Harley Hahn
Home Page

About Harley

Send a Message
to Harley


Harley Hahn's
Emacs Field
Guide...

Home Page

List of Chapters
and Appendixes

Detailed Table
of Contents

Buying the Book

Endorsements

Lists of Command
Summaries

Indexes
• Important topics
• General
• Key sequences
• Variables and
Functions

• Unix: Keys, Files
and Commands

Errors and
Corrections

Detailed Table of Contents

    Front Matter
About the Author
About the Technical Reviewer
Acknowledgments
A Personal Note From Harley Hahn
Chapter 1   All About Emacs
1.1: Getting Started Together
1.2: Emacs Is a Text Editor
1.3: Emacs Is a Working Environment
1.4: Where Did Emacs Come From?
1.5: The Free Software Foundation
1.6: Excerpts From The Gnu Manifesto
Chapter 2   Unix for Emacs Users
2.1: Operating Systems
2.2: Unix and Linux
2.3: Unix Terminals and Userids
2.4: Types of Terminals
2.5: User Interfaces
2.6: Using a Unix Terminal
2.7: The Unix Command Line
2.8: The Shell Prompt
2.9: What Unix Commands Look Like
2.10: Making Corrections as You Type Commands
2.11: Two Important Keys: <Ctrl‑C> and <Ctrl‑D>
2.12: The History List; Command Line Editing
2.13: The Unix Manual
2.14: Using the less Pager Program
2.15: The Three Types of Unix Files
2.16: The Tree-Structured File System
2.17: The Current Directory and Pathnames
2.18: File and Directory Names
2.19: File and Directory Names: OS X and Windows
Chapter 3   Installing Emacs
3.1: Installing Software: Packages vs. Manual Installation
3.2: Installing Emacs Using a Linux Package Manager
3.3: Installing Emacs Manually With Linux
3.4: Installing Emacs With Mac OS X
3.5: Installing Emacs With Microsoft Windows
Chapter 4   The Emacs Keyboard
4.1: A Strategy for Learning Emacs
4.2: The Ctrl Key
4.3: The Meta (Alt) Key
4.4: Special Key Names
4.5: The Meta Key, Bucky Bits, and Much More
4.6: Meta Key Problems When Using a Terminal Window
Chapter 5   Starting and Stopping Emacs
5.1: Starting Emacs
5.2: Starting Emacs in a Terminal Window
5.3: Starting Emacs as a Read-Only Editor
5.4: Recovering Data After a System Failure
5.5: Stopping Emacs
Chapter 6   Commands, Buffers, Windows
6.1: Commands and Key Bindings
6.2: Buffers
6.3: Windows
6.4: The Mode Line / Read-Only Viewing
6.5: The Echo Area / Typing Emacs Commands
6.6: The Minibuffer
6.7: Completion
6.8: Disabled Commands
Chapter 7   The Text Editing Work Environment
7.1: How to Practice Using Emacs
7.2: Typing and Correcting
7.3: The repeat and undo Commands; Redo
7.4: The keyboard‑quit Command (C‑g)
7.5: Emacs for vi Users
7.6: Commands to Control Windows
7.7: Commands to Control Buffers
7.8: Commands for Working With Files
Chapter 8   The Cursor; Line Numbers; Point and Mark; The Region
8.1: The Cursor and the Idea of Point
8.2: Moving the Cursor
8.3: Text Modes; Paragraphs and Sentences
8.4: Repeating a Command: Prefix Arguments
8.5: Moving Through the Buffer
8.6: Using Line Numbers
8.7: Mark, Point and the Region
8.8: Using Mark and Point to Define the Region
8.9: Operating on the Region
Chapter 9   Kill and Delete; Move and Copy; Correct Mistakes; Spelling; Fill
9.1: Kill and Delete: Two Ways to Erase Text
9.2: Commands to Delete Text
9.3: Commands to Kill Text
9.4: The Kill Ring and Yanking; Moving and Copying
9.5: Correcting Common Typing Mistakes
9.6: Correcting Spelling Mistakes
9.7: Filling and Formatting Text
Chapter 10   Searching
10.1: Introducing the Emacs Search Commands
10.2: Incremental Searching
10.3: Keys to Use While Searching
10.4 Upper- and Lowercase Searching
10.5: Non-Incremental Searching
10.6: Word Searching
10.7: Searching for Regular Expressions
10.8: Regular Expressions
10.9: Fixing Emacs Key Conflicts
10.10: Searching and Replacing
10.11: Recursive Editing
Chapter 11   Modes; Customizing Using Your .emacs File
11.1: Introducing Modes
11.2: Major Modes
11.3: List of Major Modes
11.4: Minor Modes
11.5: Setting Major and Minor Modes
11.6: Read-Only Mode
11.7: Learning About Modes
11.8: Customizing With the .emacs File; Learning Lisp
11.9: Using Your .emacs File to Set Default Modes
Chapter 12   Shell Commands; Help and Info; Programs and Games
12.1: Entering Shell Commands
12.2: Shell Buffers
12.3: The Help Facility
12.4: The Emacs Tutorial; Info and the Emacs Reference Manuals
12.5: Built-In Programs
12.6: Built-In Tools, Including Dired
12.7: Games and Diversions
12.8: Zippy the Pinhead Talks to the Emacs Psychotherapist
12.9: A Personal Note From Harley Hahn

Appendix A   Personal Notes
This appendix contains 27 interesting observations and stories that were too long to print within the text of the book. I call them Personal Notes. As you read the book, every now and then you will see a footnote pointing you to a specific Personal Notes in this appendix. If you want, you can read them all at once, just for fun.
 
