Sinomacs

Sinomacs is a configuration for Emacs designed for people working with premodern Chinese texts. Sinomacs started as a fork of of Easymacs by Peter Heslin, which adds Mandoku to the existing configuration, but it is now rapidly developing into a completely different beasts.

Emacs provides a number of essential tools in a single, open-source, cross-platform learning environment which can be installed easily (even in a classroom where one does not have administrative rights). In one package, it provides:

• A tool for note-taking, task-management and (scientific) writing (org-mode)
• A platform-independent command line for running programs (eshell)
• An interactive tool for learning about regular expressions (re-builder with pcre2el)
• A fully-featured development environment for programming in almost any language.

Emacs has a reputation for complexity, archaism and idiosyncrasy, so it might seem an inappropriate application to introduce to students and researchers from a non-technical background. But Emacs has most of the features of a modern desktop application; it is just that not all of these are turned on by default. Emacs can be configured to be a surprisingly user-friendly application. In addition to that, the extensibility and adaptability allows Emacs to interface with a broad range of applications, both local and online. With packages for managing bibliographical databases, access to PDF files, research note-taking, task management and writing of scientific publications as reproducible research it is indeed a most suitable framework for a research environment. It also serves the pedagogical purpose of demystifying the computer as a black box and encouraging students to take ownership of it as a powerful device that can be mended for their purpose.

Sinomacs is designed to turn Emacs into as familiar an application as possible, so that students can start using it right away. Conventional keystrokes and familiar terminology are used for basic file manipulations. More advanced Emacs functionality is assigned to function keys. Some of these choices override standard defaults, but the full power of Emacs is still available to the student who wants to delve deeper.

Sinomacs is similar in principle to projects like Emacs Starter Kit, but it supposes a narrower and less technically oriented audience.

Sinomacs comes with an installer that modifies the user’s .emacs configuration file to run itself. It automatically installs a number of third-party packages, including mandoku.

For a list of keybindings, see the file sinomacs-help.txt, which is the page shown when Sinomacs starts up, to re-display it press F1 (within Sinomacs).

Installation

• Install Emacs, version 24.4 or greater:
  • Windows: The preferred way is to use the Sinomacs-bundle, simple follow the instructions there. Alternatively, for older versions of Emacs: Download Emacs. The filename will look something like emacs-24.5-bin-i686-mingw32.zip. Unzip the file in a convenient place and start Emacs by going to the bin folder and double-clicking on emacs.exe. You may want to set up a short-cut.
  • Linux: Install via your package manager.
  • Mac: Make sure that you have the OS X / macOS command line tools installed. Simply copy-paste the following into the terminal and hit return:

	 xcode-select --install

Note Emacs from the Terminal wont play well with sinomacs, instead go to Download Emacs and install and run the application as normal. Users of os X < 10.11 will see warnings when trying to establish secure connections. To workaround this follow the prompts inside emacs and accept connections despite the warnings.

• Get Sinomacs:
  • The Sinomacs bundle for Windows mentioned above already contains installation procedures. For other platforms, use the green download button above or get the Sinomacs Archive. Unzip it in a convenient location. Then run Emacs and click on the menu option File->Open File. Navigate to the folder in which you just unzipped Sinomacs and open the file called INSTALL.el. Follow the directions on screen, which will tell you to select the menu item Emacs-Lisp->Evaluate Buffer.
  • Alternatively, if the git program is available, simply copy the following lines of code and paste them into the Emacs Scratch buffer (Go to the buffer menu and select the item called * Scratch*), move the cursor to the very end of these lines (it has to be after the last closing parentheses) and press “C-x C-e”, that is: hold down the control key, then press “X” (you will see ‘C-x’ printed at the very bottom of the Emacs appliaction window), let go and do control “E” next.

 (let ((default-directory user-emacs-directory))
   (unless (file-exists-p (concat user-emacs-directory "sinomacs/sinomacs-help.txt"))
     (shell-command
      (concat
	(executable-find "git")
	" clone https://github.com/mandoku/sinomacs.git"))
     (add-to-list 'load-path (concat user-emacs-directory "sinomacs"))
     (load "INSTALL")
     (find-file-other-frame
      (concat sinomacs-dir "sinomacs-help.txt"))
     (delete-other-frames)
     (goto-char (point-min))))

Note git is a program that is used behind the scenes to keep track of changes in files, and to download or upload these files from/to remote computers. The Windows bundle mentioned above contains this; if you are on Windows and do not use the bundle, you should download and install it separately. On Macintosh computers, the program will install itself, with your permission, when needed. Linux systems will either have it from the start or you can get it with your package manager.

• Any of the above will/should (after a few moments of silence) trigger a frenzy of activity in Emacs, downloading and installing the necessary packages and settings that are needed, with a lot of strange messages written to the screen. Do not interrupt this process, but wait until it comes to an end and prompts you for information. Towards the end of the procedure, it will ask you a number of questions as follows:
  1. “”Please input the full path to the base directory for Mandoku (default:~/krp): ”

     Emacs here asks you where to put the files Mandoku is using. This includes your downloaded text files, a workspace and a number of other files needed for the proper operation of the program. The default is to place it directly in the home directory of your user account or, on Windows, in the root of drive C:. For Windows, it should be in the root folder of a drive, but it does not need to be “C:”.

  2. “No workspace found. It necessary to take full advantage of Mandoku, but requires a (free) Github account. If you do not currently have one, create one and come back, then you can download (clone) a workspace from GitHub. Otherwise, deal with Github later and continue without a workspace. Do you want to download it now?”

     You should either answer “yes”, if you have a GitHub account and are ready to download the additional files. If you answer “no” here, you will be presented with the same question next time you start Emacs.

  3. “Git needs a name to identify you. How should git call you?”

     The name you use here will be saved locally and used in communications with GitHub, this will be used, together with the email alias (see next question) to identify you and credit your activities there. You can use any alias you want, either a real name or an online handle.

  4. “Git needs an email alias to identify you. How should git mail you?”

     The email you enter here does not need to be a valid one, it will not be used to actually send mail to you, but only for git based communications. If you want to take credit for your contributions on GitHub, it would make sense to use the same email alias that you used when signing up with Github.

• Sinomacs is now installed. The whole process might take 10-15 minutes, depending on the speed of your network connection and computer. You may want to install some auxiliary programmes such as Hunspell for spell-checking. For Macs, Homebrew is the best way to do this.