Doom Emacs

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Posted by Simon
Feb 23, 2021 at 04:59 PM

Hi all,

I have skirted with Emacs a number of times over the years. Last time was 2017 with Spacemacs. This year I thought I’d try out Doom Emacs (https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs).

I have been pleasantly surprised in how well it works. Orgmode as many know is just phenomenal. I’m using it as my main workstation at the moment, so all my writing, meetings, todo’s are in emacs. This is working extrmely well and I’m not missing the apps I’ve sidelined. The power of links and export to PDF via LaTeX, plus some very well designed html exporters is making things pretty easy. Even org-tree-slide mode for simple online presentations has all been good.

There is of course a fairly sharp learning curve with emacs, but the doom distro is well put together and easy to use. It’ll be interesting how it scales and when/if I hit limitations.

I wondered if anyone else is using doom?

Posted by cspk
Feb 25, 2021 at 11:34 AM

I use it for programming. It’s a good out-of-the-box solution, though I can’t help feeling I have to actually strip its functionality to what I need, contrary to building stuff up with vanilla emacs. Some redditors have noted the same. I don’t use org-mode anymore though. I tried it, but felt it requires too much effort to do stuff right. It’s not convenient, plain text not really helping here. It’s not trivial to setup cross-device sync. After all, knowledge-management software has to have nice UI I guess. The closest one to what I’ve dreamed of is Amplenote’s. Emacs is a nice code editor, but I’ve failed to start using it as a PIM.

Posted by Simon
Mar 2, 2021 at 09:00 AM

I’ve not found the croos apps sync a problem. My configuration works well from either usb or Dropbox and can be quickly installed on other systems. Some configs require installing other software such as latex or pandoc, but that is fairly ubiquitos.

I’m only really using orgmode. My complete management and text work is in orgmode. I’ve been happy with markdown for 10 years, but during that time find it too limited. Just trying to create a properly formatted pdf from markdown is no easy task. Orgmode emacs, gives me plain text, but I can create just about any type of document I like. From simple to complex. This has been a glaring hole in the markdown world in my opinion. Plenty of editors, but no simple solutions for complex documents, and by complex I’m not talking about equations, I’m talking about simple headers and footers, proper margins and the like.

My other issue is the never ending appearance (and disapperance) of apps. Meaning migration of data. Or the app changes pricing model, I’m thinking of Ulysses, Day One, Noteplan and the like, all who made a decision that meant I needed to move on. I like the fact that emacs and orgmode are here to stay, have stood the test of time and have functionality that even the likes of roam and obsidian do not have. Yes the learning curve has been hard, but well worth it in my opinion. I have yet to find something I want to do that I cannot do in emacs. And if I ever arrive at the place where I can no longer afford Apple, switching systems will little impact my systems.

cspk wrote:
I use it for programming. It’s a good out-of-the-box solution, though I
>can’t help feeling I have to actually strip its functionality to what I
>need, contrary to building stuff up with vanilla emacs. Some redditors
>have noted the same. I don’t use org-mode anymore though. I tried it,
>but felt it requires too much effort to do stuff right. It’s not
>convenient, plain text not really helping here. It’s not trivial to
>setup cross-device sync. After all, knowledge-management software has
>to have nice UI I guess. The closest one to what I’ve dreamed of is
>Amplenote’s. Emacs is a nice code editor, but I’ve failed to start using
>it as a PIM.

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