---

.spacemacs.d

My .spacemacs.d directory as a Spacemacs configuration. It's optimized for English and Thai languages.

What is Spacemacs ?

Spacemacs is an Emacs configuration distribution that makes Emacs behave a lot like Vim by using modal text editing and also provides many useful features out of the box.

Its four core pillars are Mnemonic, Discoverable, Consistent and "Crowd-Configured".

It forces heavy usage of space bar, thus the name Spacemacs. It refers to the space bar as SPC. The purpose of using space bar is to reduce numbers of Ctrl, Alt, Shift combinations. It's good for your pinky finger and your editing speed. It also lowers the risk of RSI.

Screenshots

These are screenshots taken over time. The most recent one is at the bottom.

My current theme is material (I switched back from majapahit-dark). And I've also reduced that too much colorful identifiers to colorize only variables. The commit that did just that is 48613a90373651de2a54fd5f5fc6c6371241b32c. You can revert it if you want.

This is a Spacemacs instance on Windows 10 with material theme showing which key buffer that is invoked by pressing SPC.

This is another Spacemacs instance on Windows 10 with majapahit-dark theme showing magit package and the Spacemacs home buffer.

This shows magit log and helm buffer list. It also shows the markdown-mode buffer.

This shows nerdtree on the left with file icons package. It can be toggled using SPC f t

Want to use CLI? Here is a python interactive shell inside Emacs, you can send a piece of code to it and use it as usual. I also show the eshell on the bottom corner which is Emacs' own shell that can do Unix stuff inside Windows as well!

Installation

1. Install Spacemacs from develop branch. Follow the instruction for installation and don't forget to install dependencies like fonts.

2. Clone this repository into your home. git clone https://github.com/offchan42/.spacemacs.d.git

3. Remove .spacemacs file inside your home. It's a file automatically generated by Spacemacs. rm .spacemacs

4. That's it!

You are now ready to use Spacemacs with my configuration. For the best experience, use Spacemacs on a graphical version of Emacs!

Dependencies

• I highly recommend using Source Code Pro font from Adobe (it's free and awesome font for writing and programming). My configuration is already setup to try to use it. You can download it freely from this repository: https://github.com/adobe-fonts/source-code-pro
• all-the-icons fonts are needed for SPC f t (neotree) to display file icons properly. Go download all .ttf files there.
• Search tools like "rg", "ag", "pt", "ack", or "grep". You only need to install one of them. I recommend "ag" the as I'm happy with it. On Windows, you can install ag the simplest way using chocolatey. Run choco install ag and you are good to go. If you want, you can also use rg or pt instead. They both are easy to install and have similar performance. Don't forget to add its directory to your PATH variable, otherwise Spacemacs wouldn't know where to locate the searcher.

Configurations

Edit ~/.spacemacs.d/init.el instead of ~/.spacemacs.

You can open the configuration file directly via SPC f e d.

You can also compare the differences betweeh the default Spacemacs settings versus mine via SPC f e D.

Learning to Use Spacemacs

If you know Vi, you will be able to use Spacemacs without much of a hassle. But if you don't, you can press SPC h T to open the Evil mode interactive tutor so that you can learn enough Vi keybindings to survive in Spacemacs.

NOTE: Evil mode is an Emacs package that tries to mimic Vi.

After you have familiarized yourself with Evil modal editing, your next station is to discover Spacemacs' features. You can do so in several ways.

By hitting SPC ? you can search for functions that have certain keybindings attached. You can learn what key does what and what function is assigned to which key this way.

The biggest help is probably SPC h SPC. It lists all Spacemacs layers and packages documentation. The very first document that you should read is named BEGINNERS_TUTORIAL.ORG. Read it first to familiarize yourself with Spacemacs.

If things go wrong, you can always press ESC or Ctrl-g to escape out of frustration.

[OPTIONAL] Using Emacs keybindings instead of Vi

If you are an Emacs enthusiast, you can switch to use Emacs keybindings. Emacs keybindings mode in Spacemacs is called a Holy mode. You can toggle between the Holy mode and the Evil mode by pressing Ctrl-z.

But really, who love Emacs's weird keybindings that says "Ctrl this, Ctrl that" all the time anyway?

Everyone loves Vi keybindings. (Unless you do not grok Vi) So, try to master Vi keybindings and it will be beneficial to you. If you want to execute the next command in Holy mode, you can use \ key in evil normal state which is similar to Vi's normal mode.

