scimax - Awesome editing for scientists and engineers

Scimax is an Emacs starterkit for scientists and engineers. It provides a comprehensive configuration of Emacs for scientific programming and publishing.

See the manual for more details.

[2021-01-02 Sat] new features

It has been about two years since I noted the last new features. Here are few new features:

1. org-db - index your org-files into sqlite and then be able to search them
   1. scimax-contacts - an org-db add-on to help you find and use contacts
2. scimax-editmarks - a new markup for editing org-files and more.
3. scimax-@-links - use the @ key to easily insert a link from many different sources
4. scimax-hydra - a leader key like menu to use scimax

<2018-02-28 Wed> scimax 2.0

It is an update of scimax, and the main new features are:

1. Major overhaul on ipython. See ./scimax-ipython.org.
2. A dashboard feature: ./scimax-dashboard.el
3. A new inkscape link: ./scimax-inkscape.el
4. You can put images on links with images in the description: ./scimax-link-thumbnails.el
5. Functional text: ./scimax-functional-text.el

And probably more.

Installation

Windows users

Install git (http://git-scm.com/download/win). Open a git bash terminal. Run this command.

bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jkitchin/scimax/master/install-scimax-win.sh)"

There is an emacs 25.2 binary in this repository for Windows. You should be able to run the scimax.sh command to launch scimax now.

Mac users

Run the next command in your terminal in the location you want to install scimax. The command will make sure you have homebrew, git, and emacs installed, and then will clone scimax and tell you how to use it. It will take some time to install. You need to install your own Python and LaTeX. These days I am using Python3 from Continuum IO and MacTeX from http://www.tug.org/mactex.

bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jkitchin/scimax/master/install-scimax-mac.sh)"

Alternative manual installation of scimax for Mac users

Alternatively, you can install homebrew yourself, install git from http://git-scm.com/download/mac, build your emacs like this:

brew install emacs --with-gnutls --with-imagemagick --with-librsvg --with-x11 --use-git-head --HEAD --with-cocoa

Alternatively, lately I have been using emacs-plus which claims to be faster for magit and has all those options enabled by default.

brew tap d12frosted/emacs-plus
brew install emacs-plus

This got me:

(emacs-version)

After that, I clone scimax like this:

git clone https://github.com/jkitchin/scimax.git

and launch emacs with:

emacs -q -l scimax/init.el

Linux users

Run this command. It checks for a git and emacs, but does not install them. You will have to use your package manager for that. You also need to install your own LaTeX and Python (and other languages you might want).

bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jkitchin/scimax/master/install-scimax-linux.sh)"

Manual installation

You can use your own emacs if you have one (version 25 or more is recommended). You still have to install Python and LaTeX if you will be using those.

Clone the scimax repo where you want it.

git clone https://github.com/jkitchin/scimax.git

and launch emacs with:

emacs -q -l path/to/scimax/init.el

Alternatively, add scimax to your load path in your init file and just require what you want.

(setq scimax-dir "path/to/scimax")
(add-to-list 'load-path "path/to/scimax")

It is not uncommon to have to restart emacs a few times while all the packages from MELPA are installed. Windows seems to be like that.

Funding for scimax

scimax development has been partially supported by the following grants:

• National Science Foundation (Award 1506770)
• Department of Energy Early Career Award (DESC0004031)
• You can sponsor scimax development at https://github.com/sponsors/jkitchin.