I've looked multiple times online and can't find how to change the cursor type in emacs for cygwin on Windows. I'm trying to get it to the block cursor instead of the thin line which I can never tell which window I'm in. I've seen stuff about editing the .emacs file or the emacs init file but where do I find this if I use cygwin on windows? Any help would be great.
Editing your init file or customizing that variable will only work in a GUI version of emacs.
In this case, Cygwin (and the shell in which it is running) ultimately determines how the cursor looks. You should be able to change the cursor type by:
Right-click on the window title bar > Options > Looks > Cursor
My options are:
Line
Block
Underscore
With an option for Blinking
You should be able to do M-x customize-variable cursor-type and pick something better -- either a thicker bar or a block cursor (my favourite).
The default location for your .emacs file should be ~/.emacs.d/init.el interpreting "~" in the same way that cygwin does.
In general, I'd suggesting using the native windows version of Emacs rather than the cygwin one.
Related
I'm somewhat new to gnu emacs, and so perhaps this is a noob question, but I have a few batch files I use a lot when coding in emacs to compile/build/execute/debug/etc. I am wondering how I could A) run these batch files from emacs without having to keep opening a cmd prompt window or going to windows explorer and B) bind this to a key shortcut (perhaps I could specify the file?) I have seen several things online about running emacs in batch-mode, but I don't believe this is what I'm looking for. And I know it is possible because I have seen others run batch from emacs (output and everything would appear in a new buffer adjacent to the current as if you did C-x 3)
Thanks in advance!
To run an arbitrary shell command in Emacs, you call shell-command which is bound to M-!
See C-hf shell-command (or C-hkM-!) for details.
I believe in the Windows-native Emacs, the default shell is cmd (or some alias thereof), so I'm reasonably confident that this is what you're thinking of.
I'm not sure whether all of the following work in Windows, but related commands are:
M-& - async-shell-command
M-| - shell-command-on-region
And with a prefix argument (e.g. C-uM-!) any of those commands will insert the shell command's output into the current buffer. (In the case of shell-command-on-region, that replaces the region.)
Suppose I am in terminal in Emacs (M-x term), and I list the following files in current directory:
text_code.R
Now I am in bash-3.2$ (terminal) and hope to open this .R file in another Emacs buffer and then edit. Is there a way to do it? This might be a trivial question, for I am a newbie to Linux and Emacs. Thanks in advance!
Remember that in Term Mode you can type C-c C-f to open a file (just like C-x C-f outside Term Mode). The prompt will already be on your current directory, so you just have to start typing the name of the file and autocomplete it with TAB.
I don't know the official procedure for what you want to do, but here is a procedure that works:
Either tell emacs to run as a daemon (Ref: EmacsAsDaemon) or in emacs start daemon via M-x server-start.
In the term, a command like emacsclient -n filename will start editing the specified file in the current window. Note, emacsclient also has a -c, --create-frame option to edit in a new frame. You probably will want to use a -n option as above, so you can continue using your term, after selecting it from the buffers list in another pane or frame.
If you start the daemon via M-x server-start in emacs, the daemon will terminate when you exit from emacs. If you set it up via reference mentioned above, use kill-emacs or save-buffers-kill-emacs commands or shell command emacsclient -e '(kill-emacs)' to stop it, as mentioned in part 6 of reference.
So I opened emacs through putty by executing the command "emacs -nw FILENAME", where emacs opens up with the desired file. I split the screen in emacs in order to open different file by executing the command "C-x 2" in emacs to split the window horizontally so that I can view two windows at a time.
My question is, now that I can view both files next to each other through the split screen, how do I edit the other file? (I can't use the mouse to click on the other file (other split window) to edit it because I can only use key commands when using emacs through putty)
You might want to try the Emacs tutorial which will explain those things. Also, I believe it is possible to get mouse clicks to work under putty: try M-x xterm-mouse-mode.
Use C-x o, other-window.
See http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Other-Window.html.
Another tip to use the other window as a terminal is to run:
M-x term
Often I find my self navigating the filesystem from a Conque shell in Vim and want to open a specific file inside my existing MacVim session. Is this possible ? - I was hoping for something like:
shell> open some/file.txt
and then have file.txt pop up inside my existing Vim window (preferably in a new tab).