Cool stuff you can do inside Spacemacs

Before you do any of this stuff, please read the BEGINNERS_TUTORIAL.ORG first. Because the way this section is written is assuming that you understand Spacemacs' core concepts already.

• You can open and view images inside Spacemacs.

• Type SPC ' to open a shell buffer (specifically eshell).

• Type SPC / to do a smart search inside the project using the search tool you preferred in the Dependency section.

• Type SPC x g t to translate a word under point using Google translate (the language is currently set from English to Thai).

• Type SPC x l s to sort selected lines or the entire buffer

• Type SPC s w g to search using Google.

• Type SPC s s to search interactively inside current buffer. To edit all the matching results, type C-c C-e next and do your editing there.

• Type SPC s e to activate iedit on the current symbol or visually selected text. You can then edit this symbol and it will affect all occurences inside the buffer.

• Type SPC g l l to open current file on GitHub in your default web browser. (If the file you are on is inside a git repository)

• Type SPC g s to open a git status of your current file inside magit. You can discover more actions by typing ? next.

• Type SPC g f h to open current file's history using magit log.

• Type SPC f j or SPC j d to jump to a file using dired-mode.

• Type SPC j i to jump to a function using helm imenu

• Type SPC j j followed by a character to jump to a character inside all display window using avy.

• Type SPC j u to jump to a URL inside all display window using avy.

• Type SPC b i to to open imenu list (a symbol index).

• Type SPC b s to open a scratch buffer you can play with immediately.

• Type SPC f J to open a new junk file that you can save and abandon later.

• Type SPC TAB to toggle between the current buffer and the lastly visited buffer.

• Type SPC SPC to execute an Emacs command.

• Type SPC i s to insert a snippet using yasnippet.

• Type SPC i e to insert an emoji.

• Type SPC i l l to insert a random lorem ipsum placeholder text.

• Type SPC r y to see all the previously yanked text inside the kill ring.

• Type SPC T F or F11 to toggle fullscreen.

• Type SPC w u or SPC w U to use winner to undo/redo window configurations.

• Type SPC w m to toggle maximize current window.

• Type SPC w f to toggle follow mode in the current buffer. You can then type SPC w v to split a new window vertically. The new window will show the same buffer BUT with a little twist. Put simply, if your window on the left shows line 1 - 50 then your window on the right will show line 51 - 100. It also sync motion on both buffers, try it and you will love it!

• Type SPC w c to toggle centered-buffer-mode. Have you ever felt like your screen is really wide but your text buffer is only consuming half left of your screen leaving the half right empty without purpose? If so, try using this command!

• Type SPC v then v repeatedly to expand selection on the region like in IntelliJ IDEA's C-w feature.

• Type SPC a u to visualize your undo history as a tree

• Type SPC a E to open an emoji cheatsheet buffer

• Type fd quickly to quit out of almost everything. You can exit evil insert state, evil visual state, helm mode, holy mode, iedit mode, etc. If you are a veteran Vim user and have it set to jk then learn to change your habit because setting this key to jk can quit from the visual state accidentally when moving up or down a line.

  If the thing you are trying to quit out of is a minibuffer, just press q to quit it.

Cool Emacs keys

Emacs keybindings can also be nice sometimes. So, instead of hating it. We should appreciate its good parts and abandon its ugliness. But most of these keys are also available using SPC key too.

• Type M-q to toggle between filling or not filling the current paragraph. (Wrapping text on to new lines)
• Type M-t to transpose current word with the previous word. If the point is not on the first character of the word then it will transpose current word with the next word instead.
• Type M-u to upper case the next word.
• Type M-l to lower case the next word.
• Type M-a to go to the previous sentence similar to ( but not exactly the same.
• Type M-e to go to the next sentence similar to ) but not exactly the same.
• Type M-SPC to retain only one space if there are many spaces. If there are no spaces, it will insert one before the point.
• Type M-k to kill from point to end of sentence
• Type M-; to insert a comment symbol. if the comment already exists, jump to it instead.
• Type M-h to put point at beginning of this paragraph, mark at end. Similar to vap in Evil mode.
• Type C-/ or C-_ to undo changes similar to u but works inside Evil insert state too.

Tips for Thai people

You can learn some basic Vim keys from this website. Then you can apply it inside Evil mode wonderfully.

Emacs have a Thai utility package available into the core by default. It understands Thai language using a decent algorithm with a big list of Thai words. It's not something you would find in Vim.

Press SPC SPC then thai-word-mode to toggle Thai word mode. This will alter the key M-f, M-b, M-d, C-DEL, M-t to understand Thai words. See thai-util.el if you are curious about how it works.