It so happens that a colleague of mine wanted to start using Emacs but couldn’t get to it. He insists on having proper color themes in all applications and some sensible defaults full of nifty add-ons everywhere, and didn’t want to have to learn that much about Emacs and Emacs Lisp to get started. I’m not even sure that he will Take the Emacs tour.

You would tell me that there’s nothing we can do for so unfriendly users. Well, here’s what I did:

;; emacs setup

(add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/el-get/el-get")
(require 'el-get)
(setq
 el-get-sources 
 '(el-get
   php-mode-improved
   psvn
   auto-complete
   switch-window

   (:name buffer-move
	  :after (lambda ()
		   (global-set-key (kbd "<C-S-up>")     'buf-move-up)
		   (global-set-key (kbd "<C-S-down>")   'buf-move-down)
		   (global-set-key (kbd "<C-S-left>")   'buf-move-left)
		   (global-set-key (kbd "<C-S-right>")  'buf-move-right)))

   (:name magit
	  :after (lambda ()
		   (global-set-key (kbd "C-x C-z") 'magit-status)))

   (:name goto-last-change
	  :after (lambda ()
		   ;; azerty keyboard here, don't use C-x C-/
		   (global-set-key (kbd "C-x C-_") 'goto-last-change)))))

(when window-system
   (add-to-list 'el-get-sources  'color-theme-tango))

(el-get 'sync)

;; visual settings
(setq inhibit-splash-screen t)
(menu-bar-mode -1)
(tool-bar-mode -1)
(scroll-bar-mode -1)

(line-number-mode 1)
(column-number-mode 1)

;; Use the clipboard, pretty please, so that copy/paste "works"
(setq x-select-enable-clipboard t)

(set-frame-font "Monospace-10")

(global-hl-line-mode)

;; suivre les changements exterieurs sur les fichiers
(global-auto-revert-mode 1)

;; pour les couleurs dans M-x shell
(autoload 'ansi-color-for-comint-mode-on "ansi-color" nil t)
(add-hook 'shell-mode-hook 'ansi-color-for-comint-mode-on)

;; S-fleches pour changer de fen&#xEA;tre
(windmove-default-keybindings)
(setq windmove-wrap-around t)

;; find-file-at-point quand &#xE7;a a du sens
(setq ffap-machine-p-known 'accept) ; no pinging
(setq ffap-url-regexp nil) ; disable URL features in ffap
(setq ffap-ftp-regexp nil) ; disable FTP features in ffap
(define-key global-map (kbd "C-x C-f") 'find-file-at-point)

(require 'ibuffer)
(global-set-key "\C-x\C-b" 'ibuffer)

;; use iswitchb-mode for C-x b
(iswitchb-mode)

;; I can't remember having meant to use C-z as suspend-frame
(global-set-key (kbd "C-z") 'undo)

;; winner-mode pour revenir sur le layout pr&#xE9;c&#xE9;dent C-c <left>
(winner-mode 1)

;; dired-x pour C-x C-j
(require 'dired-x)

;; full screen
(defun fullscreen ()
  (interactive)
  (set-frame-parameter nil 'fullscreen
		       (if (frame-parameter nil 'fullscreen) nil 'fullboth)))
(global-set-key [f11] 'fullscreen)

With just this simple 87 lines (all included) of setup, my local user is very happy to switch to using our favorite editor. And he’s not even afraid (yet) of his ~/.emacs. I say that’s a very good sign of where we are with el-get!