Learning GNU Emacs

by James Elliott, Eric S. Raymond, Marc Loy

GNU Emacs is the most popular and widespread of the Emacs family of editors. It is also the most powerful and flexible. Unlike all other text editors, GNU Emacs is a complete working environment--you can stay within Emacs all day without leaving. Learning GNU Emacs, 3rd Edition tells readers how to get started with the GNU Emacs editor. It is a thorough guide that will also "grow" with as you become more proficient, this book will help you learn how to use Emacs more effectively. It takes you from basic Emacs usage (simple text editing) to moderately complicated customization and programming.The third edition of Learning GNU Emacs describes Emacs 21.3 from the ground up, including new user interface features such as an icon-based toolbar and an interactive interface to Emacs customization. A new chapter details how to install and run Emacs on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux, including tips for using Emacs effectively on those platforms.Learning GNU Emacs, third edition,

How to edit files with EmacsUsing the operating system shell through EmacsHow to use multiple buffers, windows, and framesCustomizing Emacs interactively and through startup filesWriting macros to circumvent repetitious tasksEmacs as a programming environment for Java, C++, and Perl, among othersUsing Emacs as an integrated development environment (IDE)Integrating Emacs with CVS, Subversion and other change control systems for projects with multiple developersWriting HTML, XHTML, and XML with EmacsThe basics of Emacs LispThe book is aimed at new Emacs users, whether or not they are programmers. Also useful for readers switching from other Emacs implementations to GNU Emacs.

Genres: Programming, Nonfiction, Computers, Reference, Computer Science, Technology, Software

709 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

James Elliott is a Canadian journalist and author with a keen and abiding interest in early North American history. With the Hamilton Spectator he wrote widely on the War of 1812 on subjects ranging from the Bloody Assizes to the Burlington Races. He worked on several episodes of the CBCs Gemini Award winning Canada: A Peoples History both as a consultant and a special-skills extra. He is the author of the critically acclaimed If Ponies Rode Men, which should have been made into a major motion picture. James Elliott lives in Hamilton, Ontario, with his wife, Irene, four miles from the Stoney Creek battlefield."

Reviews

[Peter Sichevsky]

If you are a programmer, you must read it! It is full of good examples of how to write better code and design things right.

[Rick Muële]

Seriously! Why nboody talked about this book during my college years? A greta book I regret not reading it sooner! Lots and lots of thigns to comprehend!

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

LEARNING GNU EMACS is an introduction to the most powerful text editor ever made, a fully-programmable environment that through contributions from thousands has become something of an operating system in itself. This third edition covers all the new enhancements made in version 21.3.

The book begins with an introduction to Emacs as it : a text editor. It gives basic commands for moving around, describes the look of the user interface, teaches how to search and replace, and how to make simple (and not-so-simple) macros. But Emacs isn't just a simple text editor, it also has extensions to do everything from drawing simple pictures to managing your schedule. In the next portion the book describes among other things Dired, the Emacs file manager, the calendar and diary functions, and how to execute commands from within Emacs.

Since Emacs functions as an integrated-development environment for many programming languages, a fairly large portion of the book focus on how Emacs can help the software developer. Concerning markup languages, this new edition covers the excellent nxml mode for XML documents, and in terms of computer languages it describes modes for C, C++, Java, Perl, SQL, and Lisp. Unfortunately, the Python mode is not discussed. An entire chapter is devoted to Emacs' interface to version control systems like CVS.

The book doesn't aim itself at only a beginner's market. It teaches one already proficient in editing to customize Emacs. At the simplest, this means tinkering with one's "~/.emacs" file, but it also includes using the power of Lisp to change all aspects of Emacs.

This book could only be perfect if it were twice as large as it is now, since Emacs has so much in it. I think it a pity that the book doesn't cover Gnus, a mail and news reader that takes advantage of Emacs' scriptable nature to offer immense configurability and power. In fact, it doesn't cover the popular Mew mail reader or Emacs' limited built-in mail reader at all. Also, the bit on search and replace doesn't give any small intro to regular expressions.

Emacs is not for everyone, and even with a fine book like this some people are not going to like it. But if you are comfortable doing basic editing with Emacs, and want to maximize your efficiency, then LEARNING GNU EMACS can help.

[Amclinux · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is by far the best book on emacs that I have come across. The book starts off by giving an introduction into how to use Emacs, shortcuts, key bindings. By the time you finish the book you will have in depth knowledge on how to use Emacs .

[Glenn Burnside · Rating 3 out of 5]

Comprehensive, and a little overwhelming.

I learn best by doing - so I like having this on hand, but I'd love to have some walk-through exercises to drive some of the techniques home.

After taking a long hard look at my daily toolset, I've decided I just can't make emacs "Work" for me on my pixelbook and across my other devices. This was a great throwback read for me, and I had fun flexing some of those old muscles. I'd still LOVE to see a cross-platform text-based environment that I could use across my multiple devices and with the extensibility and versatility of emacs - so maybe it's not too late for someone to build a emacsm to parallel vim? Maybe? Maybe not? Is VS Code as good as it's going to get?

[Ege · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the book if you want to learn EMACS. That is by reading a book about it.

If you try to cram all the shortcuts, all the commands into your brain as you read along the book, you will end up hating EMACS and won't see the beauty in it. Instead, learn the essentials (and don't be afraid to look things up when you forget) and simply discover the rest as you use EMACS.

Ask the question "Can I do x in EMACS?" The answer is most likely yes. Then go and find how to do it. You don't need someone to tell you "here is how you do x and here is how you do y and don't forget you can also do this thing which is somewhat like y but actually does z."

