Email with Thunderbird, Compose with Emacs

My Mac let's me use emacs keyboard shortcuts everywhere. I'm really sad that I don't get that in Linux. How the universe ever got into this state is beyond my comprehension. Mail.App has gotten me hooked on emacs keybindings when typing emails especially.

The solution in Linux, it turns out, is to just use emacs. I already have It's All Text for Firefox, with emacsclient as the editor. I just found External Editor for Thunderbird, with emacsclient as the editor and tbemail-mode for extra goodness. I think that'll do.

Comments

Karthik said…
If you're on Gnome, you're in luck.

The common emacs keys can be made to work in every text field (including the browser in Gnome.)

The short version:

gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/interface/gtk_key_theme Emacs --type string
October 8, 2010 at 11:23 PM
oylenshpeegul said…
In addition to the Gnome configuration, I also tell GTK with

echo 'gtk-key-theme-name = "Emacs"' > .gtkrc-2.0

You'll still need External Editor though, as Thunderbird is surly and won't respect C-n and C-p.
October 9, 2010 at 12:43 AM
Anonymous said…
Perhaps this is due to Firefox and Thunderbird being Windows-first applications?
October 9, 2010 at 6:00 AM
Bryan said…
Yup, I tried both the gconftool and the .gtkrc-2.0 tricks, and c-n and c-p in Thunderbird were killing me.
October 9, 2010 at 7:18 PM
Anonymous said…
That's what i was looking for.Thanks for sharing...
December 1, 2014 at 5:37 PM
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