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Emacs Application Framework

Emacs Application Framework (EAF) is a GUI application framework for Emacs that revolutionizes its multimedia and graphical capabilities to ultimately Live in Emacs.

EAF supports Linux, Windows, macOS, and FreeBSD.

EAF Vision

Emacs, the extensible text editor, is more than 45 years old, older than most operating systems people use today, as old as the first UNIX system. During the 45 years of development, the brightest hackers from all over the world have been contributing their intelligence and imagination, together constructed the most comprehensive and rich ecosystem that you can find in any software to date.

If you are a hacker who works with numerous programming languages, who desires maximum freedom, extensibility and introspectivity into your tools, and into keyboard/text centrism, Emacs will be your best bet.

However, one of the greatest disadvantages of Emacs is how old it is. Emacs lacks performance as it doesn't have proper multithreading and modern graphical support that you can expect on many GUI applications today (such as IDEA or VSCode), resulting in the extensibility of Emacs to be limited when it shouldn't have to be.

The vision of the EAF project is that, while retaining the culture and the ecosystem of Emacs, use Python, Qt5, and JavaScript to extend Emacs' graphical capabilities, with the hope to ultimately Live in Emacs.

Applications

Browser	Pdf Viewer

Music Player	File Manager

EAF is an extensible framework. It comes with a number of useful applications, and you can develop any Qt5 application and integrate it into Emacs.

• Browser: Full-featured browser
• PDF Viewer: The fastest PDF reader
• Terminal: Full-featured terminal
• JS Video Player: Video player based on plyr.js
• Video Player: Video player base on Qt
• Markdown Previewer: Markdown file previewer in Emacs
• Org Previewer: Org file previewer in Emacs
• Music Player: Music player, support playlist and audio visual
• File Manager: File manager, support file real-time preview
• Mindmap: Mindmap with full-featured keyboard operation
• Jupyter: Jupyter in Emacs
• Image Viewer: Picture viewer, supporting real-time zoom rotation
• Camera: Use camera in Emacs
• System Monitor: System monitor base on Vue.js
• Netease Cloud Music: EAF frontend for netease cloud music
• File Browser: Browse file in mobile phone
• File Sender: Share file between Emacs and mobile phone
• Airshare: Share text between Emacs and mobile phone
• Demo: EAF Application demo base on Qt
• Vue Demo: EAF Application demo base on Vue.js

EmacsConf2020 - Extend Emacs to Modern GUI Applications with EAF

• EAF talk & demo at EmacsConf2020, presented to you by MatthewZMD
• Homepage (Q&A included): https://emacsconf.org/2020/talks/34/
• Youtube link:

Install

1. Download EAF

git clone --depth=1 -b master https://github.com/emacs-eaf/emacs-application-framework.git ~/.emacs.d/site-lisp/emacs-application-framework/

• Alternatively, you can use a Quelpa recipe

  (quelpa '(eaf :fetcher github
                :repo  "manateelazycat/emacs-application-framework"
                :files ("*")))

2. Install EAF dependencies

cd emacs-application-framework
chmod +x ./install-eaf.py
./install-eaf.py

There are many useful flags available for install-eaf.py, check it yourself using --help.

3. Load EAF:

From here on, you can either add the full path to the EAF installation directory to your Emacs load-path, then add the following to init.el:

(add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/site-lisp/emacs-application-framework/")
(require 'eaf)

• Alternatively, if you use use-package, you can use the following sample configuration for your convenience.

  (use-package eaf
    :load-path "~/.emacs.d/site-lisp/emacs-application-framework" ; Set to "/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/eaf" if installed from AUR
    :custom
    (eaf-browser-continue-where-left-off t)
    :config
    (setq eaf-browser-enable-adblocker t")
    (eaf-bind-key scroll_up "C-n" eaf-pdf-viewer-keybinding)
    (eaf-bind-key scroll_down "C-p" eaf-pdf-viewer-keybinding)
    (eaf-bind-key take_photo "p" eaf-camera-keybinding)
    (eaf-bind-key nil "M-q" eaf-browser-keybinding)) ;; unbind, see more in the Wiki

4. Load EAF apps:

You can use below code to load applications browser pdf-viewer js-video-player, more applications please check Applications:

(require 'eaf-browser)
(require 'eaf-pdf-viewer)
(require 'eaf-js-video-player)
...

5. Hooray!

Congratulations, you just installed EAF! You can try M-x eaf-open-demo (that is if you have demo installed, of course) to see if everything works properly, and enjoy the new possibilities of Emacs.

