Skip to content
<awesome-gh-repos>
vic

rnkn/olivetti

Emacs minor mode to automatically balance window margins
Source code at GitHub https://github.com/rnkn/olivetti
rnkn/olivetti.json
{
  "createdAt": "2014-04-10T09:35:34Z",
  "defaultBranch": "master",
  "description": "Emacs minor mode to automatically balance window margins",
  "fullName": "rnkn/olivetti",
  "homepage": "",
  "language": "Emacs Lisp",
  "name": "olivetti",
  "pushedAt": "2024-10-30T05:42:48Z",
  "stargazersCount": 1189,
  "topics": [
    "emacs",
    "emacs-lisp",
    "prose",
    "writing"
  ],
  "updatedAt": "2025-11-25T23:40:51Z",
  "url": "https://github.com/rnkn/olivetti"
}

Olivetti

Section titled “Olivetti”

[MELPA Stable][1] [MELPA][2]

A simple Emacs minor mode for a nice writing environment.

![olivetti screenshot]!(screenshot.png)

Features

Section titled “Features”
  • Set a desired text body width to automatically resize window margins to keep the text comfortably in the middle of the window.
  • Text body width can be the number of characters (an integer), a fraction of the window width (a float between 0.0 and 1.0), or nil which uses the value of fill-column +2.
  • Interactively change body width with:
    olivetti-shrink C-c { { { ...
    olivetti-expand C-c } } } ...
    olivetti-set-width C-c |
  • If olivetti-body-width is an integer, the text body width will scale with use of text-scale-mode, whereas if a fraction (float) then the text body width will remain at that fraction.
  • Change the way the text body margins look with option olivetti-style: use margins, fringes, or both for a fancy “page” look.
  • Customize olivetti-fringe face to affect only Olivetti buffers.
  • Optionally remember the state of visual-line-mode on entry and recall its state on exit.

Olivetti keeps everything it does buffer-local, so you can write prose in one buffer and code in another, side-by-side in the same frame.

Requirements

Section titled “Requirements”
  • Emacs 24.4

Installation

Section titled “Installation”

The latest stable release of Olivetti is available via [MELPA-stable][1]. First, add MELPA-stable to your package archives:

M-x customize-option RET package-archives RET

Insert an entry named melpa-stable with URL: https://stable.melpa.org/packages/

You can then find the latest stable version of olivetti in the list returned by:

M-x list-packages RET

If you prefer the latest but perhaps unstable version, do the above using [MELPA][2].

Advanced Installation

Section titled “Advanced Installation”

Download the latest tagged release, move this file into your load-path and add to your init.el file:

(require 'olivetti)

If you wish to contribute to or alter Olivetti’s code, clone the repository into your load-path and require as above:

git clone https://github.com/rnkn/olivetti.git

Bugs and Feature Requests

Section titled “Bugs and Feature Requests”

Use GitHub issues or send me an email (address in the package header). For bugs, please ensure you can reproduce with:

$ emacs -Q -l olivetti.el

Alternatives

Section titled “Alternatives”

For those looking for a hardcore distraction-free writing mode with a much larger scope, I recommend Writeroom Mode.

[1] !: https://stable.melpa.org/#/olivetti [2] !: https://melpa.org/#/olivetti

Donations

Section titled “Donations”

Donations are graciously accepted via [Github][3], or [Liberapay][4].

[3] !: https://github.com/sponsors/rnkn [4] !: https://liberapay.com/rnkn/