# I think I just started Emacs at the right time!

**URL:** https://forum.systemcrafters.net/t/i-think-i-just-started-emacs-at-the-right-time/834
**Category:** General
**Tags:** emacs
**Created:** [July 3, 2024, 10:52pm UTC](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/t/i-think-i-just-started-emacs-at-the-right-time/834 "2024-07-03T22:52:45Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![TriAttack](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/forum.systemcrafters.net/triattack/32/628_2.png) [@TriAttack](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/u/TriAttack)
#### Post date: [July 3, 2024, 10:52pm UTC](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/t/i-think-i-just-started-emacs-at-the-right-time/834/1 "2024-07-03T22:52:45Z")

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Hi everyone,

For the summer I decided to learn something new, and that thing happened to be emacs. I’ve finished the Absolute Guide as well as the in-program tutorial and I’m quite impressed with the functionality on display. Being able to copy large sections of text without having to stick my index finger on the left click button is amazing! And it seems that I started at just the right time to find this Forum. Glad to be here!

P.S: What’s the best spell-checker for daily use? Any chance I can get Grammarly to work in here? I’m also on the lookout for a package that can work with the TV Tropes Markup format.

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### Author: ![alphapapa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@alphapapa](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/u/alphapapa)
#### Post date: [July 4, 2024, 2:27am UTC](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/t/i-think-i-just-started-emacs-at-the-right-time/834/2 "2024-07-04T02:27:21Z")

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Welcome to Emacsland. It is truly the “editor of a lifetime” (being more of a platform or Lisp Machine than an editor).

`flyspell` is built-in, but the `jinx` package is by a prolific author and I’ve heard many good things about it.

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### Author: ![wxie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ee59a6/32.png) [@wxie](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/u/wxie)
#### Post date: [July 4, 2024, 2:41am UTC](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/t/i-think-i-just-started-emacs-at-the-right-time/834/3 "2024-07-04T02:41:57Z")

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Welcome TriAttack.

Glad to know that you are trying Emacs. It is worthy.  
As to spell-check, I use Aspell. However, it does not support much grammar. Maybe you can add?

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### Author: ![TriAttack](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/forum.systemcrafters.net/triattack/32/628_2.png) [@TriAttack](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/u/TriAttack)
#### Post date: [July 4, 2024, 4:34am UTC](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/t/i-think-i-just-started-emacs-at-the-right-time/834/4 "2024-07-04T04:34:18Z")

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How do I get aspell on Windows 11? I’ve tried using Hunspell, but there’s actually an [open bug](https://github.com/hunspell/hunspell/issues/754) on the current version that break Emacs compatibility.

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### Author: ![TriAttack](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/forum.systemcrafters.net/triattack/32/628_2.png) [@TriAttack](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/u/TriAttack)
#### Post date: [July 4, 2024, 5:02am UTC](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/t/i-think-i-just-started-emacs-at-the-right-time/834/5 "2024-07-04T05:02:09Z")

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Sounds interesting! How do I get it to work correctly on Windows 11? I’m specifically trying to figure out how to get enchant on my device.

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### Author: ![alphapapa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@alphapapa](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/u/alphapapa)
#### Post date: [July 4, 2024, 6:21am UTC](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/t/i-think-i-just-started-emacs-at-the-right-time/834/6 "2024-07-04T06:21:14Z")

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Not that there aren’t any Windows users around here, but asking for help with Windows 11 is kind of like barking up the wrong tree here. 😉

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### Author: ![TriAttack](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/forum.systemcrafters.net/triattack/32/628_2.png) [@TriAttack](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/u/TriAttack)
#### Post date: [July 4, 2024, 6:43am UTC](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/t/i-think-i-just-started-emacs-at-the-right-time/834/7 "2024-07-04T06:43:10Z")

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Well, it’s worth asking regardless. Linux is slowly getting closer to being a viable option for me, but there are just some awfully nagging sticky points, like how most everything seems to have a default windows version but no Linux port, like Solidworks. Or how font sizes just seem slightly off. I do have an old Thinkpad running Linux Mint though.

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### Author: ![altomcat](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/forum.systemcrafters.net/altomcat/32/583_2.png) [@altomcat](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/u/altomcat)
#### Post date: [July 4, 2024, 11:08am UTC](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/t/i-think-i-just-started-emacs-at-the-right-time/834/8 "2024-07-04T11:08:00Z")

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Welcome @TriAttack,

With my professional laptop currently under **windows10** , I installed **aspell** from [MSYS2](https://www.msys2.org/). There is a mingw64 repository.

> pacman -S mingw64/mingw-w64-x86\_64-aspell  
> pacman -S mingw64/mingw-w64-x86\_64-aspell-en  
> pacman -S mingw64/mingw-w64-x86\_64-aspell-fr

Then you need to setup your Emacs config file:

> ;; aspell must be in your PATH  
> (setq ispell-program-name “aspell”)  
> ;; dictionnary at startup  
> (setq ispell-dictionary “english”)

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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![altomcat](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/forum.systemcrafters.net/altomcat/32/583_2.png) [@altomcat](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/u/altomcat)
#### Post date: [July 4, 2024, 11:14am UTC](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/t/i-think-i-just-started-emacs-at-the-right-time/834/9 "2024-07-04T11:14:40Z")

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> [@alphapapa](#):
>
> barking up the wrong tree

I like this idiomatic expression and push it to my org notes by the way. 🤣

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### Author: ![TriAttack](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/forum.systemcrafters.net/triattack/32/628_2.png) [@TriAttack](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/u/TriAttack)
#### Post date: [July 4, 2024, 4:43pm UTC](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/t/i-think-i-just-started-emacs-at-the-right-time/834/10 "2024-07-04T16:43:52Z")

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Does this require using emacs installed by msys?