#01: Teaching Yourself Emacs
#02: Computer With a Keyboard
#03: Usenet, Emacs, and the Growth of the Internet
#04: Free/Open Source Software
#05: GNU's Not Unix?
#06: Our Tools Shape Our Minds
#07: AT&T
#08: Early Unix on the West Coast
#09: BSD Unix in the 1980s
#10: Hackers and Geeks
#11: Bash
#12: Linux Is Free
#13: Mac OS X Is Unix
#14: Terminals That Print
#15: Why U.C. San Diego in 1976?
#16: 80- and 132-character Lines
#17: Unix Workstations
#18: Time Travel
#19: Midnight Commander
#20: KDE and Gnome
#21: Aren't All Terminals Virtual?
#22: Ubuntu Terminal Emulators
#23: How to Access the Command Line With Mac OS X and Windows
#24: Freddy and the Men From Mars
#25: Special Files and Proc Files
#26: How Many Files Are on Your Unix System?
#27: Comparing Unix Packages to Commercial Apps

Appendix B   Command Summaries
The book contains 60 summaries of Emacs and Unix/Linux commands. For reference, I have collected them all in this appendix, in the same order that you will find them in the book. In case you want to see the discussion pertaining to a particular command summary, I have included the section number in which each figure appears.
 
Accessing a virtual terminal from the GUI. (Figure 2-4)
Changing from one virtual terminal to another. (Figure 2-5)
Keys to make corrections when typing a command. (Figure 2-7)
Key combinations to use when typing a command. (Figure 2-8)
Commands to use with less. (Figure 2-9)
Important directories in filesystem hierarchy standard. (Figure 2-10)
The most important file commands. (Figure 2-11)
The most important directory commands. (Figure 2-12)
Bash configuration files. (Figure 2-13)
Linux package management systems. (Figure 3-1)
BSD package management systems. (Figure 3-2)
Emacs names for special keys. (Figure 4-1)
Choosing to save files after stopping Emacs with C-x C-c. (Figure 5-1)
Status characters within the mode line. (Figure 6-5)
Completion commands. (Figure 6-6)
Choosing whether or not to run a disabled command. (Figure 6-7)
Keys to use while typing. (Figure 7-1)
Commands for controlling windows. (Figure 7-2)
Commands for controlling buffers. (Figure 7-3)
Commands for working with files. (Figure 7-4)
Commands for moving the cursor. (Figure 8-1)
Commands for moving cursor through a paragraph/sentence. (Figure 8-2)
Major modes to use when editing a human language. (Figure 8-3)
Prefix argument combinations. (Figure 8-4)
Commands to move throughout the buffer. (Figure 8-5)
Commands to use line numbers. (Figure 8-6)
Commands to set mark and define a region. (Figure 8-8)
Commands that act upon the region. (Figure 8-9)
Commands to delete text. (Figure 9-1)
Commands to kill text. (Figure 9-2)
Commands to move and kill by word or sentence. (Figure 9-3)
Commands to yank text. (Figure 9-4)
Commands for correcting common typing mistakes. (Figure 9-5)
Commands for correcting spelling mistakes. (Figure 9-6)
Commands to fill text. (Figure 9-7)
Search commands. (Figure 10-1)
Keys to use during a search. (Figure 10-2)
Non-incremental search commands. (Figure 10-3)
Search commands. (Figure 10-4)
Search commands for regular expressions. (Figure 10-5)
Characters to use with regular expressions. (Figure 10-6)
Search and replace commands. (Figure 10-7)
Responses during a search and replace command. (Figure 10-8)
Minimum keystrokes to invoke search/replace commands. (Figure 10-9)
The four basic major modes. (Figure 11-2)
Major modes: Fundamental mode family. (Figure 11-3)
Major modes: Text mode family. (Figure 11-4)
Major modes: Prog mode family. (Figure 11-5)
Major modes: Special mode family. (Figure 11-6)
Independent major modes. (Figure 11-7)
Minor modes. (Figure 11-8)
Commands to set and describe modes. (Figure 11-10)
Running shell commands. (Figure 12-1)
Help facility options. (Figure 12-2)
General info commands. (Figure 12-3)
Info commands to select a node. (Figure 12-4)
Info commands to read a node. (Figure 12-5)
Built-in tools. (Figure 12-6)
Dired commands. (Figure 12-7)
Games and diversions. (Figure 12-8)

    Indexes
Index of Emacs Key Sequences
Index of Emacs Variables and Functions
Index of Unix Keys, Files and Commands
General Index

Jump to top of page