Requirements

macOS

This entire setup is written from a macOS perspective. If you know your system, you can adapt everything in here to your setup, whether it is Linux or Windows.

Essentially that means you can get a sub-$100 device and a nice keyboard, hook it up to a hotel’s TV set or a small projector and have a decent writing setup without having to deal with a dinky laptop keyboard. Or this Atari thing even.

Spelling Engine

With Emacs you have the choice of several spelling engines. I chose Aspell because I like the way it suggest words that actually match my intent.

It is set in this area here:

(with-eval-after-load "ispell"
	(setq ispell-program-name "aspell")
	(ispell-set-spellchecker-params)
	(setq ispell-dictionary "en_GB"))

To install Aspell, we use Homebrew again. Type brew install aspell to install it. You can find some language installation options beforehand with either brew info aspell or by going to the brew formula page.

Fonts

I use the following fonts in my setup. Download them if you just want to see how it feels before entering your own.

• Input Mono Narrow - Base font - Font Bureau
• PxPlus IBM VGA8 - Emacs Shell font - Oldschool PC Fonts
• iA Writer Mono S - Font for monospaced writing - iA Fonts
• iA Writer Quattro S - Font for variable spaced writing - iA Font

For screenshots of actual documents and for mock-ups, I use

• Blokk Neue - For headings - BLOKK Font
• Redacted Script - For body text - Redacted