Customer Reviews

GNU Emacs Pocket Reference

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

If you are new to Emacs, the I would recommend this book to you. It gives you all of the key commands that you need right at your fingertips.

If you new to learn Emacs, get a full featured book, but also get this one. You will probably find yourself referencing this book quite often until you remember all of the common keystrokes.

It's pretty tough to beat this pocket reference to emacs. It makes looking up both common options and less common commands and modes simple and quick. If you're an emacs user, this book is a must have -it's easier than apropos and quicker than C-h ?.

This is not a book to teach you how to use Emacs as some other reviewers think. This book is a reference and a reference only. It gives you a listing of common emacs commands. If you won't be going into the nitty gritty details of Emacs, use this. Otherwise, do yourself a favor and get Learning Emacs. This books is good at accomplishing its purpose...a secondary reference for Learning Emacs.

I've tried to used this to look stuff up while learning Emacs, and it is not useful to me. I have two main objections: 1. It is not organized in a way that makes it easy to look things up. There have been times when I knew the information was in the book (since I had seen it before), but had to just flip through every page to actually find it. 2. It's very incomplete. I cannot find a command in this book that takes me to a given line in a file. I suspect the book fails because he tries to cover everything. I do not expect a pocket reference to cover some nonstandard HTML mode, or how to use Emacs as my mail reader. I want a reference on how to use it to edit text and code. I probably won't open this book again; I'll just bookmark the online manual.

It is what is it is; It's a pocket guide. It's not exceptionally informative, but it provides baseline guidance for some of Emacs' many features.
If you're already a user of emacs, chances are you'll get a little something out of this book that you didn't know existed before (I'm using Emacs diary and calendar now...) but it's mostly good to throw at subusers while yelling at them to RTFM because they're always complaining to you that they don't know how to use Emacs...

Great book for beginners and those of us who haven't used emacs in awhile and need a little reminder here 'n there. There are many more extensive books on emacs, but this is great for a handy reference without the bulk of a comprehensive book.

This book appears to be nice and indeed is, but it's too basic even for beginners. If you're a beginner, it won't do you any good because it's too simple yet to understand what it is about. If you're an advanced user, it's again too basic and lacks a lot of important references that should have been included (regexps, table commands, squeleton text commands, etc.). Take my advice: if you need a reference, buy the complete reference book from GNU Press which in return, has a pocket reference card attached to it (which BTW, you can also download for free...)

I love O'Reilly Ppcket Books. Once one masters a subject pocket books provide an ideal reference and memory jogger.

Yes, emacs is the most powerful editor and this book is only a little pocket reference! The book is unnecessary after 2 days (if you did not know emacs before). It is good only for a short introduction in the commands of emacs. After two days you must buy Learning Gnu Emacs, which is really a book to learn emacs!

Do not expect to much from a litte reference!

Virgilio Krumbacher

Everyone tells me what a powerful editor emacs is. Maybe so, but this little book did very little to help me tap its power. It's unhelpful on how to change modes and on regular expression searches; I still have to use vi to make more complicated substitutions! Is that necessary? I guess not, but this book helped me not one bit.

I give it 2 stars as it does have the saving grace of being short, and could get you started perhaps a little quicker than the online tutorial.

Really! Someone ought to write a decent book on emacs.