What's in your .emacs?

Answer 1

(put 'erase-buffer 'disabled nil)
(put 'downcase-region 'disabled nil)
(set-variable 'visible-bell t)
(set-variable 'tool-bar-mode nil)
(set-variable 'menu-bar-mode nil)

(setq load-path (cons (expand-file-name "/usr/share/doc/git-core/contrib/emacs") load-path))
 (require 'vc-git)
 (when (featurep 'vc-git) (add-to-list 'vc-handled-backends 'git))
 (require 'git)
 (autoload 'git-blame-mode "git-blame"
           "Minor mode for incremental blame for Git." t)

Answer 2

I set up some handy shortcuts to web pages and searches using webjump

(require 'webjump)
(global-set-key [f2] 'webjump)
(setq webjump-sites
      (append '(
        ("Reddit Search" .
         [simple-query "www.reddit.com" "http://www.reddit.com/search?q=" ""])
        ("Google Image Search" .
         [simple-query "images.google.com" "images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=" ""])
        ("Flickr Search" .
         [simple-query "www.flickr.com" "flickr.com/search/?q=" ""])
        ("Astar algorithm" . 
         "http://www.heyes-jones.com/astar")
        )
          webjump-sample-sites))

Blog post about how this works here

http://justinsboringpage.blogspot.com/2009/02/search-reddit-flickr-and-google-from.html

Also I recommend these:

(setq visible-bell t) ; no beeping

(setq transient-mark-mode t) ; visually show region

(setq line-number-mode t) ; show line numbers

(setq global-font-lock-mode 1) ; everything should use fonts

(setq font-lock-maximum-decoration t)

Also I get rid of some of the superfluous gui stuff

  (if (fboundp 'scroll-bar-mode) (scroll-bar-mode -1))
  (if (fboundp 'tool-bar-mode) (tool-bar-mode -1))
  (if (fboundp 'menu-bar-mode) (menu-bar-mode -1)))

Answer 3

One thing that can prove very useful: Before it gets too big, try to split it into multiple files for various tasks: My .emacs just sets my load-path and the loads a bunch of files - I've got all my mode-specific settings in mode-configs.el, keybindings in keys.el, et cetera

Answer 4

I have a lot of others that have already been mentioned, but these are absolutely necessary in my opinion:

(transient-mark-mode 1) ; makes the region visible
(line-number-mode 1)    ; makes the line number show up
(column-number-mode 1)  ; makes the column number show up

Answer 5

See EmacsWiki's DotEmacs category. It provides lots of links to pages addressing this question.

Answer 6

emacs-starter-kit as a base, then I've added.. vimpulse.el, whitespace.el, yasnippet, textmate.el and newsticker.el.

In my ~/.emacs.d/$USERNAME.el (dbr.el) file:

(add-to-list 'load-path (concat dotfiles-dir "/vendor/"))

;; Snippets
(add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/vendor/yasnippet/")
(require 'yasnippet)

(yas/initialize)
(yas/load-directory "~/.emacs.d/vendor/yasnippet/snippets")

;; TextMate module
(require 'textmate)
(textmate-mode 'on)

;; Whitespace module
(require 'whitespace)
(add-hook 'ruby-mode-hook 'whitespace-mode)
(add-hook 'python-mode-hook 'whitespace-mode)

;; Misc
(flyspell-mode 'on)
(setq viper-mode t)
(require 'viper)
(require 'vimpulse)

;; IM
(eval-after-load 'rcirc '(require 'rcirc-color))
(setq rcirc-default-nick "_dbr")
(setq rcirc-default-user-name "_dbr")
(setq rcirc-default-user-full-name "_dbr")

(require 'jabber)

;;; Google Talk account
(custom-set-variables
 '(jabber-connection-type (quote ssl))
 '(jabber-network-server "talk.google.com")
 '(jabber-port 5223)
 '(jabber-server "mysite.tld")
 '(jabber-username "myusername"))

;; Theme
(color-theme-zenburn)

;; Key bindings
(global-set-key (kbd "M-z") 'undo)
(global-set-key (kbd "M-s") 'save-buffer)
(global-set-key (kbd "M-S-z") 'redo)