Distributed Mind

Okay, my day has been made... I just found out two really useful things you can do in Emacs:

• Resize "windows." If you use split windows in Emacs (C-x 2), it will split the windows evenly. To resize the one window, use M-x to get to the command buffer and then enter the command enlarge-window. On my copy of Emacs, the shortcut is C-x ^ (which is a bit awkward to enter, but hey - better than typing "enlarge-window" 5 times...).

• This is the big one: Make Emacs scroll one line at a time! Incredible... Anyway, the command is M-x set-variable then scroll-step then 2. That is, of course, long, so you could also add (setq scroll-step 2) to your .emacs file. This command works in newer versions of Emacs though (20.1, perhaps?), so if you are on an older one, you are out of luck. (This tip I found in an article by Larry Ayers.)

Having smooth scrolling has just made my life so much easier.

[Update: Why on earth does that article suggest a value of 2? Two works, but set it to 1 for much better effect. I noted at the time that was an odd value, but I assumed there was some reason for it - though apparently there isn't.]

[Okay, so I have been having trouble at least on Mac OS X with it set to 1. Beats me. Anyway, you may experiment, I guess. Or look it up. I will eventually....]