Jan
22
I love binding commonly used emacs commands to function keys. For example, I use F2 to look up a file from my tags file. This functionality didn’t work out of the box on my Mac, but there is a simple (and now obvious) fix.
By default the Mac’s function keys map to hardware functionality. F2, for example, increases the display’s brightness. To make the function keys work as, uh, normal function keys do this:
System Preferences => Keyboard & Mouse => select “Use the F1 – F12 keys to control software features”
Jan
21
I am one of those emacs people. My initial emacs experience on my Mac was frustrating, though. I started off using the emacs included with the computer (version 21.2.1). It was okay. I could use Adams’ dot files, but I had to run emacs within a terminal and fricking escape defaults to Meta. Not a big deal. I mapped the option key to Meta. I really wanted to use the apple key, though, but still be able to apple-tab out of emacs. Major chafe.
I finally got Carbon Emacs working with the dot files. It opens in its own window and behaves exactly how I want: the apple key is meta in emacs but I can still apple-tab around. Oh, and the antialiasing looks nice, too.
I had to, with Adam’s help, make a couple changes to the dot files to trick them into working with Carbon Emacs. I don’t know the underlying problems yet, but here are some quick workarounds to get up and running:
- remove the cperl and p4 sections from modes.el (then byte compile modes.el)
- clear out loaddefs.el (then byte compile it, too)
Presto: emacs in all its glory on the Mac.
Happy hacking!