Dedicated Emacs for note-taking

Posted Nov 13, 2022

This is meant to replace my previous setup for org-agenda.

I use Emacs for note-taking, and I have Ctrl+Shift+' bound to open Emacs and grab focus on whatever workspace I am. I use Windows for work and Linux at home, ideally I would like to have a setup for both, but for now I only have it setup on Linux.

On Linux, I use i3 and its scratchpad. For this to work, I added the following to the i3 config file:

# Without -mm it wouldn't use all the space available in the scratchpad
exec --no-startup-id emacs -mm

# When Emacs is launched, automatically hide it by moving it to the scratchpad
for_window [class="Emacs"] move scratchpad

# When Ctrl+Shift+' is pressed, hide Gnome terminal if it was being shown (as I have a similar
# setup for Gnome terminal), and show Emacs
bindcode Control+Shift+48 \
    [class="Gnome-terminal"] move scratchpad \
    [class="Emacs"] scratchpad show sticky enable