Spacemacs Reference Document

A general reference for getting into spacemacs from vim. Mostly derivative of other guides.

Reference

Useful Sequences

See all active minor-modes and major mode: C-h m
1. another get major-mode: C-h v major-mode
2. another get minor-mode: C-h v minor-mode-list
3. spacemacs minor-mode stuff
Reload stuff/settings: SPC f e R
Load up non-GUI mode: $ emacs -nw
Insert any character: C-q
Increment by q (q=1 by default): q SPC n -
- has some sort of minor mode where you can keep pressing stuff, try it
Clear search highlighting: SPC s c
Navigate buffers: SPC b b
- Check out the Messages buffer
- kill buffer: SPC b d
- next or prev buffer: SPC b n or SPC b p
Jump between matched tags: %
Exit insert mode (evil-escape): fd
- note that this should take you to evil normal mode from anywhere
- this may work identically to C-g
Find a file and open in a new buffer: SPC f f
"help describe": SPC h d
- "help describe function" SPC h d f
- "help describe key" SPC h d k
guide-key, a menu of stuff: SPC
Insert lorem ipsum: SPC i l l
- (lorem-ipsum) has several nice insert options SPC i l
Note that the vim . repeater works on SPC-leader macros..
- try SPC i l l . . . . .
Using evil-nerd-commenter
- comment or uncomment a block of lines SPC c l
- toggle comment on each line in a block of lines SPC c ;
  - can be used to simultaneously uncomment and comment neighboring lines
SPC m is aliased to , and accesses the current major-mode menu

Interesting Sequences

Incremental Search: C-s stuff
- Note: / style search is already incremental in spacemacs.
Learn emacs lisp: SPC h i elisp RET

Future

Mess with iedit and iedit-insert states
Try out the other SPC s search options
Test out spacemacs regex SPC x which uses pcre2el package
- further reference
editing lisp code & lisp keybindings
managing projects
compiling code

External References

Subreddits:

Notes (From References)

Each note should have a #### header and be included in the TOC.

What is `setq`?

Set Quoted. (set (quote scroll-margin) 5) is equivalent to (setq scroll-margin 5).

Spacemacs State Color Codes

There are 10 states.

The state table is from the Spacemacs documentation.

State	Default Color	Description
normal	orange	like the =normal mode of Vim=, used to execute and combine commands
insert	green	like the =insert mode of Vim=, used to actually insert text
visual	gray	like the =visual mode of Vim=, used to make text selection
motion	purple	exclusive to =Evil=, used to navigate read only buffers
emacs	blue	exclusive to =Evil=, using this state is like using a regular Emacs without Vim
replace	chocolate	exclusive to =Evil=, overwrites the character under point instead of inserting a new one
hybrid	blue	exclusive to Spacemacs, this is like the insert state except that all the emacs key bindings are available
evilified	light brown	exclusive to Spacemacs, this is an =emacs state= modified to bring Vim navigation, selection and search.
lisp	pink	exclusive to Spacemacs, used to navigate Lisp code and modify it (more [[#editing-lisp-code][info]])
iedit	red	exclusive to Spacemacs, used to navigate between multiple regions of text using =iedit= (more [[#replacing-text-with-iedit][info]])
iedit-insert	red	exclusive to Spacemacs, used to replace multiple regions of text using =iedit= (more [[#replacing-text-with-iedit][info]])

Spacemacs Fixes

Things I think need fixed.

Identified as `needs fixed for spacemacs`

Make default colors the same as default terminal colors...
not sure how to let these pass through, spacemacs has magic colors
Consider moving my hotkeys to a helm menu or something, with a space leader instead of C- pattern. Also includes vim functions.
Rewrite vim functions for spacemacs
Consider alias for bash for spacemacs nongui as default emacs -nw
Also, consider installing the emacs-plus package from homebrew cask on mac
The emacs-plus package is apparently the recommended package by spacemacs, no idea why
Store undo history between sessions for all edited files.
manage branching undo history better? may just need training...
C-c should exit insert mode
Fix ridiculous html indentation
Disable the mouse... try the (disable-mouse) package?

Needs Deeper Research

tabs->spaces
looks like highlight and <|> indent by 4 spaces in html extension files... not sure how it varies by file extension
we want this to be 2 spaces by default and 4 spaces in the .py file extension
indentation with the tab also does not always work, it seems to try to force a style from somewhere, tab does not always have an effect
html specific
- tab seems to add spaces when it allows input... this should not follow complex rules, tab should just put 2 spaces in regardless
- in html when exiting insert mode, it seems to do some postprocessing on my editing, visual mode gets weird
- things in html mode are generally not working, especially with regards to and similar
Esc (1/2 second pause or less) followed by a key is a meta-key leader... need it to be dead key from now on
this is related: https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/issues/2756
this seems to have abated, i think i toggled a mode
i do not know why it would have abated but i did restart my computer
still reloading emacs settings should be enough, mysterious
How do I drill down to my packages? How do I learn about my evil mode configuration and contribute to the evil mode emacs plugin?
i have been reading the elisp in the .spacemacs.d layers
How do I manage undo branches?

Done

line numbers on startup, line number toggle?
note taken - How do i search for tabs, e.g. \t
scroll-margin set to 5
C-l should redraw the screen - redraw does not clear search highlighting in emacs...
Clear a search with SPC s c
Turn off auto add closing quotes, braces, brackets, tildes, etc.
in init.el: put smartparens in dotspacemacs-excluded-packages

Optional

redraw screen with some key combo? - https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Refresh-Screen.html
May already be in spacemacs, check around

Greg's elisp notes

I'm starting by reading An Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp.

To get to this, open emacs with no arguments, hit ctrl-h i .

C-h is for help. i is for the info reader, which lets you browse manuals.

Then you're presented with a long menu.

Hit m for menu, then type Emacs Lisp Intro into the mini buffer. Then hit enter.

That gets you to the elisp intro.

Lisp stands for LISt Processing.

A list:

'(rose
  violet
  daisy
  buttercup)

Awesome and beautiful quote from the book: "The elements of this list are the names of the four different flowers, separated from each other by whitespace and surrounded by parentheses, like flowers in a field with a stone wall around them."

Text between double quotation marks is also an atom.

If there is no apostraphe before a preceding list then the first item of the list is a function. If there is an apostophe then the list is just taken as is.

Why I switched to Spacemacs

I wrote these out for someone. I prefer to see spacemacs as a vim featureset expansion.

Vimscript sucks and vim isn't really great wrt extendability, extensions are all over the place.
I like scheme/lisp and am writing a lot of C this year, emacs seems much better suited for working in both.
Spacemacs provides most common keys in vim (but not all!).
- For example C-a in vim is SPC n + in spacemacs. It drops chording, a net positive.
Vim promises leader keys but you effectively chord enough of your actions that it's a fake claim. Spacemacs uses a space leader for most things.
Vim feels stagnant, even if it isn't.
The core featureset of vim doesn't really need vim the application anymore