Learning GNU Emacs, Third Edition [Paperback]

Debra Cameron (Author), James Elliott (Author), Marc Loy (Author), Eric Raymond (Author), Bill Rosenblatt (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0596006489 | ISBN-13: 978-0596006488 | Publication Date: December 20, 2004 | Edition: Third Edition

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 you: 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, covers:

• How to edit files with Emacs
• Using the operating system shell through Emacs
• How to use multiple buffers, windows, and frames
• Customizing Emacs interactively and through startup files
• Writing macros to circumvent repetitious tasks
• Emacs as a programming environment for Java, C++, and Perl, among others
• Using Emacs as an integrated development environment (IDE)
• Integrating Emacs with CVS, Subversion and other change control systems for projects with multiple developers
• Writing HTML, XHTML, and XML with Emacs
• The basics of Emacs Lisp

The 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.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

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. This book tells you how to get started with the GNU Emacs editor. It will also "grow" with you: 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 second edition of Learning GNU Emacs describes all of the new features of GNU Emacs 19.30, including fonts and colors, pull-down menus, scroll bars, enhanced X Window support, and correct bindings for most standard keys. GNUS, a Usenet newsreader, and ange-ftp mode, a transparent interface to the file transfer protocol, are also described. Learning GNU Emacs, second edition, covers: Using Emacs as an Internet Toolkit (to use electronic mail and Usenet news, telnet to other computers, retrieve files using FTP, browse the World Wide Web, and author Web documents) Emacs' rich, comprehensive online help facilities How to edit files with Emacs Using Emacs as a "shell environment" How to take advantage of "built-in" formatting features How to use multiple buffers, Emacs windows, and X Windows Customizing Emacs The Emacs interface to the X Window System, which allows you to use a mouse and pop-up menus Whys and hows of writing macros to circumvent repetitious tasks Emacs as a programming environment The basics of Emacs LISP How to get Emacs Quick-reference card listing all the commands discussed in the book The 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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Back Cover

GNU Emacs is the most popular and widespread of the Emacs family of editors. It is also the most powerful and flexible. Unlike other text editors, GNU Emacs is a complete working environment; you can stay within Emacs all day without leaving. This book tells you how to get started, but it will also "grow" with you: as you become more proficient, it will help you learn to use Emacs more effectively. It takes you from basic Emacs usage (simple text editing) to moderately complicated customization and programming. The second edition of Learning GNU Emacs describes all of the new features of GNU Emacs 19.30, including fonts and colors, pull-down menus, scrollbars, enhanced X Window System support, and correct bindings for most standard keys. Gnus, a Usenet newsreader, and ange-ftp mode, a transparent interface to the file transfer protocol, are also described. This book covers using Emacs as an Internet toolkit; Emacs' rich, comprehensive online help facilities; how to edit files with Emacs; using Emacs as a "shell environment"; how to take advantage of "built-in" formatting features; how to use multiple buffers, Emacs windows, and X windows; customizing Emacs; the Emacs interface to the X Window System; whys and hows of writing macros to circumvent repetitious tasks; Emacs as a programming environment; the basics of Emacs LISP; and how to get Emacs. Also included is a handy quick-reference card listing all of the commands discussed in the book.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; Third Edition edition (December 20, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596006489
• ISBN-13: 978-0596006488
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #219,274 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

54 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Could be larger still, July 14, 2000

By 

Steve Wainstead (Jackson Heights, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Learning GNU Emacs, 2nd Edition (Paperback)

You will become functionally literate in Emacs with this book. It's large and friendly, unlike Emacs, and you have to dedicate a lot of time to learning this lovable, beastly editor. (Emacs is not so much a text editor as an IDE + calendar + interface to Unix tools rolled into one).

Learning Emacs to its very core is a good education for any programmer... I can't imagine a benefit to any non-programmer (or non-technical person) in this day and age (Emacs dates back to the 1970's, technology-wise). Its extensibility is indeed legendary, but RMAIL is simply not as good as a dozen other mail clients; Gnus cannot compare to Netscape's news reader or rtin; w3 is not as good as Lynx for plain-text Web surfing; buffers are nice but I find 'screen' to be a better tool, and 'vi' faster for just plain text editing.

The advantage is Emacs can do all of these together, with major and minor modes providing the hooks (pun intended) to integrate the work. Emacs is a jack of all trades and master of... a few, at least.

All that said, I found the lack of regular expression search/replace examples mystifying, no discussion at all of registers or the mark ring, and after reading the *whole thing* I still wanted more. Maybe more major modes for the next edition? :-)

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent book for most Emacs users, February 14, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Learning GNU Emacs, 2nd Edition (Paperback)

I have been a vi user for a long time (6 years) and never thought I needed an alternative. This book has shown me the wonderful world of Emacs and its many modes. For very fast editing of text files and search/replace operations, vi is still the best. But for anything else, Emacs is a real time saver. I work a lot with the Fortran and LaTeX modes (with the AUCTeX package) and they both have saved me countless keystrokes, particularly with LaTeX. I find it convenient to keep this book nearby for reference as Emacs' has far too many commands to keep in one's head. It is *certainly* a very good introductory and reference book to Emacs. I will not write Lisp code in my life and the information given here is sufficient for me. Another user has mentioned that rtin and Lynx are better, but most often, you have install another dozen packages before you can use them (atleast if you *don't* use a Linux machine). Gnus works well enough for my occasional newsreading. I highly recommend this book for the 95% that are not too interested in heavy customization or esoteric uses. I most certainly will buy an extra copy to keep as a reference.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Doesn't cover everything, but I've been using Emacs for 3 years and learned a lot here, February 3, 2006

By 

Christopher Culver - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Learning GNU Emacs, Third Edition (Paperback)

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.