This is the GNU Emacs FAQ, last updated on 26 October 2001.
The FAQ is maintained as a Texinfo document, allowing us to create HTML, Info, and TeX documents from a single source file, and is slowly but surely being improved. Please bear with us as we improve on this format. If you have any suggestions or questions, please contact the FAQ maintainers.
This chapter describes notation used in the GNU Emacs FAQ, as well as in the Emacs documentation. Consult this section if this is the first time you are reading the FAQ, or if you are confused by notation or terms used in the FAQ.
Key sequences longer than one key (and some single-key sequences) are written inside quotes or on lines by themselves, like this:
M-x frobnicate-while-foo RET
Any real spaces in such a key sequence should be ignored; only <SPC> really means press the space key.
The ASCII code sent by C-x (except for C-?) is the value that would be sent by pressing just <x> minus 96 (or 64 for upper-case <X>) and will be from 0 to 31. On Unix and GNU/Linux terminals, the ASCII code sent by M-x is the sum of 128 and the ASCII code that would be sent by pressing just <x>. Essentially, <Control> turns off bits 5 and 6 and <Meta> turns on bit 71.
C-? (aka <DEL>) is ASCII code 127. It is a misnomer to call C-? a “control” key, since 127 has both bits 5 and 6 turned ON. Also, on very few keyboards does C-? generate ASCII code 127.
see Text Characters, and see Keys, for more information. (See On-line manual, for more information about Info.)
M-x command means type M-x, then type the name of the command, then type <RET>. (See Basic keys, if you're not sure what M-x and <RET> mean.)
M-x (by default) invokes the command
execute-extended-command. This command allows you to run any
Emacs command if you can remember the command's name. If you can't
remember the command's name, you can type <TAB> and <SPC> for
completion, <?> for a list of possibilities, and M-p and
M-n (or up-arrow and down-arrow on terminals that have these
editing keys) to see previous commands entered. An Emacs command
is an interactive Emacs function.
Your system administrator may have bound other key sequences to invoke
execute-extended-command. A function key labeled Do is a
good candidate for this, on keyboards that have such a key.
If you need to run non-interactive Emacs functions, see Evaluating Emacs Lisp code.
When we refer you to some topic in the on-line manual, you can read this manual node inside Emacs (assuming nothing is broken) by typing C-h i m emacs <RET> m topic <RET>.
This invokes Info, the GNU hypertext documentation browser. If you don't already know how to use Info, type <?> from within Info.
If we refer to topic:subtopic, type C-h i m emacs <RET> m topic <RET> m subtopic <RET>.
If these commands don't work as expected, your system administrator may not have installed the Info files, or may have installed them improperly. In this case you should complain.
See Getting a printed manual, if you would like a paper copy of the Emacs manual.
These are files that come with Emacs. The Emacs distribution is divided into subdirectories; the important ones are etc, lisp, and src.
If you use Emacs, but don't know where it is kept on your system, start
Emacs, then type C-h v data-directory <RET>. The directory
name displayed by this will be the full pathname of the installed
etc directory. (This full path is recorded in the Emacs variable
data-directory, and C-h v displays the value and the
documentation of a variable.)
The location of your Info directory (i.e., where on-line documentation
is stored) is kept in the variable Info-default-directory-list. Use
C-h v Info-default-directory-list <RET> to see the value of
this variable, which will be a list of directory names. The last
directory in that list is probably where most Info files are stored. By
default, Info documentation is placed in /usr/local/info.
Some of these files are available individually via FTP or e-mail; see Informational files for Emacs. They all are available in the source distribution. Many of the files in the etc directory are also available via the Emacs `Help' menu, or by typing C-h ? (M-x help-for-help).
Your system administrator may have removed the src directory and many files from the etc directory.
Avoid confusing the FSF, the LPF, and the OSF. The LPF opposes look-and-feel copyrights and software patents. The FSF aims to make high quality free software available for everyone. The OSF is a consortium of computer vendors which develops commercial software for Unix systems.
