Olivetti

A simple Emacs minor mode for a nice writing environment.

Features

• Set a desired text body width to automatically resize window margins to keep the text comfortably in the middle of the window.
• Text body width can be the number of characters (an integer), a fraction of the window width (a float between 0.0 and 1.0), or nil which uses the value of fill-column +2.
• Interactively change body width with:
  olivetti-shrink C-c { { { ...
olivetti-expand C-c } } } ...
olivetti-set-width C-c |
• If olivetti-body-width is an integer, the text body width will scale with use of text-scale-mode, whereas if a fraction (float) then the text body width will remain at that fraction.
• Change the way the text body margins look with option olivetti-style: use margins, fringes, or both for a fancy "page" look.
• Customize olivetti-fringe face to affect only Olivetti buffers.
• Optionally remember the state of visual-line-mode on entry and recall its state on exit.

Olivetti keeps everything it does buffer-local, so you can write prose in one buffer and code in another, side-by-side in the same frame.

Requirements

• Emacs 24.4

Installation

The latest stable release of Olivetti is available via MELPA-stable. First, add MELPA-stable to your package archives:

M-x customize-option RET package-archives RET

Insert an entry named melpa-stable with URL: https://stable.melpa.org/packages/

You can then find the latest stable version of olivetti in the list returned by:

M-x list-packages RET

If you prefer the latest but perhaps unstable version, do the above using MELPA.

Advanced Installation

Download the latest tagged release, move this file into your load-path and add to your init.el file:

(require 'olivetti)

If you wish to contribute to or alter Olivetti's code, clone the repository into your load-path and require as above:

git clone https://github.com/rnkn/olivetti.git

Bugs and Feature Requests

Send me an email (address in the package header). For bugs, please ensure you can reproduce with:

$ emacs -Q -l olivetti.el

Hints

To always use a different width for a specific file, set a File Variable:

M-x add-file-local-variable RET olivetti-body-width RET 66 RET

See (info "(emacs) File Variables")

Alternatives

For those looking for a hardcore distraction-free writing mode with a much larger scope, I recommend Writeroom Mode.