Emacs
From Global Shellz Wiki
The GNU Emacs manual describes it as "the extensible, customizable, self-documenting, real-time display editor."
- In 1976, Guy Steele started unifying the macros in "E" editor. Richard Stallman finished the implementation to make it possible to extend and document the new macros. The new project was called EMACS, which stood for "Editing MACroS", or "E with MACroS".
- In 1984, Stallman worked on GNU Emacs to make a free software alternative to Goblins (James Gosling, the Java language inventor) Emacs which was proprietary. The GNU Emacs was the first program released by GNU project. This started as a fork, but turned out to be a substantial rewrite. GNU Emacs is in C with extensions in Emacs Lisp.
- On the systems in which Emacs was first implemented, Emacs sometimes ran than other text editors, because loading and interpreting the Lisp code is slow. Jokes include naming Emacs:
- Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping,
- Emacs Makes A Computer Slow,
- Eventually Mallocs All Computer Storage, and
- Eventually Makes All Computers Sick.
Emacs became one of the two sides of the traditional editor wars, the other side being vi.
Contents |
Start
To start emacs,
$ emacs
File Edit Options Buffers Tools Help Welcome to GNU Emacs, one component of the GNU/Linux operating system. Get help C-h (Hold down CTRL and press h) Emacs manual C-h r Browse manuals C-h i Emacs tutorial C-h t Undo changes C-x u Buy manuals C-h RET Exit Emacs C-x C-c Activate menubar M-` (`C-' means use the CTRL key. `M-' means use the Meta (or Alt) key. If you have no Meta key, you may instead type ESC followed by the character.) Useful tasks: Visit New File Open Home Directory Customize Startup Open *scratch* buffer GNU Emacs 23.2.1 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.24.4) of 2011-04-04 on rothera, modified by Debian Copyright (C) 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc. GNU Emacs comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; type C-h C-w for full details. Emacs is Free Software--Free as in Freedom--so you can redistribute copies of Emacs and modify it; type C-h C-c to see the conditions. Type C-h C-o for information on getting the latest version. If an Emacs session crashed recently, type Meta-x recover-session RET to recover the files you were editing. -UUU:%%--F1 *GNU Emacs* All L1 (Fundamental)------------------------------------ For information about GNU Emacs and the GNU system, type C-h C-a. |
Self-documentation
`C-h k` command (CTRL+h, t), followed by a shortcut, opens a new buffer with its documentation. Eg. `C-h k C-g` outputs help for the `C-g` shortcut:
File Edit Options Buffers Tools Help Emacs tutorial. See end for copying conditions. Emacs commands generally involve the CONTROL key (sometimes labeled CTRL or CTL) or the META key (sometimes labeled EDIT or ALT). Rather than write that in full each time, we'll use the following abbreviations: C-<chr> means hold the CONTROL key while typing the character <chr> Thus, C-f would be: hold the CONTROL key and type f. M-<chr> means hold the META or EDIT or ALT key down while typing <chr>. If there is no META, EDIT or ALT key, instead press and release the ESC key and then type <chr>. We write <ESC> for the ESC key. -UU-:----F1 TUTORIAL Top L1 (Fundamental)------------------------------------ C-g runs the command keyboard-quit, which is an interactive compiled Lisp function. It is bound to C-g. (keyboard-quit) Signal a `quit' condition. During execution of Lisp code, this character causes a quit directly. At top-level, as an editor command, this simply beeps. [back] -UUU:%%--F1 *Help* All L1 (Help View)-------------------------------------- |
Tutorial
To open the tutorial, `C-h t` - it has all the needed information on most commonly used key shortcuts and commands.
One of features is that Emacs doesn't recommend using arrow keys to navigate its buffers, but rather employing only the main keyboard part. This is said to be faster, because this main area is smaller, and the user is expected to use two-key shortcuts to navigate.
File Edit Options Buffers Tools Help Emacs tutorial. See end for copying conditions. Emacs commands generally involve the CONTROL key (sometimes labeled CTRL or CTL) or the META key (sometimes labeled EDIT or ALT). Rather than write that in full each time, we'll use the following abbreviations: C-<chr> means hold the CONTROL key while typing the character <chr> Thus, C-f would be: hold the CONTROL key and type f. M-<chr> means hold the META or EDIT or ALT key down while typing <chr>. If there is no META, EDIT or ALT key, instead press and release the ESC key and then type <chr>. We write <ESC> for the ESC key. Important note: to end the Emacs session, type C-x C-c. (Two characters.) To quit a partially entered command, type C-g. -UU-:----F1 TUTORIAL Top L1 (Fundamental)------------------------------------ |
