doomemacs/docs/appendix.org

Appendix

• Glossary
  • General
  • Vim/Evil
  • Environment Variables
  • Doom Emacs
  • Emacs
    • Configurations
    • User Interface
    • Editing
    • Emacs Lisp
    • Keybinds
  • Repositories
• Acronyms
• Text Substitutions

Glossary

General   category

Calendar Version, Calendar Versioning

See https://calver.org.

Semantic Version, Semantic Versioning

See https://semver.org.

Vim/Evil   category

leader key

TODO

localleader key

TODO

Environment Variables   category

$DOOMDIR

The location of the user's private configuration for Doom Emacs; usually found in ~/.config/doom or ~/.doom.d.

$EMACSDIR

The location of your Emacs initfile. This is where Doom users will have cloned Doom's core to (~/.config/emacs or ~/.emacs.d).

Doom Emacs   category

Doom module

A toggle-able collection of configuration, packages, and functions, made for Doom Emacs.

Emacs   category

ELPA

Emacs-Lisp Package Archive. Used either to refer to the GNU package repository or to all ELPA repositories as an ecosystem (e.g. MELPA, Marmalade, etc).

MELPA

ELPA

GNU ELPA

ELPA

Configurations   category

Emacs bankruptcy

To reset your Emacs configuration from scratch, usually because the old one has gotten too messy or complicated, and working backwards would be too much hassle.

Emacs framework

A foundation for your own Emacs Lisp projects, offering tools to make it easier to build on top of it.

Starter kit

A library of preconfiguration for Emacs, intended to spare you the time and effort of configuring Emacs yourself.

User Interface   category

Emacs buffer

A buffer is a space in Emacs memory containing text to be edited. Buffers are used to hold the contents of files that are being edited or opened; there may also be buffers that are not visiting files they display other information like Dired that shows the content of a directory. Each buffer, including the current buffer, may or may not be displayed in any windows.

Echo area

The echo area is the last line of the frame. Unless the minibuffer is active, this is the zone that shows all the messages Emacs sends to the user

The echo area is used for displaying error messages (see Errors), for messages made with the `message` primitive, and for echoing keystrokes. It is not the same as the minibuffer, despite the fact that the minibuffer appears (when active) in the same place on the screen as the echo area.

Emacs frame

What the rest of the world calls windows. Source.

Emacs fringe

On graphical displays, Emacs draws fringes next to each window: thin vertical strips down the sides which can display bitmaps indicating truncation, continuation, horizontal scrolling, and so on.

Header line

The header line is like a modeline (extra information line about Emacs current state), that is displayed at the top of each window instead of the bottom of them.

Notable examples include N. Rougier displaying filename in the header line, and LSP-mode powered context information ("breadcrumbs")

A window can have a header line at the top, just as it can have a mode line at the bottom. The header line feature works just like the mode line feature[…]

Display margins

A buffer can have blank areas called display margins on the left and on the right. Ordinary text never appears in these areas, but you can put things into the display margins using the `display` property. Margins tend to be a lot larger than fringes, as margins are at least as wide as characters that you'd want to display there. It is almost always disabled: relevant information can be almost always also be shown in fringes, and fringes take way less screen real estate.

Minibuffer

The minibuffer is the buffer that takes over the last line of your Emacs frame whenever Emacs prompts you (the user) for input.

A minibuffer is a special buffer that Emacs commands use to read arguments more complicated than the single numeric prefix argument. These arguments include file names, buffer names, and command names (as in <kbd>M-x</kbd>). The minibuffer is displayed on the bottom line of the frame, in the same place as the echo area (see The Echo Area), but only while it is in use for reading an argument.

The Mode line

The Emacs mode line is the status bar displayed under each Emacs window. It's what vimmers know as the status line.

Each Emacs window (aside from minibuffer windows) typically has a mode line at the bottom, which displays status information about the buffer displayed in the window. The mode line contains information about the buffer, such as its name, associated file, depth of recursive editing, and major and minor modes.

Emacs window

A window is an area of the screen that is used to display a buffer (see Emacs buffer).

Editing   category

Kill

Cut (in the Cut/Copy/Paste sense)

Kill functions delete text like the deletion functions, but save it so that the user can reinsert it by yanking . Most of these functions have ‘kill-' in their name. […] Killed text is saved for later yanking in the kill ring.

Major mode

A major mode is akin to file types/modes to vimmers/others. They specialize Emacs for editing or interacting with particular kinds of text. Each buffer has exactly one major mode at a time.

Minor mode

A minor mode provides optional features that users may enable or disable independently of the choice of major mode. Minor modes can be enabled individually or in combination. Most minor modes implement features that are independent of the major mode, and can thus be used with most major modes. For example, Auto Fill mode works with any major mode that permits text insertion.

Yank

Paste (contrary to vim). The most common pitfall to avoid when coming from Vim, is that in Emacs, yanking_ is pasting.

Yanking means inserting text from the kill ring

Emacs Lisp   category

Alist

An association list is one of the main datatype used in Emacs Lisp. It's a list of key-value cons cells (essentially tuples).

Association list

Alist

Interactive command

https://emacsdocs.org/docs/elisp/Defining-Commands

Doc string

Short for documentation string is information that is embedded in a variable or function. Their docstring can be read when looking up functions with C-h f or variables with C-h v.

Keybinds   category

Universal argument

See https://emacsdocs.org/docs/elisp/Prefix-Command-Arguments. This is a special key you use to modify the command you invoke directly afterwards.

For example, if you take a command called delete-stuff, bound to C-c d that tells you it will "delete the current line, or delete the whole buffer if prefix argument is set"; then

• C-c d will delete a line
• M-x delete-stuff RET will delete a line
• C-u C-c d will delete the whole buffer
• C-u M-x delete-stuff RET will delete the whole buffer.

The goal of the universal/prefix argument is to get a slightly different behaviour for known commands.

📌 Doom users with evil enabled will find the universal argument on SPC u instead than C-u.

Prefix argument

Universal argument

Prefix key

A "prefix" is a key that begins a key sequence. For instance, the key sequence C-x C-k b is comprised of three distinct input events. Both C-x and C-x C-k can be considered prefixes. Prefix keys allow to store and move keybindings in groups. For example by default all doom-package:lsp-mode commands are under SPC c l ..., but if you want to change that prefix to SPC L ... for all doom-package:lsp-mode commands, it is a one liner in your configuration; you do not have to rebind each command manually to its new SPC L ... variant.

Repositories   category

doomemacs/core

https://git.doomemacs.org/core

doomemacs/modules

https://git.doomemacs.org/modules

doomemacs/contrib-modules

https://git.doomemacs.org/contrib-modules

doomemacs/themes

https://git.doomemacs.org/themes

doomemacs/snippets

https://git.doomemacs.org/snippets

Acronyms

CD

Continuous Delivery

CI

Continuous Integration

CLI

Command-Line Interface

PR

(Github) Pull Request

PRed

PR

YMMV

Your mileage may vary

Text Substitutions