The word “free” in the title of the Free Software Foundation refers to “freedom,” not “zero dollars.” Anyone can charge any price for GPL-covered software that they want to. However, in practice, the freedom enforced by the GPL leads to low prices, because you can always get the software for less money from someone else, since everyone has the right to resell or give away GPL-covered software.
This chapter contains general questions having to do with Emacs, the Free Software Foundation, and related organizations.
The LPF opposes the expanding danger of software patents and look-and-feel copyrights. To get more information, feel free to contact the LPF via e-mail or otherwise. You may also contact Joe Wells; he will be happy to talk to you about the LPF.
You can find more information about the LPF in the file etc/LPF. More papers describing the LPF's views are available on the Internet and also from the LPF home page.
The real legal meaning of the GNU General Public License (copyleft) will only be known if and when a judge rules on its validity and scope. There has never been a copyright infringement case involving the GPL to set any precedents. Please take any discussion regarding this issue to the newsgroup news:gnu.misc.discuss, which was created to hold the extensive flame wars on the subject.
RMS writes:
The legal meaning of the GNU copyleft is less important than the spirit, which is that Emacs is a free software project and that work pertaining to Emacs should also be free software. “Free” means that all users have the freedom to study, share, change and improve Emacs. To make sure everyone has this freedom, pass along source code when you distribute any version of Emacs or a related program, and give the recipients the same freedom that you enjoyed.
The file etc/MAILINGLISTS describes the purpose of each GNU mailing list. (See Informational files for Emacs, if you want a copy of the file.) For those lists which are gatewayed with newsgroups, it lists both the newsgroup name and the mailing list address.
The newsgroup news:comp.emacs is for discussion of Emacs programs in general. This includes Emacs along with various other implementations, such as XEmacs, JOVE, MicroEmacs, Freemacs, MG, Unipress, CCA, and Epsilon.
Many people post Emacs questions to news:comp.emacs because they
don't receive any of the gnu.* newsgroups. Arguments have been
made both for and against posting GNU-Emacs-specific material to
news:comp.emacs. You have to decide for yourself.
Messages advocating “non-free” software are considered unacceptable on
any of the gnu.* newsgroups except for news:gnu.misc.discuss,
which was created to hold the extensive flame-wars on the subject.
“Non-free” software includes any software for which the end user can't
freely modify the source code and exchange enhancements. Be careful to
remove the gnu.* groups from the `Newsgroups:' line when
posting a followup that recommends such software.
news:gnu.emacs.bug is a place where bug reports appear, but avoid posting bug reports to this newsgroup directly (see Reporting bugs).
The FSF has maintained archives of all of the GNU mailing lists for many years, although there may be some unintentional gaps in coverage. The archive is not particularly well organized or easy to retrieve individual postings from, but pretty much everything is there.
The archive is at ftp://ftp-mailing-list-archives.gnu.org.
As of this writing, the archives are not yet working.
Web-based Usenet search services, such as
DejaNews, also archive the
gnu.* groups.
The correct way to report Emacs bugs is by e-mail to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. Anything sent here also appears in the newsgroup news:gnu.emacs.bug, but please use e-mail instead of news to submit the bug report. This ensures a reliable return address so you can be contacted for further details.
Be sure to read the “Bugs” section of the Emacs manual before reporting a bug to bug-gnu-emacs! The manual describes in detail how to submit a useful bug report. (See On-line manual, if you don't know how to read the manual.)
RMS says:
Sending bug reports to help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org (which has the effect of posting on news:gnu.emacs.help) is undesirable because it takes the time of an unnecessarily large group of people, most of whom are just users and have no idea how to fix these problem. bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org reaches a much smaller group of people who are more likely to know what to do and have expressed a wish to receive more messages about Emacs than the others.
RMS says it is sometimes fine to post to news:gnu.emacs.help:
If you have reported a bug and you don't hear about a possible fix,
then after a suitable delay (such as a week) it is okay to post on
gnu.emacs.help asking if anyone can help you.
