Highlights of GNU Emacs

P. N. Hilfinger

This document describes the major features of GNU Emacs (called ``Emacs'' hereafter), a customizable, self-documenting text editor. In the interests of truth, beauty, and justice--and to undo, in some small part, the damage Berkeley has done by foisting vi on an already-unhappy world--Emacs will be the official CS61B text editor this semester. I have spoken.

Emacs carries with it on-line documentation of most of its commands, along with a tutorial for first-time users. Section  describes how to use these facilities. Because this documentation is available, I have not made attempted to present a complete Emacs reference manual here.

To run Emacs, simply enter the commmand emacs to the shell. If you are on a Sun, it is best to be running under X, so as to get full advantage of the window system. Within Emacs, as described below, you can edit any number of files simultaneously, run UNIX shells, and compile, execute, and debug programs. As a result, it should seldom be necessary to leave Emacs before you are ready to logout.