emacs...
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I hate to say it - but I have to disagree with @dobey here - my primary reason for using Ubuntu Touch as my daily driver phone is how the fabulously intuitive native Terminal made using emacs and org-mode on UT an absolute breeze! I have an almost identical replica of emacs on UT to the one on my laptop (running Arch Linux) - and incrementally sync all of my .org files back and forth between UT and my laptop using unison (and a home server).
Install emacs on UT using apt - and then edit your .emacs file in home/phablet/ as you would usually do
As for emacs navigation, as @dobey says, you simply edit and customise one of Terminal's .json files to your liking - and then all of your classic emacs commands are on the command bar below the terminal screen. I've modified mine quite logically so that the most used emacs shortcuts appear first - in my case, CTRL+C, CTRL+X, CTRL+A etc.
To get around the missing ALT key, simply change keymappings in your .emacs file - for example, I use wanderlust in emacs for reading and writing mail and the original command to open wanderlust in emacs is "M-x wl" - so on UT, in my .emacs file, I have added:
(define-key global-map "\C-xw" 'wl)
and now "CTRL-X w" opens wanderlust
Many native emacs packages also use CTRL commands as alternatives for ALT - Dired for example (emacs built-in file browser and manager) also uses "CTRL-X d"
I have even installed texlive-full and auctex (in a chroot) on UT and used it to draft manuscripts and export to PDF - all in emacs on my phone.
So @cpb, a fully-functioning and buttery-smooth emacs experience on UT is the reason I feel like I'm carrying a fully-fledged workstation in my pocket!
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@brywilson Hello BryWiloson, I am from the UBwriters team and I would like to ask you if you would like to write a blog about how-to Emacs on Ubuntu Touch feels like carrying a fully-fledged workstation in our pocket.
Would you like to share your experiences and steps to be followed buy other community interested members? Can we invite you to UBwrites team and set up how we could help you and lunch this tutorial on ubports.com news blog page together? Thanks for feedback. Sincerely. Milan Korecky
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@brywilson tried installing with apt: Unable to locate package emacs...
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@brywilson I'm curious what you think about the touch navigation in terminal. I have a few points I struggle with, but I could never quite convince myself whether it's issues in the app or, I just need to use it differently or get more used to it:
- tap to tab: I love that there is an easy way to make a "Tabulator" key, because that way you get all the power of bash completion. However, I find that I enter too many tabs in places where I don't want them, e.g. in nano (haven't quite mustered up to emacs on touch ) Maybe it should be double tap to tab?
- scroll sensitivity: Again it is great that I can scroll up down, through my command history and left and right in the current command line to edit it. But it is too sensitive for me. It scrolls too quickly
- no jump to bottom: When I run long commands, I find myself left somewhere at the top of a long scroll back buffer. It's very cumbersome to scroll back to the bottom. The only shortcut I know, that brings you back is Enter. If I have a half typed command, I don't just want to hit Enter to go back because I would also run it. So I hit Ctrl-C. Now I can safely hit Enter and go back. But now I have it to type it all over. If you scrolled back just to find that piece of information you needed so you can actually finish your command, well you just pretty much shot yourself in the foot
- one finger scroll vs two finger scroll: Even after years of use (with long pauses though) I try to scroll up and down through the scroll back with one finger. But actually I should use two fingers. One finger up is cursor up in terminal, ie moves through the command history. On the one hand I want to say: Can we exchange the meaning of one finger scroll and two finger scroll? On the other hand, especially in an editor, I guess it is much more logical to use one finger for previous line/next line, since you are also using one finger for previous character/next character. So, for this item, I don't have a good proposal, but I really struggle with the current implementation.
Curious to hear the thoughts of mobile terminal warriors like you
- tap to tab: I love that there is an easy way to make a "Tabulator" key, because that way you get all the power of bash completion. However, I find that I enter too many tabs in places where I don't want them, e.g. in nano (haven't quite mustered up to emacs on touch
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Is there any way to get the volume buttons to act as modifier keys? Termux on Android does that, and it works pretty well.
And I'd add that I too would be very interested to know more about @BryWilson 's emacs on UT setup, especially the texlive in a chroot part.
