A simple Emacs minor mode for a nice writing environment.

• 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) or a fraction of the window width (a float between 0.0 and 1.0).
• 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.
• 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. For those looking for a hardcore distraction-free writing mode with a much larger scope, I recommend writeroom-mode: https://github.com/joostkremers/writeroom-mode.

• Emacs 24.5

The latest stable release of Olivetti is available via MELPA-stable and can be installed with:

M-x package-install RET olivetti RET

Alternately, download the latest release, move this file into your load-path and add to your .emacs/init.el file:

(require 'olivetti)

If you prefer the latest but perhaps unstable version, install via MELPA, or clone the repository into your load-path and require as above:

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

Please report bugs and request features at: https://github.com/rnkn/olivetti/issues

To always use a different width for a specific file, set a File Variable:

M-x add-file-local-variable RET olivetti-body-width RET 66 RET

See (info "(emacs) File Variables")