configuration VS helm-bibtex

FWIW I have this little Perl script that fetches BibTeX from doi.org for DOI numbers: https://github.com/cadadr/configuration/blob/76466b1342aaadfddf3453ab70ada4a15e82afbb/bin/doi2bib.pl I searched a lot for a way to make something similar for ISBN -> BibTeX to no avail...

If you're writing LaTeX without using any supporting software, it will be harder. But there are some things that you can use to make life way easier. One of these is the concept of "snippets". In Emacs I use something called yasnippet, and it works like this: I define a snippet like this or even something more elaborate like this. They have "trigger words". E.g. for the second one, I type "report" in a file and hit TAB. It inserts all that "snippet" to the file, and I can edit parts marked as $1, $2 and similar, jumping between them using TAB. I use this with Org mode, which is like Markdown, so it's not much different from typing into Word, essentially. There's some initial work figuring out how to do something like a syntax tree or say an equation, but once you figure a pattern out you can make it into a template using snippets and it's easier than Word once you have that.

There are some examples in my init.el, you can find them if you search for :after.

The way I do python is, I've a proxy shell script which I set as the python interpreter in Emacs.

One particular thing I can suggest for equations is dynamic latex equation previews, which toggles TeX source when the cursor is on an equation but when it goes out of it it toggles a rendered preview. See this and this, adapted from this).

Wrt LSP specifically, I only use it with python and the whole config is this couple lines plus this hook. IDK how lsp-mode is configured but this works fairly well for me, and actual Python config is a bit more cumbersome (because Microsoft comes up with a new Python LSP package every other day and you can't know which one to deal with...). It hooks into Emacs' complete-symbol (i.e. C-M-i), so if company or whatever (sorry, I don't really know those packages well, there was auto-something too but IDK which one is better or recommended these days) does use that mechanism as a backend, it should work seamlessly. I've made these little bindings to quickly pick a completion from the *Completions* window (gk-interactively is just a macro that expands to (lambda () ). Again, eglot hooks into Emacs' completion mechanism, so I'd risk a guess that helm or ivy would just work with that. Personally I don't like these completion frameworks because again they look to me like they are somewhat useful but not enough to warrant their complexity. I like good old completing-read, with some modern configuration (and BTW the UI Semantics section that bit is in in my init.el contains a lot of what you could call "saner defaults"). Notably they've added some very neat structural and fuzzy matching abilities starting with 25.1 IIRC and I don't even feel the need to turn ido on when those features are enabled.

I have a little project system that I use a lot and is a life saver: https://github.com/cadadr/configuration/tree/3e11ef25344188cc55b16f314c3c5358ace8a266/emacs.d/init.el#L1249 It's simple but it's very helpful. I like to have a project command view with dired at root on the left and magit or vc.el on the right, and I can go back to that view with a single command, gk-home, bound to the Home key. Popping a shell at bottom like yakuake with a single keybinding to gk-pop-shell is very useful too. I use frame parameters to tie projects up with frames so these two functions know what to do in each project frame. Titles are set up such that it's easy to find a particular frame with something like Rofi.

Depends on what you want to do. Linux is a more welcoming environment for programmers and an OS-level package manager is very helpful. I have one big repo for all my configs, and if my computer failed today I can get up and running on anything else in a couple hours, typing a few commands only. With Windows it's always a manual process and takes longer. And sometimes Windows makes some programmers' tasks too hard, like setting environment variables, etc. And more advanced things like scripting, virtualisation, containers, etc. are generally easier to do in Linux.

E.g. a very important detail IMHO is the active vs. inactive modelines. In your light theme they are virtually the same, so you need to chase the cursor to find the active window. The first thing I modify in themes I use is to make modeline colours such that inactive one is faded but still legible, and active modeline really stands out: https://github.com/cadadr/configuration/blob/bf8b87c36dbab85d1ec35f3c9aa6f7d3c5e1f347/emacs.d/init.el#L5842 In general if you're not limited by a palette it's easier to adjust everything perfectly.

This on its own is a great system for writing such notes. However, it is very lacking in searchability. If you want the notes, you need to go find them. To solve this, you first need a package to manage your bibliography in Emacs. These function with a .bib file that I assume you already can obtain through Mendeley. To my knowledge, there are two great packages for this, citar and bibtex-completion (which is actually two packages ivy-bibtex and helm-bibtex). Depending on the completion framework you are using (Ivy, Helm or Vertico/Selectrum) you can use one of these. These packages read from a bibliography file and make your life so much easier in finding the research paper you are looking for. They also have another neat feature. They allow you to create notes for your bibtex entries with ready customisable templates. This makes this whole process so much easier as you can find a paper you want to read, create a note for it with one of these packages and then link it to its pdf with org-noter. This way you have a fully-fledged research workflow inside Emacs.

I have a question regarding org-ref, bibtex-completion and ivy-bibtex respectively. I have org-ref set up as suggested by John Kitchin on his github page. This is some of the relevant code, i guess.

no multiple selection (ivy has it, but not ivy-bibtex, see https://github.com/tmalsburg/helm-bibtex/issues/308)

There is already a completing-read implementation of helm-bibtex/ivy-bibtex in the works which is supposed to be used with Selectrum/Icomplete/Consult etc. See https://github.com/tmalsburg/helm-bibtex/pull/361 and https://github.com/tmalsburg/helm-bibtex/pull/355. Maybe you can collaborate with /u/bdarcus?

This got me pointed in the right direction. I just need to now write the helper function to grab that extended metadata.

I also second the suggestion of another poster on counsel, swiper, ivy, etc. (I love this suite and the various add-ons). I'd add ivy-bibtex.