box.matto.nl
Enjoying Open Source Software

Posted:

Prose linting with Vale and Flycheck in Emacs on FreeBSD

Vale prose linting

Vale is a prose linting tool that runs on your local system. Because Vale is build in Go, it can run on most operating systems.

Vale works with so-called "style guides". Several style guides are available, for example, from Microsoft, Google, RedHat, and others.

See vale.sh/hub/

Prose linting org mode files in Emacs on FreeBSD

Emacs can be set up for prose linting of org-mode files with Flycheck.

Below follows a description of how to set this up on FreeBSD.

Installation of Vale on FreeBSD

Install Vale on FreeBSD with pkg install vale.

Create a directory ~/.vale/styles and populate it with one or more style guides.

Clone the style guides from https://github.com/errata-ai/packages.

The cloned repository has a sub-directory with the style guide.

An example how to install the write-good package:

cd /tmp
git clone https://github.com/errata-ai/write-good /tmp/write-good
mv /tmp/write-good/write-good ~/.vale/styles/
rm -rf /tmp/write-good

Repeat this for other packages you want to use.

Create the file ~/.vale.ini with the following contents:

StylesPath = ~/.vale/styles

MinAlertLevel = suggestion

[*.org]
BasedOnStyles = Vale, proselint, write-good, Readability

The line with "BasedOnStyles" should contain "Vale", and the packages you have installed, separated with commas.

Test that Vale works

Now test that Vale works. Take a text file, for example, "sample.txt" and call Vale with this file:

vale sample.txt

flycheck-org-vale

Clone the Emacs package "flycheck-org-vale" from https://github.com/grettke/flycheck-org-vale.

Add the configuration to your ~/.emacs file:

(use-package flycheck
  :ensure t
  :init (global-flycheck-mode))

(use-package flycheck-title
  :ensure t
  :after flycheck
  :config
  (flycheck-title-mode))

(add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/manualpackages/flycheck-org-vale")
(require 'flycheck-org-vale)

Evaluate the ~/.emacs buffer or restart Emacs to activate the added configuration.

Test the working

Open a org-mode file in Emacs. It should now show some words in yellow or red.

Open the Flycheck error buffer, with C-c ! l (lowercase L).

Editing org-mode files

Editing the org-mode file erases the Flycheck error buffer. Saving the org-mode file (C-x C-s) updates the Flycheck error buffer.

Use C-c ! n and C-c ! p to jump to the next or previous Flyspell error.

The Flycheck error buffer synchronises with the position of the point in the org-mode file.

Hit Enter on a line in the Flycheck error buffer to jump to the specific line in the org-mode buffer.

Disable Flycheck for the current buffer with C-c ! x.

Tags:

⇽ EWW survival guide Compile GnuPG 2.3.4 on FreeBSD ⇾