If you are unsure whether you have found a bug, consider the following non-exhaustive list, courtesy of RMS:
If Emacs crashes, that is a bug. If Emacs gets compilation errors while building, that is a bug. If Emacs crashes while building, that is a bug. If Lisp code does not do what the documentation says it does, that is a bug.
If you are receiving a GNU mailing list named list, you might be able to unsubscribe from it by sending a request to the address list-request@gnu.org. However, this will not work if you are not listed on the main mailing list, but instead receive the mail from a distribution point. In that case, you will have to track down at which distribution point you are listed. Inspecting the `Received' headers on the mail messages may help, along with liberal use of the `EXPN' or `VRFY' sendmail commands through `telnet site-address smtp'. Ask your postmaster for help, if you cannot figure out these details.
For details on how to order items directly from the FSF, see the GNU Web site, and also the files etc/ORDERS, ORDERS.EUROPE, and ORDERS.JAPAN.
This chapter tells you how to get help with Emacs
Type C-h t to invoke the self-paced tutorial. Just typing C-h enters the help system.
Your system administrator may have changed C-h to act like <DEL> to deal with local keyboards. You can use M-x help-for-help instead to invoke help. To discover what key (if any) invokes help on your system, type M-x where-is <RET> help-for-help <RET>. This will print a comma-separated list of key sequences in the echo area. Ignore the last character in each key sequence listed. Each of the resulting key sequences invokes help.
Emacs help works best if it is invoked by a single key whose value
should be stored in the variable help-char.
There is also a WWW-based tutorial for Emacs 18, much of which is also relevant for later versions of Emacs, available at
http://kufacts.cc.ukans.edu/cwis/writeups/misc/emacsguide.html
There are several methods for finding out how to do things in Emacs.
Info-goto-emacs-command-node) prompts
for the name of a command, and then attempts to find the section in the
Emacs manual where that command is described.
You can order a printed copy of the Emacs manual from the FSF. For details see the GNU Web site and the file etc/ORDERS.
The full Texinfo source for the manual also comes in the man directory of the Emacs distribution, if you're daring enough to try to print out this 620-page manual yourself (see Printing a Texinfo file).
If you absolutely have to print your own copy, and you don't have TeX, you can get a PostScript version from
http://www.gnu.org/manual/emacs/ps/emacs.ps.gz
An HTML version of the manual is at
www.gnu.org/manual/emacs/index.html
See Learning how to do something, for how to view the manual on-line.
Within Emacs, you can type C-h f to get the documentation for a function, C-h v for a variable.
For more information, obtain the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual. Details on ordering it from FSF are on the GNU Web site and in the file etc/ORDERS.
The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual is also available on-line, in Info format. Texinfo source for the manual (along with pregenerated Info files) is available at
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/emacs/elisp-manual-21-2.6.tar.gz
and all mirrors of `ftp.gnu.org' (for a list, see Current GNU distributions). See Installing Texinfo documentation, if you want to install the Info files, or Printing a Texinfo file, if you want to use the Texinfo source to print the manual yourself.
An HTML version of the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual is available at
http://www.gnu.org/manual/elisp-manual-21-2.6/elisp.html
First, you must turn the Texinfo files into Info files. You may do this using the stand-alone makeinfo program, available as part of the latest Texinfo package at
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/texinfo/texinfo-4.0.tar.gz
and all mirrors of `ftp.gnu.org' (for a list, see Current GNU distributions).
For information about the Texinfo format, read the Texinfo manual which comes with the Texinfo package. This manual also comes installed in Info format, so you can read it on-line; type C-h i m texinfo <RET>.
Alternatively, you could use the Emacs command M-x texinfo-format-buffer, after visiting the Texinfo source file of the manual you want to convert.
Neither texinfo-format-buffer nor makeinfo installs the
resulting Info files in Emacs's Info tree. To install Info files,
perform these steps:
install-info command, which is part of the Texinfo
distribution, to update the main Info directory menu, like this:
install-info --info-dir=dir-path dir-path/file
where dir-path is the full path to the directory where you copied the produced Info file(s), and file is the name of the Info file you produced and want to install.
