But Why?

I have been (was?) a longtime emacs user - ever since I got a Unix account in graduate school. In the first dot com boom, I worked for a company that was mainly populated by emacs users and picked up a few tricks - including using emacs without a mouse. Unlike most emacs users, I never did very much customization. So in some people’s eyes, I was never really an emacs power user. But that did have the advantage that I could sit down to any computer, install a fresh emacs build, and immediately be completely comfortable with the environment.

Well…. except for the fact that on a Mac keyboard, the alt key (on a Mac, that’s the option key), is in the wrong place. For a decade, I simply swapped the keyboard bindings for the option and command keys. Worked great for me but it meant that no one could sit down to my keyboard and do anything. A few years ago I started working with a new team and thought we might do some pair programming. I didn’t want to learn Vim and I couldn’t expect them to switch to Emacs, so we all settled on SublimeText - and I quit remapping my keys at the OS level.

SublimeText worked pretty well for our team and there are a number of things I really like about it. I use the multiline editing a lot - and code folding can be pretty convenient. I know emacs can do both of those things, but I never learned how to set up either of those features in emacs. On the other hand, I never learned to rewrap paragraphs in Sublime (alt-q in emacs). And if I have to do any heavy search and replace, I still prefer using the keyboard shortcuts in emacs to the equivalent replace function in Sublime.

I recently decided it was time for some professional self-improvement and that configuring and really learning one text editor is one thing I need to do. VSCode appears to be where all the cool kids are moving these days, so I decided it was time for me to try it too.

Plugins and Configuration

Emacs Keymap

Since I used emacs without a mouse for literally decades, I use the emacs keybindings to move around - even in a terminal. Having more of my familiar keybindings available would make me a lot happier. I never installed them in Sublime because the point of moving to Sublime was to have a unified editor experience with my team. Unfortunately that team is no longer together, so no reason for me not to set up my text editor to suit me and only me!

I initially found Emacs Keymap but later found a Reddit that pointed out that plugin had not been updated in a while. I took Reddit’s advice and did a little comparison shopping. Awesome Emacs Keymap has excellent ratings and recent updates. So let’s learn to use that. Based on the instructions, I set editor.find.seedSearchStringFromSelection to false. I also need the command key to work as Alt, so I set emacs-mcx.useMetaPrefixMacCmd to true.

Nice key bindings:

• Cmd-s and C-x C-s BOTH work to save a file!
• C-a (and C-e) behave in an interesting way. The first time you use it, it goes to the start of the visible line; the second time you use it, it goes to the start of the logical line. Not what I am used to from emacs but super handy!

Things I need to get used to or fix:

• VSCode shares the kill ring with the OS (BIG WIN!), however, once you get into VSCode, paste is NOT Cmd-v, it’s C-y. I like C-y working, but switching keyboard mappings in mid-operation may break my brain. We’ll have to see if I get used to it.
• I am not sure what emacs-mcx.cursorMoveOnFindWidget is. Sounds like I might need to adjust it but not sure yet.

In the mean time, I have printed out the cheat sheet for keybindings.

Rewrap

One thing I miss in Sublime Text is the ability to rewrap paragraphs using M-q. I use that A LOT when writing prose such as documentation or blog posts - or when I edit a block comment and want to reflow the text. This VSCode extension, Rewrap, looks like what I want - it even says “Similar to wrap/fill paragraph in Sublime (alt+q) Emacs (M-q) or Vim (gq); but more powerful.”. The only wrinkle is that it’s default keybinding is Option-q; M-q is already bound to VSCode’s workspace.action.quit. A little searching told me how to remove that keybinding (find it, right click, and choose “remove keybinding” from the dropdown). Then I searched for the Rewrap plugin’s keybindings and swapped in my usual M-q for rewrapping a paragraph.

I also turned on auto wrap (like emacs auto-file mode) and adjusted the editor.wordWrapColumn to 100 since I think the default (80) is a bit narrow these days. We’ll see what I think of that. If I don’t like it, I can either set per file type widths OR try the ‘wrap to rulers’ option.

According to the docs, I should be able to rewrap code comments without messing with doc comments within the comment and without messing with the code itself. It will be very interesting to see if that works.

Spell Right

I am a very poor speller. In emacs, I use ispell. So what can I replace that with in VSCode? Searching for spellcheckers in extensions sows “Spell Right” is popular and will use my Mac’s built-in dictionary. That will be super handy since I can add words like this: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/add-remove-words-mac-dictionary/

Sync Settings

Now for my last trick, I would like to have the same setup on my work computer and on my personal laptop. VSCode allows me to save my settings - using a private GIST attached to my GitHub account. There are a bunch of docs about how to do partial syncs and how to resolve conflicts. But since this is a new install on both computers, I just clicked the menu item for turning sync on, told GitHub to allow VSCode to store information for me, and now I have matching settings on both my computers.

Bonus!

There is an in-editor Markdown previewer!! So I can see how this post renders as I compose it!