I had asked about Doom running in Doom Emacs earlier and it left me wondering, what uses are there for Emacs besides things like coding? I don't code at all or use the terminal aside from some simple installations, running something from it if it doesn't run from the GUI shortcut, and just barely managing to compile protracker 2.3d clone once. I know about using it for writing, which I had planned on doing, but settled on obsidian then Joplin since it was open source so I could write on my pc and phone and easily transfer it (I might swap back to Obsidian with network access cut off, but I don't think I feel like bothering converting .jex databases to Obsidian vaults).
Dec 18 · 1 day ago
6 Comments ↓
I write fiction. With an appropriate choice of modes I can produce nice-looking prose (complete with curly quotes and other typographic niceities). Years ago, emacs with AucTeX and a LaTeX setup, I typed my wife's papers and both undergrad and grad essays for her social work degrees. Both my daughters used that same combination for their high school papers.
If it involves text, emacs is a very good choice.
@k8quinn That does sound nice, and from what I've seen it does look like a nice environment to use for writing, but is there any way I could use it for writing and still easily transfer my writings to my phone? I have it on Joplin because I'll write in my world building project occasionally when bored on my phone or I'm gone somewhere and would like to be able to update one or the other with what I've written. There's also having folders and nested folders, and I have some words that are clickable links to other notes.
What works *for me* is syncthing. All my writing is mirrored to my Android phone that way so I can do things either on my phone or Linux laptop. USB cables work too, you'll see your phone simply as another disk drive. Cloud sync via several cloud services is another possibility. Put simply, there's a lot of ways to move files and folders between a phone and laptop/desktop.
@k8quinn Oh yeah, I do the USB cable method too, I just mean a way to easily transfer between both applications quickly from phone to PC and vice versa, and preserve the words I have that take you to another note if you click them. I more specifically meant nested folders in emacs. (I'm going to assume that's easily doable though) Can emacs be used on Android in some way? Given that my worldbuilding is just paragraphs explaining and describing things Joplin may be good enough, but I'm interested.
There is an official emacs port to Android or you could use Termux which installs and runs Debian packages. Android 16 has a built-in Linux "terminal" that runs Debian in a virtual machine but I'm not sure if it works on all phones or just the latest Pixels. It's hidden so you have to do something odd to activate it. Use your favorite search engine for more details.
@k8quinn That's good to hear, I'll consider switching. I don't have android 16, though, so I won't be able to do it that way.