

Learning Emacs, any tips or tricks, best tutorial? - jacquesm

For many many years I used my own, homebrew editor, aptly named 'e' (I don't like typing more than I need to). This worked quite well until about a decade ago when I started to work more and more on other peoples machines and it bothered me that I always had to spend time to move my environment with me. So I decided to standardize on the minimum that is always available, which turned out to be vi(m).&#60;p&#62;This worked really well for a long time, even though I never got to the level of being a poweruser I managed to get through the day.&#60;p&#62;I've used 'leo' for a while, an awesome little project, it is essentially a literate programming editor and I really liked the concepts behind it but it has some serious shortcomings as well (does not work in terminal mode), so I had to let that go.&#60;p&#62;I've decided now to invest serious time into learning a new editor and have chosen to leave vi(m) behind and to move to emacs.&#60;p&#62;Are there any tips &#38; tricks that you think I should be aware of? I've googled a bit for guides on learning Emacs but nothing that strikes me as suitable turned up, however I can't imagine that I'm the first to try this, the key 'emacs tutorial' turns up a wild variety of material, too much to choose from really and lots of it of questionable heritage and/or dated (which may not be bad by itself).&#60;p&#62;What would you use as a starting point if you were to point a new emacs user to today?
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vtanase
Hello,

as someone who shied away from regular IDEs to use Emacs for programming work,
I would recommend that you start setting things up for some very specific
need.

As it was already pointed out, Emacs is huge and you will never stop learning
it. Therefore, if your main line of work implies writing Java code, I would
recommend you look for some tutorials that are particularly aimed at that, and
build on those as you need more out of your editor. For example right now I am
looking at learning org-mode to be able to do time tracking with it.

If you seriously consider using Emacs all the time I would recommend remapping
the Ctrl key to Caps Lock for easier typing.

Since you were asking for some tutorials, these are the two tutorials that I
found most useful in defining my Emacs setup:

<https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/effective-emacs> \- specific things
that are very useful in your configuration

<http://devblog.avdi.org/category/emacs-reboot/> \- someone in the ruby
community, remaking his emacs config from scratch and explaining it as he goes

I am no where near a proficient Emacs user, but maybe I can provide some
insight as a fellow learner if you get stuck. I believe my e-mail should be in
my profile if you have any problem starting up with Emacs.

Have a nice day, Vlad

~~~
jamesjporter
This absolutely, best way to learn is to have a specific goal in mind. I got
started with emacs because I was using an IDE called RStudio
(<http://www.rstudio.com/>) which I really liked, and I wanted something
similar for python but couldn't find anything to suit my needs. I set out to
recreate the functionality of RStudio in emacs and have (largely) succeeded.
It took a lot of mucking around but I really learned my way around the editor.

~~~
S4M
Well done to have replicated RStudio for pyhton on Emacs. I am interested by
that, do you have the ELisp code somewhere? Thanks!

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jgrahamc
The GNU Emacs Manual is pretty comprehensive
([http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/ind...](http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/index.html))

One of the things about Emacs I've discovered over the years is that you never
finish learning it. It's so extensive. That's how I ended up reinventing this
wheel: [http://blog.jgc.org/2013/03/automatic-bookmarking-
locations-...](http://blog.jgc.org/2013/03/automatic-bookmarking-locations-in-
emacs.html)

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samiur1204
Hey there,

I used to Vim too, and started using Emacs since I started doing a lot of
Clojure development. Since then, I have not looked back. The power and
flexibility of Emacs is second to almost none. Just the other day, I was
working on a Latex file, and I had a buffer open with a pdf viewer right next
to my tex file, that would update as soon as I saved changes to my tex file.
And the community has done almost everything you can think of already. If not,
just write it yourself!

To get started, I would highly recommend using Emacs Prelude:
<https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude> It's incredibly useful and user friendly,
and makes your Emacs all the more powerful. This is a good intro article to
it: <http://batsov.com/prelude/>

The other blog that I find useful even as a fairly seasoned Emacs user is
<http://www.masteringemacs.org/> It has some great guides and tutorials for
beginners too.

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gruseom
I agree with the people recommending the built-in tutorial (C-h t) and the
official manual. Emacs' documentation is very good.

Also, the basics of Emacs haven't changed since forever so some of those dated
resources you mention may be just fine.

Good luck! I hope you like it.

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S4M
I dont have a tutorial to offer you, but here's what made semi-comfortable
with emacs:

\- install the emacs starter kit [0] as it's much user friendly than the raw
emacs

\- learn the most used shortcuts (C-w to cut, M-w to copy, C-Y to yank
(paste), C-x C-s to save, C-x C-f to open a file, C-k to kill a text, C-a to
go at the start of a line and C-e to go at the end, etc.)

\- try to use emacs for everything and slowly get more and more comfortable at
it.

[0] <https://github.com/technomancy/emacs-starter-kit>

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bdunbar
You didn't say what operating system you are using. When I 'got into' emacs it
was with the OS X-ish version, Aquamacs.

Which _is_ emacs, but with Mac friendly bits. At first I used it simply as a
replacement for Textmate, then later got into things like TRAMP, and org-mode.

I didn't need a guide or a how-to. Every so often I would wonder 'I wonder if
Emacs can do this, or that', google it, and learn that it could.

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sunilnimmagadda
If it's only about the "editor" part of Emacs then I would recommend starting
with an Emacs-like editor mg[1]. It's clean, small and has nice manpage that I
feel wouldn't overwhelm newcomers. It also has some of the basic commands
helpful for programming.

[1] <http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=mg>

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mattl
The built in tutorial (M-x tutorial) is good.

M aka Meta is generally Alt on a PC keyboard or Alt+Esc on a Mac.

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binarysoul
some bite sized emacs tips <http://rawsyntax.com/blog/categories/learn-emacs/>

and a great introduction to setting up emacs
<http://batsov.com/articles/2012/10/14/emacs-on-osx/>

posts on various emacs topics <http://www.masteringemacs.org/>

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snotrockets

      (menu-bar-mode nil)
      (tool-bar-mode nil)
    

It'll force you to climb the very steep learning curve to Emacs mastery.

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brudgers
RTFM?

<http://shop.fsf.org/product/Emacs_Manual_24/>

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guojh0570
Emacs tutorial itself is a nice start for you.

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jacquesm
Thank you all!

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msh
M-x doctor ;)

