Writing GNU Emacs Extensions [Paperback]

Bob Glickstein (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 8, 1997

Yes, it is possible to be all things to all people, if you're talking about the Emacs editor. As a user, you can make any kind of customization you want, from choosing the keystrokes that invoke your favorite commands to creating a whole new work environment that looks like nothing ever developed before. It's all in Emacs Lisp -- and in this short but fast-paced book.

GNU Emacs is more than an editor; it's a programming environment, a communications package, and many other things. To provide such a broad range of functions, it offers a full version of the Lisp programming language -- something much more powerful than the little macro languages provided in other editors (including older versions of Emacs). GNU Emacs is a framework in which you can create whole new kinds of editors or just alter aspects of the many functions it already provides.

In this book, Bob Glickstein delves deep into the features that permit far-reaching Emacs customizations. He teaches you the Lisp language and discusses Emacs topics (such as syntax tables and macro templates) in easy-to-digest portions. Examples progress in complexity from simple customizations to extensive major modes.

You will learn how to write interactive commands, use hooks and advice, perform error recovery, manipulate windows, buffers, and keymaps, exploit and alter Emacs's main loop, and more. Each topic is explored through realistic examples and a series of successive refinements that illustrate not only the Emacs Lisp language, but the development process as well, making learning pleasant and natural.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Yes, it is possible to be all things to all people, if you're talking about the Emacs editor. As a user, you can make any kind of customization you want, from choosing the keystrokes that invoke your favorite commands to creating a whole new work environment that looks like nothing ever developed before. It's all in Emacs Lisp -- and in this short but fast-paced book. GNU Emacs is more than an editor; it's a programming environment, a communications package, and many other things. To provide such a broad range of functions, it offers a full version of the Lisp programming language -- something much more powerful than the little macro languages provided in other editors (including older versions of Emacs). GNU Emacs is a framework in which you can create whole new kinds of editors or just alter aspects of the many functions it already provides. In this book, Bob Glickstein delves deep into the features that permit far-reaching Emacs customizations. He teaches you the Lisp language and Emacs topics (such as syntax tables and macro templates) in easy-to-digest portions. Examples progress in complexity from simple customizations to extensive major modes. You will learn how to write interactive commands, use hooks and advice, perform error recovery, manipulate windows, buffers, and keymaps, exploit and alter Emacs's main loop, and more. Each topic is explored through realistic examples and a series of successive refinements that illustrate not only the Emacs Lisp language, but the development process as well, making learning pleasant and natural.

About the Author

Bob Glickstein's dog, Alex, says Bob is generous with treats and takes her to the park a lot. Alex remembers the time in the mid- to late 1980s when Bob was first exposed to Lisp at Carnegie Mellon University and created the Lisp-like filtering language FLAMES for the Andrew Message System. She is dimly aware of the way in which Bob's familiarity with Lisp helped him to overcome his initial dislike of Emacs, with the result that he is now an ardent Emacs advocate. Nowadays, she enjoys playing on the beaches and mountains of Northern California while Bob devises new ways to use Emacs for writing email software at Zanshin, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 236 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1st ed edition (April 8, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565922611
• ISBN-13: 978-1565922617
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #574,704 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Step 3 in mastering Emacs..., July 27, 2001

By 

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

This review is from: Writing GNU Emacs Extensions (Paperback)

...is reading this book. Step 1 would be to read O'Reilly's "Learning Gnu Emacs" from cover to cover. Step 2 would be to start bookmarking "Info" pages in the Emacs and Elisp manuals (inside Emacs; Emacs can bookmark places in files you've edited, bookmark directories, bookmark Info pages, etc.); and then you are ready to read this book.

While you can become proficient in Emacs just by learning a handful of commands, to be truly productive and happy you must learn most of the features and use them. This is a very long process (over a year for me, learning a little bit more each day). But what I've gained from the journey is invaluable. For example, one insight I've gotten is that Emacs can work very well for the novice (open/type/save/close) and the expert (write major mode to handle new language) equally well, and this idea can apply to any software project. (Sure, it sounds simplistic but the moment of "Aha!" is more profound than that.)

This book is fairly small and progressively introduces new ideas in writing Lisp code to add functionality to Emacs. I think in retrospect the topics covered were well chosen because I have looked up the examples time and again to use code snippets.

Step 4 in mastering Emacs is to read the newsgroup gnu.emacs.help every day for a few months, which will teach you about a great many features Emacs has that are not covered in any book (or covered very well, like term mode, font-lock and many more).

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Emacs nirvana it ain't -- but you could do worse., April 8, 2003

By 

Steven G. Harms (Austin, Tejas, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Writing GNU Emacs Extensions (Paperback)

If you have taken the wise step and decided to learn emacs you're aware of the eLISP substructure underlying your C- and M- actions. Once you're aware that this power is there, you will invariably want to use it to make some routine editing patterns faster / more efficient.

I mean heck, you learned emacs to hack code in, didn't you? Why not hack emacs to make your hacking faster?

In true geek fashion, I thought that this book would be, like so many of ORA's books, a canonical START on the monopoly board of computer / technology progress.

It wasn't really.

It started with introducing the notion of evaluating a lisp command string (in this case, making sure you have your ^H, ^? and Erase sorted out) - and goes from there. Too little time is spent on primitives (see, not really a programming guide as such) and instead uses a series of examples to make you think about how to use eLISP to handle an issue.

....but that's not what you expect from an ORA book is it? You want the reference and the step-by-step -- you want to know you went to the source to get the answer and here was the path, right?

Well for that you are actually better off going to gnu.org and reading the elisp manual there. It much more closely approximates the path that the ORA books (i.e. the camel book, etc.) take.

Where this fits in -- a nice reference, maybe.

IF YOU DO get this book, you'll find some handy examples and a few 'tricks of the trade. ' Nothing really great though.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thorough and well written, November 11, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Writing GNU Emacs Extensions (Paperback)

Glickstein offers practical solutions to gnu-emacs problems from the opening pages and only gets better from there. He introduces emacs-lisp topics gradually, and always in the context of solving a practical problem.

One of the things I loved most about this book is that from the very first chapter, made emacs more usable by correcting some annoying traits that I had just accepted. Now I realize I can fix what I don't like!

After finishing this book, a reader should be more confident in finding and modifying solutions contained at the gnu-emacs archive.

Hopefully emacs's popularity will increase further as even more people take its destiny into their own hands. This wonderful introduction is a good start.