Emacs 31: An unofficial guide to Markdown-ts-mode(rahuljuliato.com)
85 pointsby RahulMJ3 hours ago5 comments
  • RahulMJ2 hours ago
    A bit of extra info:

    - `ts` stands for "tree-sitter", meaning this mode uses tree-sitter under the hood, which is, among other things, very performant.

    - There's support for the CommonMark spec and GFM, so things like `- [ ]` checkboxes and ~~strikethrough~~ work out of the box, along with many other small QoL features.

    - This mode is BUILT-IN, so no extra packages are needed.

    - This is currently in the experimental phase, so users need to "opt in" and load the mode to play with it, hence the first part of the guide.

    • dleslie3 minutes ago
      Tree sitter support is half baked in the same way official LSP support is, only kind of worse.

      Eglot won't help you get your system ready for LSP work, it will only avail itself if what's there. It doesn't even auto detect and configure that, either. There's no user prompting, so you'll have to read the docs to know that this even needs to be done.

      Similarly, tree sitter support doesn't include the grammars! And those aren't typically sitting in your package repository, so users have to find a grammar and compile it themselves. There's not even a good recommendation given by Emacs on where to get them, leaving users to hope that whatever repository showed up on a Google search is both in good working order and safe to use.

      It's really quite a failure on Emacs.

    • lurght37 minutes ago
      I think in 31 registering the file types isnt necessary any more, the mode opens automatically for me (and i did manually delete the old markdown-mode)
  • pjdesno2 hours ago
    For those of us who have just been using Emacs, rather than following its recent evolution, "ts-mode" refers to a mode which uses tree-sitter for parsing, highlighting etc.
    • RahulMJ2 hours ago
      Thanks for adding this. I just made a comment expanding a bit of what users may find in the new mode.
  • taude2 hours ago
    One of the biggest reason I've stopped using Emacs, and I was a pretty heavy user before was that org-mode files weren't fully native Markdown files, which caused annoying friction when collaborating with others.

    It would be interesting for me to have a new markdown-centric org-mode thing. I'd love to vibe lisp to customize my workflows, and I don't totally love Obsidian, which is what I've setup and configured now. I'd prefer to just have the config living in/around init.el/config.el (I used DoomEmacs most recently).

    I realize that org/agenda, etc does a ton more than markdown offers, but most of my flow is just around: raw notes to be consumed, check lists, due dates on items, and other "basics" of org-mode.

    Any recent Emacsers have similar workflows that are tgenible these days? I'd love to get Emacs back in use in my new antigenic Tmux-centric coding flows, and have it be a first class markdown editor, organizaer, and potentially collaboration.....

    • rpdillonan hour ago
      Org mode is a coherent whole, and has capabilities far beyond what Markdown can accomplish (Markdown is inherently HTML-based, org-mode is not). Markdown's history is littered with folks trying to augment it in just the right way to bring these sorts of features, which has resulted in a diaspora of flavors, none particularly dominant+powerful (which is to say, no real org-mode competitor has emerged, even though one could have). I've used Markdown and Org-mode for 20 years concurrently, and trying to make Markdown work like org-mode has never been successful for me.

      I wrote a bit about this back in 2021, in response to a query on Reddit "Why didn't org-mode just use Markdown?".

      https://rpdillon.net/why-doesnt-emacs-org-mode-just-use-mark...

    • iLemming16 minutes ago
      I love Org-mode and use it for many things - the outline format is great, even for some unexpected cases - Jira tickets, Slack, Reddit and HN threads, etc. But of course, hard to escape Markdown these days, so I burned some tokens to implement this https://github.com/agzam/prisma.el
    • mfldan hour ago
      Not tested this myself, but there are ways to improve markdown/org-mode interop, like in https://youtu.be/RJqRwlVvB3E
    • kelvinjps10an hour ago
      I use markdown and nvim with telekasten plugin on desktop and mobile obsidian and for me is good enough
    • kodoman2 hours ago
      What is wrong with markdown mode? Is it that you would rather do the org agenda or calendar via md rather then org? I do understand that if that is the case.
      • iLemminga minute ago
        [delayed]
      • taude2 hours ago
        Yeup, I would love to have some of the org/agenda operations/views on a regular markdown file. Especially so I could just copy it raw out, and paste into other markdown-centric tools, github md files, etc. for colaborating with others.