If you don't have the install-info command installed, you can
edit the file info/dir in the installed Emacs distribution, and
add a line for the top level node in the Info package that you are
installing. Follow the examples already in this file. The format is:
* Topic: (relative-pathname). Short description of topic.
If you want to install Info files and you don't have the necessary privileges, you have several options:
Info-goto-node command (invoked by
pressing <g> in Info mode) by typing the name of the file in
parentheses. This goes to the node named “Top” in that file. For
example, to view a Info file named info-file in your home
directory, you can type this:
C-h i g (~/info-file) <RET>
Info-default-directory-list. For example, to use a private Info
directory which is a subdirectory of your home directory named Info,
you could put this in your .emacs file:
(setq Info-default-directory-list
(cons "~/Info" Info-default-directory-list))
You will need a top-level Info file named dir in this directory
which has everything the system dir file has in it, except it should
list only entries for Info files in that directory. You might not need
it if all files in this directory were referenced by other dir
files. The node lists from all dir files in
Info-default-directory-list are merged by the Info system.
You can't get nicely printed output from Info files; you must still have the original Texinfo source file for the manual you want to print.
Assuming you have TeX installed on your system, follow these steps:
\input texinfo
You may need to change `texinfo' to the full pathname of the texinfo.tex file, which comes with Emacs as man/texinfo.tex (or copy or link it into the current directory).
The `texi2dvi' script is part of the GNU Texinfo distribution (see Installing Texinfo documentation).
dvips program to print the DVI file on that
printer.
To get more general instructions, retrieve the latest Texinfo package (see Installing Texinfo documentation).
Yes. Here are some alternative programs:
info, a stand-alone version of the Info program, comes as part of
the Texinfo package. See Installing Texinfo documentation, for
details.
This isn't a frequently asked question, but it should be! A variety of informational files about Emacs and relevant aspects of the GNU project are available for you to read.
The following files are available in the etc directory of the Emacs distribution (see File-name conventions, if you're not sure where that is).
Latest versions of the above files also available at
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/GNUinfo/
More GNU information, including back issues of the GNU's Bulletin, are at
http://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bulletins.html and
http://www.cs.pdx.edu/~trent/gnu/gnu.html
See Installing Emacs, for some basic installation hints, and see Problems building Emacs, or Linking with -lX11 fails, if you have problems with the installation.
The file etc/SERVICE (see File-name conventions, if you're not sure where that is) lists companies and individuals willing to sell you help in installing or using Emacs. An up-to-date version this file is available on `ftp.gnu.org' (see Informational files for Emacs).
The Emacs FAQ is available in several ways:
?GNU Emacs Frequently Asked Questions?rc:m
In Gnus, you should type C-u C-x C-s from the *Summary* buffer or C-u <SPC> from the *Newsgroup* buffer to view all articles in a newsgroup.
If the FAQ articles have expired and have been deleted from your news spool, it might (or might not) do some good to complain to your news administrator, because the most recent FAQ should not expire for a while.
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/comp.emacs/ and
ftp://ftp.uni-paderborn.de/pub/doc/FAQ/comp/emacs/
If you do not have access to anonymous FTP, you can access the archives using the rtfm.mit.edu mail server. The Emacs FAQ can be retrieved by sending mail to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with a blank subject and containing
send usenet/news.answers/GNU-Emacs-FAQ/diffs
send usenet/news.answers/GNU-Emacs-FAQ/part1
send usenet/news.answers/GNU-Emacs-FAQ/part2
send usenet/news.answers/GNU-Emacs-FAQ/part3
send usenet/news.answers/GNU-Emacs-FAQ/part4
send usenet/news.answers/GNU-Emacs-FAQ/part5
For more information, send email to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with "help" and "index" in the body on separate lines.
