How to Set Emacs's User Interface to Modern Conventions

Turn on the CUA mode. Put the following in your emacs init file:

(cua-mode 1)

The CUA mode will do 4 things:

1. Cut Copy Paste Undo have X C V Z keys.
2. Typing while a region is selected will delete it or over-ride it.
3. Text selection will be highlighted. (this is default in emacs 23)
4. Text selection can be done by holding down the Shift key and press a arrow key. (default in emacs 23)

Use the package ErgoEmacs Keybinding.

It supports {Open 【Ctrl+o】, Close 【Ctrl+w】, Save 【Ctrl+s】, New 【Ctrl+n】, Select All 【Ctrl+a】, …}.

You need to install a redo mode. I recommend redo.el by Kyle E Jones et al, or redo+.el, or UndoTree. Any one of them will do the job. Once you install it, put the following code in your emacs init file:

(global-set-key (kbd "C-z") 'undo) ; Ctrl+z
(global-set-key (kbd "C-S-z") 'redo) ;  Ctrl+Shift+z

See: Emacs: How to Copy/Cut Current Line.

Put this in your emacs init file:

(transient-mark-mode 1) ; highlight text selection
(delete-selection-mode 1) ; delete seleted text when typing

Note: starting with Emacs 23.2, it has transient-mark-mode on by default, but does not have delete-selection-mode on by default.

This is on by default starting with emacs 22. If not on, put the following in your emacs init file:

(global-font-lock-mode 1) ; turn on syntax coloring

Put the following code in your emacs init file:

(show-paren-mode 1) ; turn on paren match highlighting

show-paren-mode can be setup so that it highlight the entire paren enclosed text, instead of just the two paren chars. For how to, see: Tips For Editing Lisp Code With Emacs.

Call hl-line-mode. Call it again to toggle off. Call global-hl-line-mode to toggle globally.

(global-hl-line-mode 1) ; turn on highlighting current line

Use the menu: 〖Options▸Set Font〗, then 〖Options▸Save Options〗.

See also: How to Quickly Switch Fonts in Emacs ◇ Best Fonts for Unicode.

You can have line numbers displayed in the left vertical margin. To turn it on, call linum-mode. To have it on by default, put the following in your emacs init file:

(global-linum-mode 1) ; display line numbers in margin. Emacs 23 only.

Call column-number-mode. After you turned it on, the cursor's line position and column position will show in the status bar, like this: (166,3). The first is line number, the second is position from the beginning of line.

To always have it on, put the following code in your emacs init file.

(column-number-mode 1)

Put the following in your emacs init file.

(setq make-backup-files nil) ; stop creating those backup~ files
(setq auto-save-default nil) ; stop creating those #autosave# files

You need to turn on the recentf mode. Put the following in your emacs init file:

(recentf-mode 1) ; keep a list of recently opened files

Once turned on, you can open recently opened files under menu 〖File▸Open Recent〗, or call recentf-open-files.

This is default with emacs 23. For detail on how to turn it on/off, see: New Features in Emacs 23.

For emacs 22, there's no robust solution. See: emacswiki.org move by visible line.

Pull the menu 〖Options▸Line Wrapping in this Buffer〗, or call visual-line-mode.

To toggle globally, call global-visual-line-mode. To set it on or off permanently, use:

(global-visual-line-mode 1) ; 1 for on, 0 for off.

Use the menu 〖Options▸Truncate Long Lines in this Buffer〗. Or, call toggle-truncate-lines.

Call setq-default, then “line-spacing” with value 5. This means there will be 5 pixels between lines. You can also use a decimal. If you set “line-spacing” to 0.5, then it means there will be a extra 50% of normal line height between lines.

You can put the following elisp code in your emacs init file for easy toggle.

(defun toggle-line-spacing ()
  "Toggle line spacing between no extra space to extra half line height."
  (interactive)
  (if (eq line-spacing nil)
      (setq-default line-spacing 0.5) ; add 0.5 height between lines
    (setq-default line-spacing nil)   ; no extra heigh between lines
    )
  (redraw-display))

(global-set-key (kbd "<f7>") 'toggle-line-spacing)

With the above code, pressing F7 will toggle line spacing to small and large. This is useful for switching between programing source code and document/novel reading.

Note that the spacing height between lines also depends on font. See: How to Quickly Switch Fonts in Emacs.

Call fill-paragraph 【Alt+q】 to reformat the current block of text your cursor is on. Call fill-region to reformat a selection of text. To have emacs automatically insert a newline char when your line reaches to the right, call auto-fill-mode.

You can set the width used in the above commands. Call set-variable, then given variable “fill-column”.

Note: these commands actually insert newline characters into your file. This type of wrapping is called hard-wrap. Hard-wrap for display purposes should be avoided. See: The Harm of hard-wrapping Lines.

See: Emacs unfill-paragraph, unfill-region, compact-uncompact-block.

Put this code in your emacs init file:

(setq pop-up-frames t)