: I do see your point but I like to have all my sysadmin-tasks combined in mainfile.org/shorts. So maybe this is just me. Here is my example, but I stand on the shoulders of giants: https://github.com/jonnay/emagicians-starter-kit Thanks for sharing! One thing which I would appreciate would be that it is more easy to write documentation (including URLs; outside of elisp sections) in org. Naive question: Are there any performance issues with not being able to compile my config.org to config.elc as it is possible with config.el files? -- Karl Voit
Re: [O] Using Org/babel for Emacs config files (was: OT: Learning ELISP)
Building on these idea, eric schulte's emacs 24 starter kit actually uses tags to configure what should and shouldn't be tangled, to make things easily configurable by others (not really a feature most of us are looking for in configs, but interesting nonetheless). Check out the starter-kit-load function in https://raw.github.com/eschulte/emacs24-starter-kit/master/starter-kit.org On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 2:06 PM, Darlan Cavalcante Moreira darc...@gmail.com wrote: I also have my Emacs configuration in org mode and it is really great. Before moving to an org-mode initialization file I had multiple elisp files and the main initialization file loaded the individual files. But having everything in one place with the outline and search powers of org-modemuch better. You can even put todos there if you want. There are many benefits of using tags in your initialization. You can, for instance, put a Keybinds tag in all headlines that change some keybindings. You can put a Flymake tag in all headlines configuring flymake for the different programming languages you use. If you need to locate the flymake configuration specific for python, for instance, all that is necessary is to do a tag search for the Flymake and Python tags. Note that Emacs does not evaluate your initialization org-mode file directly. It tangles all elisp blocks in that file to an elisp file and then load that elisp file as usual. The tangling can be slow if you have many blocks, but it only does that once after editing the org-mode file. Therefore, you don't get a performance hit by having your initialization in an org-mode file. You can also take advantage of this tangle process. For instance, I have a Themes headline where each child headline configures Emacs with a different theme. I set the TANGLE property of all of these headlines to no except one. Then Emacs will use that theme. You can easily enable/disable big parts of your configuration like this and I find it easier then commenting and uncommenting different parts of an elisp file. For visual feedback, I like to add the COMMENT keyword in the headlines where I have set the TANGLE property to no. -- Darlan At Wed, 23 Jan 2013 15:40:35 +0100, Karl Voit wrote: Hi! * Jonathan Arkell jonath...@criticalmass.com wrote: I am a huge advocate of using org files and literate programming in your config files. Great. I am not completely convinced to convert my config to org/babel but I am not oppose either. Not sure, if there are that many advantages, that it is worth my effort, that's all. A few reasons why: - Makes it easy to logically group sections of your init and configuration Well, this is also possible with pure elisp and comments. Folding is a different topic tough. - Agenda tags search on your initialization file? Yes please! Extremely useful for those cross-cutting bits. I have tags like keybinding, osx and linux, and working on others as appropriate. Hm. Interesting but I guess this is not my use-case (except for :keybinding:). I do use (when (system-is-linux) ... ) and similar all over my configuration. Although I am a huge fan of tagging, I don't see the use when editing my emacs config (yet). - Add TODOs to your init file. I am using ~/org/mainfile.org - * shorts - ** TODO do this :hostname: all the time. Also for my config tasks. No worries: I do see your point but I like to have all my sysadmin-tasks combined in mainfile.org/shorts. So maybe this is just me. Here is my example, but I stand on the shoulders of giants: https://github.com/jonnay/emagicians-starter-kit Thanks for sharing! One thing which I would appreciate would be that it is more easy to write documentation (including URLs; outside of elisp sections) in org. Naive question: Are there any performance issues with not being able to compile my config.org to config.elc as it is possible with config.el files? -- Karl Voit
Re: [O] Using Org/babel for Emacs config files
Hi, Naive question: Are there any performance issues with not being able to compile my config.org to config.elc as it is possible with config.el files? I used an init.org file in my initialization, and as long as you haven't recently modified your init.org, emacs won't re-tangle the org file (ie its as if you have a config.el file that's getting loaded) Of course, you can set emacs up to automatically recompile the config.el file when its generated so, there are literally no performance issues because you can still compile elisp code to load with the exception of when you edit your configuration. Dave Karl Voit devn...@karl-voit.at writes: Hi! * Jonathan Arkell jonath...@criticalmass.com wrote: I am a huge advocate of using org files and literate programming in your config files. Great. I am not completely convinced to convert my config to org/babel but I am not oppose either. Not sure, if there are that many advantages, that it is worth my effort, that's all. A few reasons why: - Makes it easy to logically group sections of your init and configuration Well, this is also possible with pure elisp and comments. Folding is a different topic tough. - Agenda tags search on your initialization file? Yes please! Extremely useful for those cross-cutting bits. I have tags like keybinding, osx and linux, and working on others as appropriate. Hm. Interesting but I guess this is not my use-case (except for :keybinding:). I do use (when (system-is-linux) ... ) and similar all over my configuration. Although I am a huge fan of tagging, I don't see the use when editing my emacs config (yet). - Add TODOs to your init file. I am using ~/org/mainfile.org - * shorts - ** TODO do this :hostname: all the time. Also for my config tasks. No worries: I do see your point but I like to have all my sysadmin-tasks combined in mainfile.org/shorts. So maybe this is just me. Here is my example, but I stand on the shoulders of giants: https://github.com/jonnay/emagicians-starter-kit Thanks for sharing! One thing which I would appreciate would be that it is more easy to write documentation (including URLs; outside of elisp sections) in org. Naive question: Are there any performance issues with not being able to compile my config.org to config.elc as it is possible with config.el files?
Re: [O] Using Org/babel for Emacs config files
Karl Voit devn...@karl-voit.at writes: Hi, I am not completely convinced to convert my config to org/babel but I am not oppose either. Not sure, if there are that many advantages, that it is worth my effort, that's all. its a bit like writing with LaTeX - in some simpler but common cases its just great to write your stuff in Org and simply press a few keys for the LaTeX export. But dealing with LaTeX AND Org-mode when writing a big complex document might not be such a good idea, there will be enough problems with LaTeX only. I must admit I went back from Org-based multi-file config to a single big .el init file because of two reasons: - I frequently found myself looking for stuff in the tangled .el files instead of the .org files, because I was only interested in the lisp code and did not want to see all those comments in the .org files. - after figuring out that I can have full outline functionality in .el files too, the (in my eyes) main advantage of an org-based config was gone. Otherwise I really liked the org based starter-kit, it was well organized and definitely better than what I had before. -- cheers, Thorsten
