making buffer names unique





When you open a file in emacs, the buffer gets the name of that file. That's
all fine, but what if you open multiple files with the same name? At least for
me, it's a fairly common to have a number of different Makefile.am buffers

Makefile.am<3> etc., but that does really help to find the right one
at the same time. Emacs does make those names unique – Makefile.am<2>,
quickly.



To do that, emacs provides uniquify – it makes buffer names unique. In your
.emacs:





(require 'uniquify) 
(setq
uniquify-buffer-name-style 'post-forward
uniquify-separator ":")





This is emacs, so you can influence the way in which the names are made
unique. I prefer post-forward, and as separator I use a : rather than the
default |. Note, instead of post-forward there are other bizarre styles,
please see the documentation.



Anyway, now, when opening ('visiting') files test/a/foo and test/b/foo,
their buffers get the names foo:a and foo:b. In other words, the name
followed by a colon and part of the path. I think it's much clearer than the
default names foo and foo<2>. One could ask why emacs should not use

uniquify as its default behavior; it seems a clear improvement.



Uniquify is a small convenience that's been a documented part of emacs for 20
years. Still, somehow I missed it until this year. I suspect I am not the only
one - which is why I write this.


showing pop-ups






Updated: yes, it's %s, not %d Sometimes, it's nice when emacs can warn you when something is happening or
should happen. For example, when a new e-mail has arrived, or when there's a
meeting in 15 minutes you should attend.



As always, there are different way to do this, but here's what I've been using
for while. Various versions of this have been circulating around mailing
lists, so I don't know whom to credit with the original idea – anyway, this
is the (modified) version that I'm using.





(defun djcb-popup (title msg &optional icon sound)
"Show a popup if we're on X, or echo it otherwise; TITLE is the title
of the message, MSG is the context. Optionally, you can provide an ICON and
a sound to be played"


(interactive)
(when sound (shell-command
(concat "mplayer -really-quiet " sound " 2> /dev/null")))
(if (eq window-system 'x)
(shell-command (concat "notify-send "

(if icon (concat "-i " icon) "")
" '" title "' '" msg "'"))
;; text only version

(message (concat title ": " msg))))






A couple of notes:




  • I'm using notify-send for sending notifications; this assumes you are
    using that system (it's part of the libnotify-bin package in
    Debian/Ubuntu). You can of course replace it with whatever is available on
    your system. Alternatives are zenity or kdialog or xmessage (for
    old-timers) and their equivalents (?) on Windows, MacOS.



  • I'm now using mplayer for playing sounds. This is a bit heavy, but at
    least plays all kinds of audio files. If you only care about .wav-files,
    you could replace it with e.g. aplay;


  • as always, please ignore my ego-centric function names :-)




Now, we can use this function by evaluation e.g.




(djcb-popup "Warning" "The end is near"
"/usr/share/icons/test.png" "/usr/share/sounds/beep.ogg")








showing pop-ups from org-mode appointments






The above popup function is most useful when it's does its work based on some
event. To be notified of appointments and the like, there is the emacs appt facility. Here, we set up this appt, and then hook it up with org-mode, so

appt can warn us when there's something happening soon…





;; the appointment notification facility
(setq
appt-message-warning-time 15 ;; warn 15 min in advance

appt-display-mode-line t ;; show in the modeline
appt-display-format 'window) ;; use our func
(appt-activate 1) ;; active appt (appointment notification)
(display-time) ;; time display is required for this...

;; update appt each time agenda opened

(add-hook 'org-finalize-agenda-hook 'org-agenda-to-appt)

;; our little façade-function for djcb-popup
(defun djcb-appt-display (min-to-app new-time msg)
(djcb-popup (format "Appointment in %s minute(s)" min-to-app) msg
"/usr/share/icons/gnome/32x32/status/appointment-soon.png"

"/usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo/phone-incoming-call.ogg"))
(setq appt-disp-window-function (function djcb-appt-display))






Of course, you can freely choose a icon / sound to your liking.







showing pop-ups for new mail






Another event you might want to be warned about is new mail. There is
something to be set for not letting yourself be disturbed for new mail, but
if you sufficiently filter your mails before they enter your inbox, it can be
a good way to periodically bring you back from your deep sl ^H^H thinking. For
Wanderlust, I use something like this:





(add-hook 'wl-biff-notify-hook
(lambda()
(djcb-popup "Wanderlust" "You have new mail!"
"/usr/share/icons/gnome/32x32/status/mail-unread.png"
"/usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo/phone-incoming-call.ogg")))






Exercise for the reader: adapt this for your chosen mail client.




copying lines without selecting them






When I'm programming, I often need to copy a line. Normally, this requires me
to first select ('mark') the line I want to copy. That does not seem like a
big deal, but when I'm in the 'flow' I want to avoid any little obstacle that
can slow me down.



So, how can I copy the current line without selection? I found a nice trick by
MacChan on EmacsWiki to accomplish this. It also adds ta function to kill
(cut) the current line (similar to kill-line (C-k), but kills the whole
line, not just from point (cursor) to the end.



The code below simply embellishes the normal functions with the functionality
'if nothing is selected, assume we mean the current line'. The key bindings
stay the same (M-w, C-w).



To enable this, put the following in your .emacs:





(defadvice kill-ring-save (before slick-copy activate compile) "When called
interactively with no active region, copy a single line instead."

(interactive (if mark-active (list (region-beginning) (region-end)) (message
"Copied line") (list (line-beginning-position) (line-beginning-position
2)))))

(defadvice kill-region (before slick-cut activate compile)
"When called interactively with no active region, kill a single line instead."
(interactive
(if mark-active (list (region-beginning) (region-end))
(list (line-beginning-position)
(line-beginning-position 2)))))






It also shows the power of Emacs-Lisp with the defadvice-macro – see the
fine documentation. Using defadvice, you can 'decorate' any function with
your own modifications. This great power should be used with caution, of
course, as to not break other usage that assumes the undecorated versions. In
this case, that seem unlikely. And note that the 'advise' only applies when
the functions are called interactively.


bookmarks







Emacs has a very useful system for bookmarks – shortcuts to often-used
files. It's also one of those features I only really started using after years
of emacs – there seem to be many of such obvious features…



Bookmarks are especially handy if you have long file names, or for examples
the special file names for editing root-owned files discussed here before.



To start using bookmarks effectively, there are only a few important key
bindings to memorize: C-x r m ('make') will create a new bookmark,
defaulting to the current file. Then, you can jump to an existing bookmark
with C-x r b ('bookmark') Finally, you can see the list of your bookmarks
with C-x r l ('list').



There are a few customizations you can put in your .emacs:




(setq 
bookmark-default-file "~/.emacs.d/bookmarks" ;; keep my ~/ clean
bookmark-save-flag 1) ;; autosave each change)






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