Basic Emacs

EMACS - "Editing Macros" originally created in 1975 by Richard Stallman as a set of macros for the now long defunct TECO editor. It became the first major piece of GPL software in the Free Software Movement.  Since then emacs has become a  *FREE*, open source, cross platform, extensible text editor and multipurpose integrated development environment (ide). Emacs supports almost every major programming technology and utility. Emacs can be used inside of a command shell or as a GUI application. Emacs has literally hundreds of commands, but you only need a few ( even less for the GUI version ) to get a tremendous amount of work done.

Quick Start - my very short guide for learning Emacs.

My Emacs Customization Collection

Getting Emacs

  • GNU Emacs Home Page ( if you use a variant of unix see your os distro's site for binary versions)
  • GNU Emacs For Microsoft Windows
  • GNU Emacs For The Macintosh OS
  • Xemacs Home Page ( an alternative to GNU emacs, also *FREE* and open source )

    • Emacs Extensions

  • Emacs Wiki ( a whole web site of extensions and supplemental emacs packages )
  • Emacs Lisp List ( Many extension packages for emacs )
  • Emacs Code Browser ( a gui file and code explorer that runs inside of emacs )
  • CUA mode ( gives emacs "windows" style keybindings and other customizations)
  • JDEE ( an extension that adds to the already good support for programming in Java )

    • Making Extensions

  • Programming in Emacs Lisp ( *FREE*, online book, everything you need to know about customizing/extending emacs )
  • GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual
  • Pymacs ( use python to extend emacs instead of lisp )

    • Emacs Clones That Fit On A Floppy

  • Jassapa Microemacs (200k download, shell version, gui version, runs on *nix and windows)
  • Jed (815K download, shell version, gui version, runs on *nix, vms, windows)
  • Jove (422K download, not actively maintained )
  • NotGNU (230k download, shell version, gui vesion, runs on linux and windows)
  • Qemacs (800k download compiles to 200k binary, runs on *nix and in the shell)
  • Zile (263k download, shell version, runs on posix unix)


    • Recommended Books

    "Learning GNU Emacs" ISBN: 1565921526.
    To get the cheapest price among the various online book sellers run a search on the ISBN at :     http:/www./bestbookbuys.com