HOWTO: Beautiful Emacs

saaz

The standard emacs package for Hardy looks incredibly horrible. The main reason for this is the ugly font it uses. The ugliness is exacerbated on large monitors. Anti-Aliased fonts improve the look tremendously. Unfortunately, the standard package doesn't support this...but the 'emacs-snapshot' package does. You'll need the universe repository enabled and then from a terminal:

Code:

apt-get install emacs-snapshot

Edit the file: ~/.Xdefaults (which probably doesn't exist yet)
Add the following line to this file:

Code:

Emacs.font: Monospace-10

Monospace-10 is one of the AA fonts.

Either restart X or just type the following form the terminal:

Code:

xrdb -merge ~/.Xdefaults

When you start emacs make sure you run "emacs-snapshot-gtk" and not the standard package, "emacs" in case you also have that installed.

I'd also recommend setting up a color theme with the color-theme library. Get it by typing this in a terminal:

Code:

apt-get install emacs-goodies-el

Start emacs and do (M-x = hit the esc key and then the x key, RET = the Enter key):

Code:

M-x load-library RET
color-theme

Then do:

Code:

M-x color-theme-select

Hit RET on each theme name to see it, 'd' to get a description including the real name of the theme.

Once you have a theme you like, you can put it in your ~/.emacs so it'll load every time. If I want the "Gnome 2" theme, I'd put:

Code:

(require 'color-theme)
(color-theme-gnome2)

ColorTheme site:
http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/ColorTheme

May 22nd, 2008	#1
saaz 5 Cups of Ubuntu Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Tempe, AZ Beans: 18 Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron	HOWTO: Beautiful Emacs The standard emacs package for Hardy looks incredibly horrible. The main reason for this is the ugly font it uses. The ugliness is exacerbated on large monitors. Anti-Aliased fonts improve the look tremendously. Unfortunately, the standard package doesn't support this...but the 'emacs-snapshot' package does. You'll need the universe repository enabled and then from a terminal: Code: apt-get install emacs-snapshot Edit the file: ~/.Xdefaults (which probably doesn't exist yet) Add the following line to this file: Code: Emacs.font: Monospace-10 Monospace-10 is one of the AA fonts. Either restart X or just type the following form the terminal: Code: xrdb -merge ~/.Xdefaults When you start emacs make sure you run "emacs-snapshot-gtk" and not the standard package, "emacs" in case you also have that installed. I'd also recommend setting up a color theme with the color-theme library. Get it by typing this in a terminal: Code: apt-get install emacs-goodies-el Start emacs and do (M-x = hit the esc key and then the x key, RET = the Enter key): Code: M-x load-library RET color-theme Then do: Code: M-x color-theme-select Hit RET on each theme name to see it, 'd' to get a description including the real name of the theme. Once you have a theme you like, you can put it in your ~/.emacs so it'll load every time. If I want the "Gnome 2" theme, I'd put: Code: (require 'color-theme) (color-theme-gnome2) ColorTheme site: http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/ColorTheme

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