Clojure With Light Table and Emacs Keybindings

When I teach people Clojure I use Light Table because it is really simple to use and its Instarepl gives instant feedback of the code as you type it. This feedback helps you understand Clojure quickly and gives you more confidence when coding.

As I do most of my Clojure development (and most everything else) in Emacs I really miss the excellent Emacs keybindings when I use Light Table. Luckily there is an Emacs plugin for Light Table, so here is a quick guide on how to install & use this Emacs plugin.

Install Emacs plugin for Light Table

Light Table has many plugins available and the easiest way to install them is with the plugin manager. In Light Table, open the command bar with Ctrl-Space (Cmd-Space on MacOSX) and type plugin

Select the plugin manager and a new window opens, listing all the currently installed plugins. Select the available tab in this window.

There are many plugins, so type emacs to quickly find the plugin. Then select install on the Emacs plugin

At the time of writing, installing this plugin generates a warning message due to a format change in Light Table 0.7.0. The plugin still works correctly however.

Add Emacs plugin to Light Table user.behavior

Finally, we need to edit the Light Table user behaviours to use the Emacs keybindings with the editor.

Open the command bar with Ctrl-Space (Cmd-Space on MacOSX) and type behavior, selecting on the Settings: user Behaviours command.

In the user behaviours window that opens, edit the configuration by adding the following line to the editor section

[:editor :lt.plugins.emacs/activate-emacs]

The user behaviors configuration should look something like this:

The format of user.behaviour has changed from Light Table version 0.7.0 onwards. Configuration is now defined using vectors or maps, rather than lists as before. At the time of writing, the configuration line on the Github repository README.md is incorrect (a pull request has been created).

Using Emacs keybindings with Light Table

The Emacs keybindings seem to be exactly what you would expect in Emacs. Obviously there are a few differences between the design of Light Table and Emacs, although conceptually things seem to work the same.

Here are a few keybindings that may not be immediately obvious:

Alt-x - opens the command bar so you can find the command you want by typing - in the same way as you use meta-x in Emacs.

C-x f - open a file using the system file manager (Ctrl-Shift-o in Light Table default keybinding)

C-x C-f - select a file from those added to the Light Table workspace - the Light Table Navigate: Open Navigate command is called.

C-x o - switch to next window tab on the right - similar to the next buffer window in Emacs.

C-x k - close the current tab - similar to killing a buffer, but without a choice.

Alt-g g - go to line.

C-x h - select all.

C-x C-e - evaluate all the code in the current tab.

You can see all the Emacs keybindings at the Emacs Plugin Github repository.

Have fun with Light Table and Emacs keybindings. If you have any modifications of the Emacs keybindings you find useful, please share them in the comments.

Thank you.
@jr0cket

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