Prosthetic Conscience

Fast append-to-file in emacs for GTD

One of the most important things you need to implement Getting Things Done (GTD) is a fast way of collecting things you think of so that they are out of your mind and in your inbox. On the Mac, you’d do this with Quicksilver’s “Append to…”. Using Emacs, you use Remember Mode. Rather than appending to a text file, you can use other backends, such as sending yourself mail, posting to your blog, or appending to your bibliographic database. I use the backend for Org Mode, a mode for living in one big text file.

But if Emacs isn’t the active application, how do you get a Remember buffer quickly? The trick is to use emacsclient and your window manager. You need to get your window manager to bind a key to run

     emacsclient -n –eval '(progn (remember) (switch-to-buffer-other-frame "*Remember*"))'

In metacity, the Gnome window manager, binding keys to arbitrary commands is not exactly straightforward, involving the use of gconf-editor, as far as I can see. Edit the key /apps/metacity/keybinding_commands/command_N to contain the command above. Then edit the key /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/run_command_N to a keybinding that you like. I use <Ctl><Shift>R.

Then, no matter where you are, your keybinding pops up a new emacs frame with a new Remember buffer in it, ready to be appended to any text file with C-c C-c.

[ Posted: 17:13] | [ Category: /productivity] | Permalink | Comments: 1 ]