Write Paper With Spacemacs and Org Mode

• I will use C-x for "Ctrl + x", C-X for "Ctrl + Shift + x", M-x for "Alt + x", etc.
• I will use SPC for the space key.
• Notice in VIM mode, SPC SPC is equivalent to M-x. Both allow you to execute an Emacs command.

If you already know Spacemacs setup, you can skip this section.

Layers in Spacemacs are a bunch of packages put together for a specific purpose. We will be using latex, bibtex, and org layers.

In Spacemacs, SPC f e d to open the .spacemacs file. Spacemacs key sequences usually follow a logical order. In this case f represents "files", e represents "emacs", d represents "dot-file". the "dot-file" is the Spacemacs configuration file, normally located at ~/.spacemacs.

In dot-file, search for the variable dotspacemacs-configuration-layers, ignoring the comments, it should look somewhat like the following:

dotspacemacs-configuration-layers
'()

This is where we add layers. We need to add latex, bibtex, and org and the variable now looks like the following. auto-completion and shell are also absolutely recommended for obvious reasons. helm should already be installed when you install Spacemacs.

dotspacemacs-configuration-layers
'(
  latex
  bibtex
  org
  helm
  auto-completion
  shell
  ;; other layers go here
  )

Save this file by SPC f s Now SPC q r to restart Spacemacs. Spacemacs will install and configure these layers automatically.

Find your favorite place in the file system and create a new folder. The files we will be editing has a .org suffix. I will use paper.org in the rest of this post.

In Latex, we usually start with the following lines

\title{Awesome Title}
\author{ My Awesome Name }
\date{\today}
\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\begin{document}
\maketitle
\end{document}

Then we copy these lines around all the time.

With org-mode, we do not need to deal with these nonsense anymore. Most of these lines will be generated by default. Instead we need the following

#+TITLE: Awesome Title
#+AUTHOR: My Awesome Name

These lines are self-explanatory.

Most of the common Latex packages are included by default, such as amsmath and graphicx. If you need additional package, for example geometry to control the margins, you can add the following line.

#+LATEX_HEADER: \usepackage[top=0.5in]{geometry}

Any options that normally appears at the top of the Latex file can be added this way, for example, we can remove indentation by adding

#+LATEX_HEADER: {\setlength{\parindent}{0cm}

Remember typing \Section and \item all the time? It is simpler with org. I highly recommend check out the org manual at http://orgmode.org/manual/. I will cover some basic usage here. Here is a basic example

* This is a section
** This is a subsection
  1. enumerate item 1
  2. enumerate item 2
  3. enumerate item 3
     - itemize item 1
     - itemize item 2
     - itemize item 3
  *bold*, /italic/, =code=

This piece of org text will be formatted into the following Latex code

\section*{This is a section}
\subsection*{This is a subsection}
\begin{enumerate}
\item enumerate item 1
\item enumerate item 2
\item enumerate item 3
\begin{itemize}
\item itemize item 1
\item itemize item 2
\item itemize item 3
\end{itemize}
\end{enumerate}
\textbf{bold}, \emph{italic}, \texttt{code}

Looks great?

You can Export to PDF by the following keystrokes. First C-c C-e will open a export dispatch. You can follow the instructions in the window and press l p to export to a pdf file, or press l o to generate the file and open it.

(Don't tell your rhetoric teacher)

Important! We need to tell Latex to use bibtex. Otherwise you will be running into weird issues like I did. Add the following lines to the user-config section of the .spacemacs file. So that the user config looks like the following.

(defun dotspacemacs/user-config ()
  (setq org-latex-pdf-process 
     '("latexmk -pdflatex='pdflatex -interaction nonstopmode' -pdf -bibtex -f %f"))
  ;; Other configurations
  )

Restart Spacemacas or simply reload the .spacemacs file by SPC f e R for this change to take effect.

Now we need to create a .bib file to hold the references. You can find out more about bibtex here. Lets call the .bib file ref.bib. Now at the end of paper.org, add the following lines

bibliographystyle:ieeetr
bibliography:ref.bib

The first line tells the bibtex to use IEEE style. You can also change it to other styles. The bibliography will not work until you provide a correct style. The second line is the place to search for references.

Now press C-c ] to open helm-bibtex buffer. You can type in the title of any paper, then C-n to your preferred reference site (e.g. Arxiv) and press Enter. You will get a list of search results. Put the cursor on the paper you want and press c to copy or C to copy and close the search window. Now go to ref.bib, paste the entry there and save.

Now go back to paper.org, press C-c ] again. This time you will see the entry you just saved is displayed. Press enter to insert it at any place. Export the file to pdf and all references are magically generated.