Edit: it works! Emacs can automatically find aspell

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### Author: ![alphapapa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@alphapapa](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/u/alphapapa)
#### Post date: [July 5, 2024, 12:39am UTC](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/t/i-think-i-just-started-emacs-at-the-right-time/834/11 "2024-07-05T00:39:45Z")

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Well, I certainly can’t take credit for that one. I suppose a more contemporary one would be, “Sir, this is a Wendy’s,” but I didn’t make that one up either. 😉

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### Author: ![wxie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ee59a6/32.png) [@wxie](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/u/wxie)
#### Post date: [July 5, 2024, 5:38am UTC](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/t/i-think-i-just-started-emacs-at-the-right-time/834/12 "2024-07-05T05:38:05Z")

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I have seen that you made it work. Congratulations.

Alternatively, you can try wsl if you use Windows anyway.

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### Author: ![altomcat](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/forum.systemcrafters.net/altomcat/32/583_2.png) [@altomcat](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/u/altomcat)
#### Post date: [July 5, 2024, 7:03am UTC](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/t/i-think-i-just-started-emacs-at-the-right-time/834/13 "2024-07-05T07:03:41Z")

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This one was too subtle for me to catch. Thanks to google for helping me to find the reference about Wendy’s restaurant.

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### Author: ![wolfjb](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/forum.systemcrafters.net/wolfjb/32/428_2.png) [@wolfjb](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/u/wolfjb)
#### Post date: [July 5, 2024, 6:06pm UTC](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/t/i-think-i-just-started-emacs-at-the-right-time/834/14 "2024-07-05T18:06:37Z")

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Regarding the question about `grammarly`, yes, there are a few packages available. Check MELPA for `flycheck-grammarly`, `flymake-grammarly`, and also `grammarly`. Also there is this project [GitHub - emacs-grammarly/eglot-grammarly: Eglot Clients for Grammarly](https://github.com/emacs-grammarly/eglot-grammarly) to get a `grammarly` language server for `eglot`.

Hope that helps.

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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![TriAttack](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/forum.systemcrafters.net/triattack/32/628_2.png) [@TriAttack](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/u/TriAttack)
#### Post date: [July 9, 2024, 10:23pm UTC](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/t/i-think-i-just-started-emacs-at-the-right-time/834/15 "2024-07-09T22:23:32Z")

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Thank you, I’ll try it out one day.

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### Author: ![cow\_2001](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/forum.systemcrafters.net/cow_2001/32/598_2.png) [@cow\_2001](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/u/cow_2001)
#### Post date: [July 12, 2024, 5:21am UTC](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/t/i-think-i-just-started-emacs-at-the-right-time/834/16 "2024-07-12T05:21:58Z")

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If you haven’t, read Bob’s An Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp.

(copying and pasting from [this reply](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/t/book-recommendation-thread/857/3))

Bob’s An Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp is great. Didn’t finish it, but it gave me a lot. It comes packaged under GNU Emacs and is available to read in:

1. The Info command `$ info eintr` or
2. under GNU Emacs: `C-h R eintr RET` (by default `C-h R` runs the `info-display-manual` command, which asks you for the name of the manual. The command can also be run with `M-x info-display-manual RET eintr RET`) or
3. The GNU site [https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html\_node/eintr/](https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/eintr/)

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### Author: ![benoitj](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/forum.systemcrafters.net/benoitj/32/127_2.png) [@benoitj](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/u/benoitj)
#### Post date: [July 13, 2024, 2:01pm UTC](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/t/i-think-i-just-started-emacs-at-the-right-time/834/17 "2024-07-13T14:01:43Z")

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I use emacs with wsl (Ubuntu) on windows. That is the best experience in my opinion on windows

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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![TriAttack](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/forum.systemcrafters.net/triattack/32/628_2.png) [@TriAttack](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/u/TriAttack)
#### Post date: [July 13, 2024, 4:32pm UTC](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/t/i-think-i-just-started-emacs-at-the-right-time/834/18 "2024-07-13T16:32:05Z")

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Thank you for the recommendation! I’ve been thinking of making a package one day, so this could be very useful.

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### Author: ![EMacAdie9](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ad7895/32.png) [@EMacAdie9](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/u/EMacAdie9)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2024, 4:52am UTC](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/t/i-think-i-just-started-emacs-at-the-right-time/834/19 "2024-07-15T04:52:39Z")

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You can use scoop to install Emacs and aspell. I have not tried it, but there are scoop packages for both.

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### Author: ![wolfjb](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/forum.systemcrafters.net/wolfjb/32/428_2.png) [@wolfjb](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/u/wolfjb)
#### Post date: [July 19, 2024, 9:21pm UTC](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/t/i-think-i-just-started-emacs-at-the-right-time/834/20 "2024-07-19T21:21:41Z")

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Yep, it’s how I get Emacs and aspell on MS Windows on the rare occasions I have to use that OS.