I highly encourage you to read the Wiki and FAQ if you have any questions.

Also, I encourage periodically git pull and run install-eaf.py again to update EAF, applications and relating dependencies. If you encounter a bug while using it, see the instruction on how to Report bug

Dependency List

You can check app/name/package.json and app/name/dependencies.json for EAF application dependencies.

Launch EAF Applications

• EAF Browser and PDF Viewer support Emacs built-in bookmark operation, with M-x bookmark-set (defaulted to C-x r m) and M-x bookmark-bmenu-list (defaulted to C-x r l).

Keybindings

Global Keybindings

Bottom Pop Edit Buffer Keybindings

Wiki

It is highly suggested to read the Wiki first before using EAF.

Wiki consists of documentations on:

• Keybindings
• Customization
• Design
• TODOLIST

There also are some helpful tips to make EAF work with Docker, Helm, etc.

FAQ

How does EAF work?

EAF implements three major functionalities:

1. Integrate PyQt program window into Emacs frame using QWindow Reparent technology.
2. Listen to EAF buffer's keyboard event flow and control the keyboard input of PyQt program via Python EPC.
3. Create a window compositer to make a PyQt program window adapt Emacs' Window/Buffer design.

Learn more from the Wiki!

EAF vs EXWM?

1. EAF and EXWM share a common goal: enhance collaboration between the standard GNU Emacs with other GUI tools.
2. EXWM is an X11 Window Manager, it manages and controls other software using a keyboard, but it cannot modify, customize and extend the behavior of other software.
3. EAF is not a Window Manager, it utilizes the windows managing capabilities of Emacs to display its applications.
4. The intention of EAF is to provide a framework to write PyQt5 applications that extends the multimedia experience of Emacs. From the perspective of Emacs' buffer/mode design, EAF is not different from any other package, with the former uses Qt for drawing contents while the latter uses Emacs' built-in text libraries instead.
5. Through EAF's design, one can use Elisp to control Python and vice versa, and even able to use Elisp to control JavaScript in EAF Browser. EAF enables Emacs to the world of multi-language scripting.

Both projects are similar in terms of interface, but they are two completely different projects with different goals in mind. Sometimes one may find EAF is more suitable than EXWM, sometimes it's the other way around. Please do not meaninglessly compare them.

macOS

Currently, macOS is only partially supported and needs a lot of testing, not all functions can work normally, please check the Wiki for details.

Browser crashes

Please DO NOT install PyQt5 through pip, pip version has bug, please install PyQt5 from the OS software repository.

EAF js-video-player can't play some video on Windows and Mac. Why?

js-video-player requires that qtwebengine built against ffmpeg to support proprietary codecs like h264/aac.

Why doesn't EAF receive input events on Linux Window Manager?

EAF confirms that the desktop environment or window manager you can work includes: KDE, Gnome2, Gnome3, Mate, Xfce, LXDE, Sway, i3, QTile, Xpra, EXWM.

We suspect there are some issues with how all the Window Managers implement their x11 protocols.

One workaround is to name of command wmctrl -m to the elisp list eaf-wm-focus-fix-wms. Fill an issue if it still doesn't work.

Proxy

If you need to use proxy to access internet, one can configure the proxy settings.

(setq eaf-proxy-type "http")
(setq eaf-proxy-host "127.0.0.1")
(setq eaf-proxy-port "1080")

If you use Socks5 as local proxy, one can set proxy type with:

(setq eaf-proxy-type "socks5")

EAF in the community

A list of other community packages that use EAF to enhance their graphical experiences!

If we missed your package, please make a PR to add it to the list.

• obr-viz: visualizing org-brain relationships using EAF

Report bug

For any installation and configuration assistance, please read the Wiki first!

If you encounter a problem with EAF, and it occurred after pulling the latest commit, please check the Mandatory Procedures to Keep Your EAF Up-To-Date page first.

For any other problems, please use emacs -q and load a minimal setup with only EAF to verify that the bug is reproducible. If emacs -q works fine, probably something is wrong with your Emacs config.

If the problem persists, please report it here with *eaf* buffer content, it contains many clues that can help us locate the problem faster.

If you got segfault error, please use the following way to collect crash information:

1. Install gdb and turn on option eaf-enable-debug
2. Use command eaf-stop-process stop current process
3. Restart eaf, send issue with *eaf* buffer content when next crash

Join Us

Do you want to make Emacs a real "operating system"?

Do you want to live in Emacs more comfortably?

Do you want to revolutionize the capabilities of Emacs?

Let's hack together!

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