Note: I am using #wycats vim dot files (not sure this matters).
Type from ConqueShell
mvim --remote-tab-silent filename
This will open the file in a new tab in MacVim
You could also write a Bash alias to shorten the command (assuming you are using bash).
Put in your ~/.profile
alias vim='mvim --remote-tab-silent'
this would enable you to type
vim filename
from ConqueShell or bash, and have it open in a new MacVim tab, rather than terminal vim. It of course does disable your ability to run standard vim (although you could still use the vi command), so maybe you would want to name the alias differently.
Just to add, this will work only if you placed the mvim executable on your path E.G. /usr/bin/mvim. It comes with the MacVim.app
Often I find my self navigating the filesystem from a Conque shell
The beauty of running a shell from inside vim is you have all of vim and the shell at your disposal.
gf is your friend. Once you get the file you want displayed on the screen in some way, you can enter normal mode, move the cursor to the file you want to edit, then use the gf command to navigate to the file. There are many ways to use this. Any program or command that outputs file names is great for this (ll, git status, etc). You could also type the filename into the shell, just to make it visible on the screen without actually running any terminal commands (tab completion is handy here).
It is possible, you can start vim as server and then add as many files as you want, but I'm not very familiar with this, so I can't give you just a direction.
I found an awesome tip here. You can "[r]apidly invoke an editor to write a long, complex, or tricky command". However, when I press the key combination above, I get Emacs open. I would like to switch it to Vim. How can I invoke Vim with C-X e?
[1. Problem SOLVED by Brian Cambell]
export EDITOR=vim
Add to your .bashrc or appropriate shell rc file
[2. Problem SOLVED thanks to Pax]
I was unable to get the tricky command back to Bash. The errors were:
> Error detected while processing BufRead Auto commands for "*":
> E117: Unknown function: JumpToLastPosition
Quotes in .vimrc solved the second problem. I am still unsure about the part in my .vimrc:
" augroup misc
" autocmd!
" autocmd BufReadPost * call JumpToLastPosition()
" autocmd FileChangedShell * call WarningMsg("File changed outside of vim")
" augroup end
[3. Problem]
What do the above part in .vimrc do?
On most Linux installs (all the ones I tested), bash recognizes both the Emacs and Vi command history keys (or you can use "set -o vi" to force it).
So, you can just use the vi-mode "<ESC>v" to to enter visual mode, this will start editing in a Vim session.
To run the command, you just save and exit from Vim ("ZZ" or ":wq"). To cancel the command, you need to delete the contents, save and exit ("1GdGZZ").
In addition to running it by exiting, you can also save it while in the editor to another location (":w /tmp/myscript").
Keep in mind that visual mode will work with the currently selected line so you don't have to start with a blank command ("<ESC>v"). You can use the normal vi-mode tools to select a line from the history first and then enter visual mode ("<ESC>kv" for last command, "<ESC>/grep<ENTER>nnv" for third-last grep command and so on).
Using this method has the advantage of not changing the "EDITOR" variable which may be used for other things (unless you want Vim for everything, which is a very sensible position to take IMNSHO).
Update:
Regarding your error, posted after the question:
JumpToLastPosition() is the function called by Vim for all files to put the cursor where it was when you last edited the file. I'm going to assume you're actually getting this error when the editing starts, not when you exit, since this is the auto function following a buffer read.
Can you start a "normal" vim session ("vim xx.txt" and then "vim xx") without this error occurring? You may find you get the same problem (and possibly only on the last one).
If you do have the same problem, you need to look at your startup files. It's possible the autocmd for BufRead is broken somehow. Have a look inside your vimrc and you filetype.vim files to see where that function is called and/or defined (I suspect it's called but not defined and that may be a mismatch between the two files or one of them has been damaged).
export EDITOR=vim
Add to your .bashrc or appropriate shell rc file
The link that you provided contains the answer:
Next time you are using your shell, try typing ctrl-x e (that is holding control key press x and then e). The shell will take what you've written on the command line thus far and paste it into the editor specified by $EDITOR.
You need to set the EDITOR environment variable (like #Brian Campbell)