Emacs tips

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This page of emacs usage tips was originally written for my fellow ArsDigita Web/DB bootcampers. The current version includes stuff incorporated from an earlier set of help pages written for my colleagues at BMERC.

[Note: I am in the process of reorganizing this, so some of the links may be broken. Please bear with me. -- rgr, 27-May-00.]

Table of contents

Contents of this page:

1. Emacs tips
   1. Table of contents
   2. Notation conventions
   3. Learning emacs
      1. Other resources for learning emacs

Other pages in this set:

Keyboard issues

Is emacs designed give you Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS)? Not if you have a sensible keyboard layout.

emacs self-documentation commands

This covers the C-h (for "help") commands, which let emacs tell you about itself.

Advanced emacs usage tips

These are the things that, in my opinion, makes emacs particularly worthwhile; I use them constantly.

Other useful emacs customizations

This is a subset of my own emacs customization code that I have exported for general use.

• Use the built-in emacs tutorial. Simply start emacs and type C-h t; follow instructions from there.
• Look through the "Other resources" pages below, bring your favorite up in a browser next to emacs, and experiment.
• Or, get one of the O'Reilly emacs offerings mentioned below, and start playing.

If you don't have access to emacs, then your options are much more limited. I emphatically don't recommend trying to learn emacs solely from a book; you'll only put yourself to sleep. If you can't download and install it yourself on your machine, then you're best off glancing at, say, the emacsis.great tutorial page, and otherwise waiting until you can get your hands on a keyboard.

Other resources for learning emacs

• Dave Cohen's emacs cheat sheet, written by an alumnus of the August 1999 bootcamp.
• Also, Bob Rogers' extended version of Dave Cohen's emacs cheat sheet.
• Tutorial outline for the tutorial presented at bootcamp on 4-Oct-99.
• www.refcards.org has an information-rich emacs reference card (which doesn't seem to want to print on printers of vintage 1995 or earlier).

Tutorials and other longer articles:

• The Linux Emacs Beginner's HOWTO by Jeremy D. Zawodny gives a good overview of emacs that is not specific to Linux. It is available from http://www.wcnet.org/jzawodn/emacs/ as well as from http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Emacs-Beginner-HOWTO.html.
• emacsis.great tutorial page (not hypertext), with a topical command summary at the bottom. This is very dense, and covers a lot of ground.
• GNU emacs FAQ. This is also available in emacs itself by typing "C-h F" (note that the "F" must be capitalized). The Web version is hypertext, though it isn't very easy to navigate, and it does have a reference page that points to all kinds of good stuff. The version within emacs is not hypertext, but it's all on one page, and you can use C-s (incremental search) to find things of interest.