Emacs is the extensible, customizable, self-documenting real-time display editor. This Info file describes how to edit with Emacs and some of how to customize it; it corresponds to GNU Emacs version 20.7. For information on extending Emacs, see section `' in @cite{The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual}.
This manual documents the use and simple customization of the Emacs editor. The reader is not expected to be a programmer; simple customizations do not require programming skill. But the user who is not interested in customizing can ignore the scattered customization hints.
This is primarily a reference manual, but can also be used as a primer. For complete beginners, it is a good idea to start with the on-line, learn-by-doing tutorial, before reading the manual. To run the tutorial, start Emacs and type C-h t. This way you can learn Emacs by using Emacs on a specially designed file which describes commands, tells you when to try them, and then explains the results you see.
On first reading, just skim chapters 1 and 2, which describe the notational conventions of the manual and the general appearance of the Emacs display screen. Note which questions are answered in these chapters, so you can refer back later. After reading chapter 4, you should practice the commands there. The next few chapters describe fundamental techniques and concepts that are used constantly. You need to understand them thoroughly, experimenting with them if necessary.
Chapters 14 through 19 describe intermediate-level features that are useful for all kinds of editing. Chapter 20 and following chapters describe features that you may or may not want to use; read those chapters when you need them.
Read the Trouble chapter if Emacs does not seem to be working properly. It explains how to cope with some common problems (see section Dealing with Emacs Trouble), as well as when and how to report Emacs bugs (see section Reporting Bugs). To find the documentation on a particular command, look in the index. Keys (character commands) and command names have separate indexes. There is also a glossary, with a cross reference for each term.
This manual is available as a printed book and also as an Info file. The Info file is for on-line perusal with the Info program, which will be the principal way of viewing documentation on-line in the GNU system. Both the Info file and the Info program itself are distributed along with GNU Emacs. The Info file and the printed book contain substantially the same text and are generated from the same source files, which are also distributed along with GNU Emacs.
GNU Emacs is a member of the Emacs editor family. There are many Emacs editors, all sharing common principles of organization. For information on the underlying philosophy of Emacs and the lessons learned from its development, write for a copy of AI memo 519a, "Emacs, the Extensible, Customizable Self-Documenting Display Editor," to Publications Department, Artificial Intelligence Lab, 545 Tech Square, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. At last report they charge $2.25 per copy. Another useful publication is LCS TM-165, "A Cookbook for an Emacs," by Craig Finseth, available from Publications Department, Laboratory for Computer Science, 545 Tech Square, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. The price today is $3.
This edition of the manual is intended for use with GNU Emacs installed on GNU and Unix systems. GNU Emacs can also be used on VMS, MS-DOS (also called MS-DOG), Windows NT, and Windows 95 systems. Those systems use different file name syntax; in addition, VMS and MS-DOS do not support all GNU Emacs features. We don't try to describe VMS usage in this manual. See section Emacs and MS-DOS, for information about using Emacs on MS-DOS.
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