        Since markdown is becoming so prevalent. Even our product managers are becoming natively conversant with it, I'd just prefer to have as markdown first world.

        (don't get me started ranting about how Atlassian and Slack have migrated away from markdown and to proprietary formats....).

        • kodomanan hour ago
          Yes must say I have found myself moving away from org and looking at it as an annoyance wrapping up many excellent features that could be wrapped up in simple elisp function and structures that could then just be encoded in what every way one likes, it seems to me that for example todo lists are actually better as nested lisp lists, And then you can simply render as what ever you like. Of course one might like to serialize back as well but I have often wondered about it.

          I definitely think markdown has won (at org was never going to 'win' of course given it's limited scope) and actually is probably what we should just all be using and accept.

          • taudean hour ago
            That's actually not a bad mindset, especially when lisp can be vibed so easily. I could actually see myself building out my own library that does the things I want over markdown.

            - have it look through all md files in a directory, collect all the todos into a main view

            - look for items tagged with a date

            - support customer tagging, and provide workflow exports for each one...

            - behind the scenes git management for files

            - etc...

            I've been wanting to build a collaborative markdown editor for awhile now, making it so that different front-ends could work with it is an interesting thing to think about....

            • kodoman34 minutes ago
              My thinking was lean into lisp lists rather then the actual rendered format, so that instead of a text buffer (although you could always open up a text buffer that is the lisp list) you have a list that you can use normal elisp functions that is bindable to keys and highly customizable and your only really building fairly simple elisp machinery on top and you can just use an alist (though you could use a plist I think alist's work better for todos) to represent todo's and just use assoc and setf and friends to do your modifications.

              Of course one might also want to actually build out todo nodes as CLOS style objects. Only caveat hear is that you would need to decide how the object should be serialized and deserialized and the deserializing has to be more precise.

              serializing and deserializing to MD should be easy I think since all we need to do is read in headings and list items into lists with some denotation to the type it was.

              Those are just my thoughts on the topic. My thinking has been I have gotten fed up with emacs modes that are good and a lot of effort to write but just end up adding a lot of stuff on top that make it difficult to customize or customize the the standard way and returning to simple lists could be good.

  • edgyquant2 hours ago
    What are people’s workflows for using eMacs with generative coding? I’m trying to get a workflow where I can generate code and approve it like a PR (maybe leave comments for a next round of generation) but I’m new to eMacs and the ai coding package isn’t working with the latest eMacs
    • jwr17 minutes ago
      I use cLaude cOde in my eMacs (through ghostel, which is unbelievably great!) to generate code :-)

      I then use mAgit to review it.

    • remedan2 hours ago
      Agent Shell connected via ACP to local Claude Code.

      https://github.com/xenodium/agent-shell

      • wilkystyle2 hours ago
        Can't say enough good things about agent-shell.el! Xenodium has done amazing work there.
        • bryanlarsen2 hours ago
          I'll have to try it again. It definitely feels like the right way to do things, but when I tried it it had a couple of show-stopper limitations and a show-stopper bug, so I've been using claude-code-ide.el instead.
        • aagan hour ago
          I'm a huge fan of agent-shell, too. It keeps getting better and better, and it's infinitely customizable, like any good Emacs package.
    • banjomonster2 hours ago
      I’ve been using gptel, I’ll have it generate org babel blocks I can tangle (write to files) or have it use tools to write and edit files in the project I’m working in, and then review with magit.
    • sebastianavinaan hour ago
      I use windows 11, wsl2, WezTerm.

      emacs -nw directly on the shell.

      its like working on a linux computer, but from windows.

      I run vterm inside emacs, and claude code inside vterm. I have special commands for extracting file routes, and flow between dired and magit. Everything runs like magic.

      I also have copilot-chat and copilot-mode installed. From time to time I use it to review what claude has done, or to chat a little bit.

    • bryanlarsen2 hours ago
      IMO, generative coding on Emacs works nicely because magit is awesome for code review. A good agent integration package is going to have a command you can use to send the current cursor line & file to the agent so you can reference and comment.
    • kreyenborgi2 hours ago
      Which AI coding package? Agent-shell? Gptel-agent?
  • 3 hours ago
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