Xorns - an improved way to use Emacs

Introduction

Xorns is a configuration framework for GNU Emacs. It was initially intended to be used by Merchise members who wanted to take it to the next level by using Emacs.

Install

1. Select a target folder (you can use ~/.emacs.d or ~/.config/emacs):

   TARGET_FOLDER=~/.emacs.d

2. Backup any files you have in your $TARGET_FOLDER.

   [ -d $TARGET_FOLDER ] && mv $TARGET_FOLDER ${TARGET_FOLDER}.bak

3. Clone the repository:

   git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/merchise/xorns.git $TARGET_FOLDER

4. Xorns is now ready to run, but it is advisable to first create a user configuration folder:

   CONFIG_HOME=${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:~/.config}
   mkdir $CONFIG_HOME/xorns

   Inside this folder there must be at least two files:

   • user-config.el: Xorns local user configuration file. There is a template to create this file (templates/user-config). Copy it, and rename it to user-config.el, and customize the user experience according to your preferences.
   • custom.el: File used for storing standard Emacs customization information. See the Emacs variable custom-file for more information.

Documentation

Check the [Xorns User Manual][docs/xorns.org].

Prerequisites

• Emacs 28.1+ (recommended: 29.1+ with native compilation enabled)

• Git: If you need to be told this, this package is not for you. ;)

• The fonts you will customize.

  Recommendations:

  • Source Code Pro
  • RobotoMono Nerd Font, part of Nerd Fonts, project that patches developer targeted fonts with a high number of icons.

  You can also use fallback fonts to ensure that certain Unicode symbols appear correctly (If you don't do this you may have problems with certain types of mode-line):

  • For example: Nanum Gothic

  You can search fonts on:

  • https://www.wfonts.com/
  • https://sharefonts.net

  Maybe you can install some fonts using your OS package manager.

  There could be packages using all-the-icons and nerd-icons. If any of those are installed, please execute all-the-icons-install-fonts and nerd-icons-install-fonts helper functions.

• Several commands use operating system programs. In the XS module you can see how to configure these options. For example:

  • grep: very slow but widely available on most systems.
  • rg (ripgrep): line-oriented search tool that recursively searches the current directory for a regular expression pattern (strongly recommend).
  • fzf: general-purpose command-line fuzzy finder.

Known Issues

• When the module containing the vterm configuration is compiled to native code, although this configuration is optional, it is installed from ELPA and the vterm-module package is compiled. Sometimes I needed to manually install the ELPA =vterm= package to avoid some errors when compiling the modules. See backlog file for more information.

Contributions

This package is currently experimental, but the plan is that in the future it can be used by anyone. From now on, any contribution and suggestion will be welcome.

References

To make xorns, the most important references that we have used are:

• David Wilson's videos
• Mastering Emacs
• The Spacemacs package
• Doom Emacs