This should not keep you away from browsing through this book though. It is still well-written and covers pretty much everything.

[Obione_TdG · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quite obsolete, and probably too brief to be useful.

[Todor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too much details for parts that are not really used by an everyday dev.

[Maggie · Rating 4 out of 5]

An easy, simple, pleasant read.

[Altivo Overo · Rating 4 out of 5]

EMACS is a text editor that has been around for about 3 decades, originally on UNIX but long since ported to Windows, Macintosh, Linux, VMS and many other environments.

Those are the bare facts. The truth is far more complex, and several volumes this size could be (and have been) written about this program. EMACS (and the more recent GUI-based Xemacs) is in fact an entire environment. While it was conceived as an "extensible" editor, the expansion capabilities turned out to be immense because the macro facilities are embodied in LISP, a complete programming language.

From within EMACS you can not only edit files (and directories!) but you can read your e-mail, play games, compile and test code in just about any language supported by your operating system, scan and reply to USENET News, transfer files and data to and from other systems, sign onto other systems, and run accessories such as calculators, printers and print queues, and appointment calendars.

Users who have only ever used GUI facilities such as those found on Windows or Macintosh may take this for granted, but in the days of character cell terminals the ability to have multiple full screens of activity available and easily swapped in and out was pretty exciting.

As a long time user and administrator of UNIX systems, I have always avoided this behemoth because it seems so complex and has a high learning curve. Cameron's book presents the major capabilities of EMACS in small chunks, and after the first couple of chapters you can pick and choose the facilities you want to learn.

If you use Linux or another UNIX workalike, and especially if you are a coder, EMACS is well worth a closer look. Don't wait as long as I did. It's a powerful integrated development environment, customizable, up-to-date (yes, it knows Python and Ruby) and on top of all that, absolutely free under a GNU public license.

[caisah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book listed as a reference for Emacs on /r/emacs so I was curious about what it cloud offer. Aside from the intro tutorial one gets when pressing C-h t, this book is the best thing an Emacs beginner could get.

Although it covers an older version (21.3) most of the subjects are still relevant. I have been using Emacs for about a year (when I started reading it) and I still got a lot out of it. I have found the power of narrowing and of rectangles, some basic info about major modes (I have not yet used) and version control.

At a first glance the book looks way too verbose but as one digs deeper, there are subjects that can easily be skipped (if you are already knowledgeable). Also a lot of paragraphs just reiterate the command shortcuts or tables with general explanations. So the length of the book shouldn't be something to scare anybody.

The 3rd edition covers all the major subjects starting with text editing, finding & replacing, using buffers, macros, specialized text formatting, customization, how to use help, and also some popular major modes. Something that's missing is org mode. But that requires another new book.

All in all, it was a pleasant and informative read, and I recommend this book to any beginner (going to intermediate).

[Simon Kozlov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Awesome books for Emacs beginner/newbie.
I got hooked up to Emacs through org-mode (_the_ best outliner in the world, watch this video if you haven't heard about it: http://youtu.be/oJTwQvgfgMM) and was using it here and there without understanding core concepts much. I mean, I copied stuff from EmacsWiki from time to time, but always felt helpless when something went wrong.

So I really needed a extended guided tour - and this book nails it. It shows power, beauty and flexibility emacs both in basic text editing and its extensions, always with good examples and exactly the right depth.
It walks through core concepts of Emacs Lisp so scripts are not too scary anymore (Kudos for examples).

All in all, awesome book to learn and appreciate Emacs. Recommended.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fairly good book over the general use of emacs. It's definitely for the beginner or intermediate user since it focuses on more of use rather than the customization of emacs. You can find this information in the emacs manual, but this is far easier to read. I've havw the book, even after using emacs for over 5 years, by my side because of how good of a book this is on reference. There are even some nice inserts to pull out and hang on the wall.

For programming or heavy customization, I'd not recommend this book. You will find emacs wiki much better for that kinda stuff.

[Alonso Schmidt · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was fairly good reading. With this book, I stepped from fundamentals of Emacs, passing through specific widely-used features which covers daily work and then finally got into basic lisp programming and customization. Emacs has shown to be a powerful text editor due to its overwhelming versatility and extensibility.

[Wade McReynolds · Rating 2 out of 5]

Badly dated. If you want to use Emacs you're better off referring to any of a half-dozen blog posts or videos available freely on the Web. Not only that, the author recommends starting out using the default configuration, crappy keybindings and all, and refuses even to mention things like vi emulation. Don't bother with this one.

[Alpha · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is comprehensive. It covers most aspects of Emacs a newbie needs to know.

The authors seem not good at organization and presentation.

Consistency is also a problem for five authors. Look at those screen captures of Linux, MacOS and Windows.

[Wm · Rating 2 out of 5]

A must have if you delve into the deep radiant pool that is emacs.

[Mark Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Invaluable for getting a feel for Emacs (and the Emacs Way) as an entirety.

[Dave Peticolas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good! I definitely learned some useful new things about the editor I have been using for so long.

[Adam McCartney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good overview of emacs. Also lots of general information on working with modal editors.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been a Linux user for almost 20 years, and one of the first programs I learned about was Emacs. I originally read the 2nd edition of this book, but bought the 3rd edition when it came out, and recently revisited it when it was included in a bundle for my kindle. My original copy bristles with marker tabs for all the bits I feel are indispensable, and the pages are floppy and well thumbed.
In summary this book has been a constant companion and deserved a re-read. It needs to be supplemented with on-line resources now, but it still works for explaining the basics.

[Sitdhibong Laokok · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally done.