Emacs 31: An unofficial guide to Markdown-ts-mode

RRahulMJ about 3 hours ago 23 commentsRead Article on rahuljuliato.com

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Discussion (23 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

RahulMJ•about 1 hour 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.

lurght•25 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)

pjdesno•about 2 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.

RahulMJ•about 1 hour ago

Thanks for adding this. I just made a comment expanding a bit of what users may find in the new mode.

taude•about 2 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.....

rpdillon•39 minutes 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...

iLemming•5 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

mfld•about 1 hour ago

Not tested this myself, but there are ways to improve markdown/org-mode interop, like in https://youtu.be/RJqRwlVvB3E

kelvinjps10•about 1 hour ago

I use markdown and nvim with telekasten plugin on desktop and mobile obsidian and for me is good enough

kodoman•about 2 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.

taude•about 1 hour 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....).

kodoman•about 1 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.

edgyquant•about 2 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

jwr•6 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.

remedan•about 2 hours ago

Agent Shell connected via ACP to local Claude Code.

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

wilkystyle•about 2 hours ago

Can't say enough good things about agent-shell.el! Xenodium has done amazing work there.

bryanlarsen•about 2 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.

aag•about 1 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.

banjomonster•about 2 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.

sebastianavina•about 1 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.

bryanlarsen•about 2 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.

kreyenborgi•about 2 hours ago

Which AI coding package? Agent-shell? Gptel-agent?

edgyquant•about 1 hour ago

It’s just called ai-code I’m new to eMacs so this popped up but had a bunch of issues I was trying to debug https://github.com/tninja/ai-code-interface.el