Emacs Writing Studio

Emacs Writing Studio (EWS) is a configuration and a series of articles for authors who want to use Emacs to research and publish articles, books, scripts and websites.

This configuration follows the following principles:

• Leverage functionality in Emacs 29.1
• Standard keyboard shortcuts
• No configuration for writing code
• Centred around Org mode

The accompanying website will eventually be published as an (e)book with additional content. The website and the book are written and published with the Emacs Writing Studio Configuration.

Feel free to raise an issue if you have any suggestions on how to enhance the configuration or like to see additional packages useful to authors.

Install EWS

To run the Emacs Writing Studio configuration, download the init.el file and run Emacs with the --init-directory option followed by the folder where init.el is located:

emacs --init-directory <path/to/emacs-writing-studio>

The Documents folder contains some sample documents and a testing script.

Emacs requires external software to assist with reading and manipulating non-text files, such as ebooks, images and sound files. EWS checks for the presence of required external software and will generate a warning in the *Messages* buffer if one or more programs are missing. If this is the case, some functionality might not be available, but Emacs will work fine otherwise.

Using EWS

Emacs Writing Studio uses the standard Emacs key bindings. For commands without defualt keybinding, it uses the C-c w prefix keys (w for writing).

EWS Functions

Emacs Writing Studio includes bespoke convenience commands:

• ews-biblio-lookup: Combines functionality from the biblio and Citar packages.
• ews-distraction-free: Activate Olivetti mode.
• ews-org-insert-notes-drawer: Inserts an notes drawer under the current Org heading.