Irreal

After my last VimGolf post I thought it would be fun to try another so I headed over to the VimGolf site to find a challenge. The first one I stumbled across was Let’s play some Imvgolf. The challenge is simple: starting with

Ivm is an awesome text editor based on
Iv, and is used to play a game called
Ivmgolf. A challenge, simple for many
Ivmgolfers, can still hide secrets.

transform it to

Vim is an awesome text editor based on
Vi, and is used to play a game called
Vimgolf. A challenge, simple for many
Vimgolfers, can still hide secrets.

in the smallest number of keystrokes possible.

My first thought was that it was too simple. Surely, it would hard to beat a simple query-replace: 【Meta+%】 iv 【Return】 vi 【Return】 【!】 for a total of 8 keystrokes. Hard to see how you could do much better than that. Except that the winning VimGolf entries solved it in only 5 keystrokes¹

Using Magnor Sveen’s awesome multiple-cursors package, which should and probably will be part of Emacs core, I was able to get that down to 6 keystrokes.

It’s easy to see what you need to do: switch the first two characters of each line and adjust the capitalization. I tried that using keyboard macros and even apply-macro-to-region-lines but I couldn’t do better than query-replace using core Emacs functionality. The problem is that any macro that requires typing in Vi has already used 4 keystrokes, and if you use a macro and something like 【Ctrl+t】 to switch characters you’ve used 3 keystrokes and still have to adjust the capitalization, get to the start of the next line, and run the macro on the rest of the lines. If you can do better than 8 keystrokes with stock Emacs, be sure to leave a comment.

Xah Lee has a nice post on the various methods of autocompleting in Emacs (search for 2012-12-01). Most Emacs users will be familiar with the majority of the material but it’s helpful to have it all written down in one place. For most of the methods he gives pointers to additional material that he’s written for that particular mode or package. Very helpful.

Of the minibuffer methods that he mentions, I use ido and smex and I’m experimenting with icomplete. For the general methods, I use hippie-expand, dabbrev-expand, and abbrev-mode. I couldn’t live without ido and smex and I use the others regularly. I find them all very handy so if you aren’t already using them you should give them a try.

I don’t use YASnippet but I’ve been meaning to install it. When guys like Lee and Magnar Sveen keep recommending it, that’s a pretty good indication that I’d find it useful. What do you think? If you have any strong feelings about the above packages or use something else that really works for you, leave a comment.

Update:

Lee has made the post a standalone page.

Noufal Ibrahim has started “season two” of his Emacs Movies. This is the second section that will describe various Emacs modes and tools such as

1. Dired
2. Org-mode
3. Eshell
4. Diary
5. Calc
6. Ediff
7. Gnus
8. Vmail
9. Erc
10. BBDB
11. Info

His latest movie is an excellent summary of Dired. He covers all the usual Dired tricks but includes a few that I didn’t know. For example, it’s possible to bring up a thumbnail of an image in Dired and then, if you like, open the image in another window The video is about 20 minutes long and well worth watching. Unless you’re already very familiar with Dired, you’re sure to learn something new. Definitely recommended.

Per Xah Lee (search for 2012-11-28), I’ve experimentally turned on icomplete-mode. I’m not sure how I like it so I haven’t included it in my init.el file yet.

According the internal documentation, icomplete-mode “implements a more fine-grained minibuffer completion feedback scheme.” You can toggle it with 【Meta+x】 icomplete-mode or turn it on/off unconditionally with a positive/non-positive prefix argument.

Lee says it’s part of Emacs 24.2 but the source file indicates it’s been around a lot longer. If you have an older version of Emacs and it works for you (or you get documentation for it with 【Ctrl+h f】 icomplete-mode) leave a comment so that others will know.

Or VimGolf in Emacs anyway. Over at Life seen through a coder’s eyes, Yassine Chaouche poses the following problem. Starting with an Emacs buffer containing only

[[Image(grep_1.png)]]

end up with

[[Image(grep_1.png)]]
[[Image(grep_2.png)]]
[[Image(grep_3.png)]]
[[Image(grep_4.png)]]
[[Image(grep_5.png)]]
[[Image(grep_6.png)]]
[[Image(grep_7.png)]]
[[Image(grep_8.png)]]

Chaouche solves this problem using CUA mode. If you use CUA mode, you should take a look at his solution; you may find it will serve as a template for similar problems you may encounter.

I’ve never used CUA mode in Emacs or, before I saw the light, Vim so his solution doesn’t work for me. It also seems as if it uses more keystrokes than necessary. (This is VimGolf in Emacs, remember.) To me, this cries out for a macro. Here’s what I did

That’s a solution in just 13 keystrokes. The problem is simpler, but takes more keystrokes, if you start with an empty buffer. Then it’s just 【Ctrl+1 F3】 to set the macro counter and start recording, the text [‍[Image(grep_, 【F3】 to insert the counter, and finally the text .png)]] followed by 【Return F4】 to move to the next line and stop recording. Then 【Ctrl+7 F4】 inserts the other 7 lines as before.

This post really should have been a video but I’m not set up for that. Besides, I don’t have a cool voice like Magnar Sveen.

The other day I wrote about using the Mac’s virtual keypad to get some additional key sequences for Emacs. That didn’t work out as well as I’d hoped because, unlike my MacBook Pro, the keyboard for my iMac doesn’t have a virtual keypad. I thought about getting an add-on Bluetooth keypad for my iMac but that seemed like unnecessary expense and clutter for something that I might not use all that much.

All was not lost, though, because Magnar Sveen popped up in the comments to suggest that I map the 【fn】key to 【hyper】. I’d considered doing that before but the 【fn】 key is used to control music functions such as start/stop and volume and I sometimes want to use those functions while I’m in Emacs. Sveen replied that if you map 【fn】 to 【hyper】 it will still work properly when you use it to modify a function key, which is where the music controls are.

So, this is a note to all Emacs users working on a Mac. Just map 【fn】 to 【hyper】 and you have the best of both worlds: easy access to all the controls living on the function keys and an easy-to-use 【hyper】 key that opens up a bunch of key sequences that you can map to your favorite commands. I implemented it by adding

(setq ns-function-modifier 'hyper)

to my darwin.el file, which is where all my Mac specific configurations live.

Thanks to Magnar for setting me straight on this. I’m already loving having the 【hyper】 key in an easy to use place.