Harley Hahn’s Emacs Field Guide

Emacs, the world’s most powerful text editor-based work environment, is easy to use, but far from easy to learn. As such, integrating Emacs into your personal world of thinking and creating is a long-term process.

Harley Hahn, one of the most respected technical authors in the world, makes learning fun and stimulating. In this book, Hahn demystifies Emacs for programmers, students, and everyday users.

The first part of the book carefully creates a context for your work with Emacs. What exactly is Emacs? How does it relate to your personal need to work quickly and to solve problems? Hahn then explains the technical details you need to understand to work with your operating system, the various interfaces, and your file system.

In the second part of the book, Hahn provides an authoritative guide to the fundamentals of thinking and creating within the Emacs environment. You start by learning how to install and use Emacs with Linux, BSD-based Unix, Mac OS X, or Microsoft Windows.

You then move on to learn about:

• Special Emacs keys
• Emacs commands
• Buffers and windows
• Cursor, point, and region
• Kill/delete, move/copy, correcting, spell checking, and filling
• Searching, including regular expressions
• Emacs major modes and minor modes
• Customizing using your .emacs file
• Built-in tools, including Dired
• Games and Diversions

Written with Hahn’s clear, comfortable, and engaging style, Harley Hahn’s Emacs Field Guide will surprise you: an engaging book to enjoy now, a comprehensive reference to treasure for years to come.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: All About Emacs
Chapter 2: Unix for Emacs Users
Chapter 3: Installing Emacs
Chapter 4: The Emacs Keyboard
Chapter 5: Starting and Stopping Emacs
Chapter 6: Commands, Buffers, Windows
Chapter 7: The Text Editing Work Environment
Chapter 8: The Cursor; Line Numbers; Point and Mark; The Region
Chapter 9: Kill and Delete; Move and Copy; Correct Mistakes; Spelling; Fill
Chapter 10: Searching
Chapter 11: Modes; Customizing Using Your .emacs File
Chapter 12: Shell Commands; Help and Info; Programs and Games
Appendix A: Personal Notes
Appendix B: Command Summaries