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Hey @doniks, sorry for the late reply - I love the touch navigation in the UT Terminal and it's consistently the major reason I'm using UT - I think I can safely say that I have tried every - and I mean every - android terminal emulator out there and nothing has come close to the UT Terminal experience. Well, I say nothing - the Termux developers are doing a great job bringing the Linux experience to Android phones but you're still very much restricted to the Termux environment and limited software selection.
The page navigation by touch does need some tweaking - but in the Terminal Scroll menu, I've found that the PG_UP, PG_DN, HOME and END suffice in lieu of that...
I find it difficult to suggest improvements without sounding like I'm complaining - because in my opinion, there is no mobile device terminal that comes close to this...and certainly with a keyboard attached, the UT Terminal experience is much improved - especially since the new terminal (which I have in 16.04 "devel") included tabbed terminals and keybindings for flipping between them.
I've spent my time tweaking instead the emacs config file (.emacs in the /home/phablet/ directory) to sidestep some of the issues moving from computer to UT - and I shall at some point when I have a moment, share those with everybody here.
I'm slightly bashful at being called a "mobile terminal warrior" - but have spent a comedic number of hours optimising UT for that full desktop experience. Last January, I actually presented a plenary lecture on my research in front of a couple of hundred scientists - and prepared the whole hour-long presentation on UT, using Gimp in Libertine for slide preparation and Beamer in LaTeX (in emacs in a chroot).
It is possible to carry a workstation in your pocket
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Hey Milan @mk73,
I would absolutely love to share my experiences with the UBports users and give something back! Although will honestly admit that I consider myself more a "curator of assembled knowledge" (akin to standing on the shoulders of giants!) than an original fount of that knowledge. The internet and all its wonderful contributors have been my inspiration - but I do also realise the importance and use of actually having all of these titbits and tweaks in a single place.
So, yep, consider me sold on writing an "emacs on UT" blog. It'll probably be quite useful for me to write some of this stuff down too
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@brywilson I use emacs to write my email, but I log into my server and read my email with mutt there, not right in the phone. I would also love to hear how you use emacs in the phone.
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@brywilson this could be amazing for sure. very excited to read what you have to share with the community
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@brywilson said in emacs...:
I love the touch navigation in the UT Terminal and it's consistently the major reason I'm using UT
I hear you
I find it difficult to suggest improvements without sounding like I'm complaining - because in my opinion, there is no mobile device terminal that comes close to this...
fair enough, but then maybe just as feedback to myself: Are you not struggling with the things I pointed out? Because then maybe I just need to find how I adjust my own usage pattern. Or are you simple being (too
) humble here? No stray tabs in your .tex files?@brywilson said in emacs...:
So, yep, consider me sold on writing an "emacs on UT" blog. It'll probably be quite useful for me to write some of this stuff down too
Looking forward to it.
And to the promo clip that marketing is undoubtedly going to make out of it
whistle -
Is there a way to get a more recent version of Emacs than 24.5 on UT? (Also, does xmodmap work for rebinding capslock on an external bluetooth keyboard?)
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@emacsomancer That is the version available in Ubuntu 16.04. You could add a PPA or such which has a newer version for 16.04 on armhf, if you wish, but eh only official archive version would be 24.5.
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@emacsomancer That is the version available in Ubuntu 16.04. You could add a PPA or such which has a newer version for 16.04 on armhf, if you wish, but eh only official archive version would be 24.5.
Right, no, I get that. What I actually wanted to ask is: (a) is there a PPA which has a newer version of Emacs for 16.04?[1] (b) If so, how do I add PPAs in Libertine?
[1] There's this PPA: https://launchpad.net/~kelleyk/+archive/ubuntu/emacs , but it's not clear to me whether it has support for arm.
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@emacsomancer said in emacs...:
how do I add PPAs in Libertine?
there's options for this:
libertine-container-manager configure --help -
@emacsomancer Looking at that page, it does have ARM builds, so if you trust that PPA, you could use it.
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@brywilson , Hi, also sorry for little later reply, very busy this days, but perfect and great to here you would like to share your experiences. Our main communication channels, as you may know, are right now Telegram or Matrix. The UBwriters team reside already only on Matrix.But you will find me also in Telegram Supegroup. Pls send me private message: @milkor73 and we will invite you to our group to agree the next steps and way of working.
Thx a lot. Best regards.
