Howto

Off late the Mail.app email client on OSX has been acting up on me. It often stalls or displays the spinning beach ball of death till a forced quit is required. Also, it seems to have display rendering issues when a mail classified incorrectly as junk is moved back to the inbox. I tend to use the Mail.app as a local email client for three main purposes: Offline mode for reading my emails when there is no Internet connection available Easy desktop search for the mails via Spotlight, and Easy archival of important mail in my project workspaces (either in Devonthink or plain text export) The other features (TODO and Notes) are nice, but not really useful for me as I use other tools for these items. The mail itself is served out via gmail accounts and IMAP synchronization. ...

In an earlier post I had listed the server-mode mechanism to allow client/server editing using Emacs. However, this require some setup and also an active Emacs session. With the latest version of Emacs (23.1), a new mechanism to invoke Emacs in a server mode has been introduced. Basically, emacs can be invoked with the –daemon option from the shell command line: $ emacs --daemon This will run emacs in the background as a daemon which will be listening in to emacsclient connections. To actually start a edit session, use emacsclient from the command line as before with the file name as a parameter. ...

Emacs is a great editor, but has one setback - it is slow to startup if you have loads of packages to load. On my G4 iBook, it takes around 45 seconds before Emacs becomes usable (OK - I use lots of packages). However, Emacs is not meant to be restarted every so often. The canonical usage is to start Emacs once, invoke the server mode (see EmacsClient) and then use the emacsclient from the command line to invoke the editor instance when needed. I.e., the classic client/server model for editing! ...

A Small function to set the PATH variable from within Emacs. You can define the function and the path definitions in your .emacs file: Very useful for OS X, where the default path is set by plists. ;; Define a function to setup additional path (defun my-add-path (path-element) "Add the specified path element to the Emacs PATH" (interactive "DEnter directory to be added to path: ") (if (file-directory-p path-element) (setenv "PATH" (concat (expand-file-name path-element) path-separator (getenv "PATH"))))) and use it as: ...

Traditionally, mice on Macs have had just one button (including the iBook/Powerbook trackpads) - even through Mac OS (including OS X) can accept 2 or 3 button input without any problems. Emacs on the other hand maps quite a few functions to the second and third chords of the mice. If you want to emulate a three button mouse in Emacs on OS X, a simple customization option will do the trick. ...

The standard Emacs key-binding for moving to the other frame (‘other-frame’) is C-x 5 o. That’s quite a few key-strokes, and also does not match with the standard OS X key-mapping for switching windows, which is Command-`. On OS X, the Command key maps to Meta in Emacs. However, this is easy to fix. Put the following code-fragment into your .emacs file: (define-key icicle-mode-map [?\M-`] nil) # Only needed if you use Icicles (global-set-key [?\M-`] 'other-frame) # This sets the key binding Note that by default M-` invokes ‘tmm-menubar’ which can also be accessed via [F10]. Also, you do not need the first line (to undefine the key binding in Icicles) if you do not use that package.

Emacs comes with a ‘locate’ command that uses the locate system command to find files within your system. On OS X, it is easier to use Spotlight, which is trivial to enable in Emacs. In your .emacs file, add the following code: (setq locate-command "mdfind") Now try: M-x locate <enter your search here> Your search results will be displayed in a new Window.

My time-management revolves around email, Calendar and to-do lists. While tools definitely help, it is more important to understand that we are processing information and acting on them, and it is just managing or tracking the items. A few pointers on what I use for Emails: Email The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem, of what to say and how to say it. - Edward R. Murrow ...