Get that spacemacs look without spacemacs

Spacemacs is an active, popular, and very comprehensive modular Emacs configuration. I’ve heard lots of good things about it but am happy with my own personal configuration so don’t want to switch. However, I really like the appearance of spacemacs. Happily, the key components are available stand-alone without needing the full spacemacs configuration.

I used the zenburn theme for a long time but more recently have switched to the spacemacs theme. I set this up using the following code in my emacs config file

(use-package spacemacs-theme
  :ensure t
  :init
  (load-theme 'spacemacs-dark t)
  (setq spacemacs-theme-org-agenda-height nil)
  (setq spacemacs-theme-org-height nil))

This contains a couple of options to stop the theme using variable heights for org-mode agenda items and headings. However, they didn’t have the desired effect for me to I also needed to add the following lines to my org-mode configuration:

;; set sizes here to stop spacemacs theme resizing these
(set-face-attribute 'org-level-1 nil :height 1.0)
(set-face-attribute 'org-level-2 nil :height 1.0)
(set-face-attribute 'org-level-3 nil :height 1.0)
(set-face-attribute 'org-scheduled-today nil :height 1.0)
(set-face-attribute 'org-agenda-date-today nil :height 1.1)
(set-face-attribute 'org-table nil :foreground "#008787")

The other aspect of the spacemacs appearance I like is the modeline. This is replicated using the spaceline package

(use-package spaceline
  :demand t
  :init
  (setq powerline-default-separator 'arrow-fade)
  :config
  (require 'spaceline-config)
  (spaceline-spacemacs-theme))

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Highlight latex text in org mode

Here is a tiny tweak for org-mode. If you add the following option to your emacs config file

(setq org-highlight-latex-and-related '(latex))

Then inline latex like $y=mx+c$ will appear in a different colour in an org-mode file to help it stand out.

Easily manage Emacs workspaces with eyebrowse

You know how many windows managers have workspaces you can switch between? These are variously called “virtual desktops” (e.g. KDE) or “spaces” on OS X, but the idea is the same; you have one workspace with a collection of windows/apps (say for mail and browsing) and another with the windows/apps for a particular project, and you can quickly switch between them. The eyebrowse packages gives a nice simple interface to the same experience in Emacs.

I install and configure eyebrowse with the following code in my emacs config file:

(use-package eyebrowse
  :diminish eyebrowse-mode
  :config (progn
            (define-key eyebrowse-mode-map (kbd "M-1") 'eyebrowse-switch-to-window-config-1)
            (define-key eyebrowse-mode-map (kbd "M-2") 'eyebrowse-switch-to-window-config-2)
            (define-key eyebrowse-mode-map (kbd "M-3") 'eyebrowse-switch-to-window-config-3)
            (define-key eyebrowse-mode-map (kbd "M-4") 'eyebrowse-switch-to-window-config-4)
            (eyebrowse-mode t)
            (setq eyebrowse-new-workspace t)))

The enables the shortcuts M-1 to M-4 to access 4 virtual desktops (N.B. you will have to disable the M- numeric prefixes first). Of course you can add more than 4 if you need to.

Now you will start by default in workspace 1. If you hit M-2 you will switch to a new empty workspace, numbered 2 in the modeline. It will initially just contain the scratch buffer, since we used (setq eyebrowse-new-workspace t). Open whichever buffers and window arrangements you like then hit M-1 to switch back to the first desktop where you will see the windows and buffers you had set up there.

A useful command is C-c C-w , (N.B. the comma is part of the command!) which runs eyebrowse-rename-window-config allowing you to name a workspace, and that name then appears in the modeline instead of the workspace number.

Prevent comments from breaking paragraphs in org-mode latex export

In an org-mode document, comments like this:

Some text forming a paragraph
# with some lines
# commented out
but I still want this to be a single paragraph.

are exported in latex like this:

Some text forming a paragraph

but I still want this to be a single paragraph.

which leads to a paragraph break between the two lines. This is the intended behaviour of the exporter, but I want it to export like this:

Some text forming a paragraph
but I still want this to be a single paragraph.

This was raised on stackexchange, and the mighty John Kitchin provided a quick solution with the following simple function to strip comments from the org file, which we then add to the org export hook:

;; remove comments from org document for use with export hook
;; https://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/22574/orgmode-export-how-to-prevent-a-new-line-for-comment-lines
(defun delete-org-comments (backend)
  (loop for comment in (reverse (org-element-map (org-element-parse-buffer)
                    'comment 'identity))
    do
    (setf (buffer-substring (org-element-property :begin comment)
                (org-element-property :end comment))
          "")))

;; add to export hook
(add-hook 'org-export-before-processing-hook 'delete-org-comments)

and then when we export an org-mode file, the comments are stripped out on-the-fly giving the desired result. The original org-mode file is not modified – the comments stay in place.