The symptom was that in an Emacs buffer, after hitting Ctrl and the spacebar (C-space) and then moving the cursor, I was expecting the text in between (between mark and point) to be highlighted (indicating an active region), but the region was not highlighted and not active. Accordingly, then doing a replace-string and expecting it to replace text in the region that is “normally” (in Emacs 23) highlighted did not replace anything. (I was, however, able to cut and paste (kill and yank) the same region. In Emacs-speak, the region was not active. Another symptom: after M-x replace-string where I normally see “Replace string in region” in the minibuffer, it now only said “Replace string”.

The solution:

M-x transient-mark-mode

to enable transient-mark-mode and get the expected behaviour (this command toggles it on and off).

gconf-editor

and change the setting desktop → gnome → interface → gtk_key_theme from “Default” to “Emacs”.

If you use R, you most likely want ESS (Emacs Speaks Statistics) for your GNU Emacs. If you use LaTeX, you will also want AucTeX.

I highly recommend you use Vincent Goulet’s modified Emacs version. As an additional benefit, it comes as a convenient self-installing .exe file.

Thanks Vincent!

p.s. To get LaTeX on Windows, you will want to get MiKTeX. MiKTeX is very nice and can auto-install missing packages on the fly when you want to use them in a document.

I wanted a regular expression to match the pattern of mutt mail edit buffers, to apply mail-mode, but I did not want to match the muttrc and mutt.hooks files I have.

Mail edit buffers get a pattern that starts with “mutt”, followed by a combination of dashes, letters and numbers. Examples:

mutt-lauren-ad34AD-
muttadR12
muttadrsd

The pattern mutt[-0-9a-zA-Z]+$ matches these just fine, but it would also match muttrc. So I want a regex that looks for at least three occurrences from the character class described in the brackets. Generally, this is done using {3,} (using the {m,n} pattern to match at least m and at most n occurrences). (You can match exactly n occurrences, by using {3}).

In Emacs, this didn’t work, and it turns out I had to escape the curly brackets twice: mutt[-0-9a-zA-Z]\\{3,\\}$.

Here’s the full section in my .emacs file:

(defun mutt-edit-hook ()
  (setq fill-column 70)
  (setq make-backup-files nil)
  )

(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("mutt[-0-9a-zA-Z]\\{3,\\}$" . mail-mode))
(add-hook 'mail-mode-hook 'turn-on-auto-fill)
(add-hook 'mail-mode-hook 'mutt-edit-hook)

For immediate relief (this will not persist through a reboot):

sudo modprobe -r pcspkr

For permanent relief, edit the file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist and add the line:

blacklist pcspkr

Addendum

On my Lenovo Thinkpad X41, there was still an annoying loud beep whenever I plugged in or unplugged the AC power cord. I had to disable this in the BIOS.

One thing that’s always annoyed me in both XEmacs and Emacs was the buffer switching using C-x b. In theory, this has a nice history you can cycle through using the up arrow, but this history never contained all of my open buffers. About fifty percent of the time, for reasons only known to the Lisp gurus, it did not offer the one buffer I wanted to switch to, even if I only had three different buffers open. OTOH, it did always contain all kinds of buffers I never in my life want to even see, such as *scratch*, *Messages*, *ESS*. Yikes.

This is what does away with all of this (in ~/.emacs):

; Better buffer switching
(iswitchb-mode 1)
; Ignore all kinds of special Emacs buffers that start with a *,
; but don't ignore the R process buffer (*R*)
(add-to-list 'iswitchb-buffer-ignore "*[^R]")

Not only does this have a sensible history to cycle through, C-x b shows the names of all open buffers in the minibuffer, and you can “find as you type”, even for parts of the buffer name that are not at the beginning. So you can immediately type the letters that are unique to that buffer name, handy when you’re working on a project where the .tex and several .R files all start with the same project prefix.

In addition: When creating an entry, you can also set categories by adding a line “Keywords:” to the header, such as:

Keywords: Linux, Emacs, Noobs

I haven’t figured out how to do trackbacks yet, but I do that rarely enough. Even when I have to use the web interface, I can use Emacs via Mozex.

For me, the default is set to 70 in ~/.xemacs/init.el by this line:
(setq default-fill-column 70).

If you want to change fill-column temporarily for the current buffer, you’ll figure out quickly enough that you can use M-x set-fill-column or C-x f. However, if you’re hoping to use that and then just enter a number, it doesn’t work, but instead XEmacs complains:

set-fill-column requires an explicit argument

You need to give that first using C-u.

For example, to change fill-column to 80:

C-u 80<RET>C-x f<RET>

To change fill-column to where point currently is, omit the argument to C-u:

C-u<RET>C-x f<RET>

Addendum

Maybe I made a mistake, or maybe things are different with Emacs, which I am now using. In any case, on Emacs, you should not hit enter between C-u (and its argument, if any) and the C-x f. So the commands to type would be:

C-u 80 C-x f

and

C-u C-x f

respectively.