This chapter gives you basic information about Emacs, including its latest version status.
Emacs originally was an acronym for Editor MACroS. RMS says he “picked the name Emacs because <E> was not in use as an abbreviation on ITS at the time.” The first Emacs was a set of macros written in 1976 at MIT by RMS for the editor TECO (Text Editor and COrrector, originally Tape Editor and COrrector) under ITS on a PDP-10. RMS had already extended TECO with a “real-time” full-screen mode with reprogrammable keys. Emacs was started by Guy Steele as a project to unify the many divergent TECO command sets and key bindings at MIT, and completed by RMS.
Many people have said that TECO code looks a lot like line noise; you can read more at news:alt.lang.teco. Someone has written a TECO implementation in Emacs Lisp (to find it, see Packages that do not come with Emacs); it would be an interesting project to run the original TECO Emacs inside of Emacs.
For some not-so-serious alternative reasons for Emacs to have that name, check out the file etc/JOKES (see File-name conventions).
Emacs 21.2 is the current version as of this writing.
To find out what has changed in recent versions, type C-h n (M-x view-emacs-news). The oldest changes are at the bottom of the file, so you might want to read it starting there, rather than at the top.
The differences between Emacs versions 18 and 19 was rather dramatic; the introduction of frames, faces, and colors on windowing systems was obvious to even the most casual user.
There are differences between Emacs versions 19 and 20 as well, but many are more subtle or harder to find. Among the changes are the inclusion of MULE code for languages that use non-Latin characters and for mixing several languages in the same document; the “Customize” facility for modifying variables without having to use Lisp; and automatic conversion of files from Macintosh, Microsoft, and Unix platforms.
A number of older Lisp packages, such as Gnus, Supercite and the calendar/diary, have been updated and enhanced to work with Emacs 20, and are now included with the standard distribution.
Emacs 21 features a thorough rewrite of the display engine. The new display engine supports variable-size fonts, images, and can play sounds on platforms which support that. As a result, the visual appearence of Emacs, when it runs on a windowed display, is much more reminiscent of modern GUI programs, and includes 3D widgets (used for the mode line and the scroll bars), a configurable and extensible toolbar, tooltips (a.k.a. balloon help), and other niceties.
In addition, Emacs 21 supports faces on text-only terminals. This means
that you can now have colors when you run Emacs on a GNU/Linux console
and on xterm with emacs -nw.
see Init File
In general, new Emacs users should not have .emacs files, because it causes confusing non-standard behavior. Then they send questions to help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org asking why Emacs isn't behaving as documented.
Beginning with version 20.1, Emacs includes the new Customize facility, which can be invoked using M-x customize <RET>. This allows users who are unfamiliar with Emacs Lisp to modify their .emacs files in a relatively straightforward way, using menus rather than Lisp code. Not all packages support Customize as of this writing, but the number is growing fairly steadily.
While Customize might indeed make it easier to configure Emacs, consider taking a bit of time to learn Emacs Lisp and modifying your .emacs directly. Simple configuration options are described rather completely in see Init File, for users interested in performing frequently requested, basic tasks.
In Emacs 21.1 and later, colors and faces are supported in non-windowed mode,
i.e. on Unix and GNU/Linux text-only terminals and consoles, and when
invoked as `emacs -nw' on X and MS-Windows. (Colors and faces were
supported in the MS-DOS port since Emacs 19.29.) Emacs automatically
detects color support at startup and uses it if available. If you think
that your terminal supports colors, but Emacs won't use them, check the
termcap entry for your display type for color-related
capabilities.
The command M-x list-colors-display pops up a window which exhibits all the colors Emacs knows about on the current display.
Syntax highlighting is usually turned off by default; see Turning on syntax highlighting, for instructions how to turn it on.
Start Emacs with the `-debug-init' command-line option. This enables the Emacs Lisp debugger before evaluating your .emacs file, and places you in the debugger if something goes wrong. The top line in the trace-back buffer will be the error message, and the second or third line of that buffer will display the Lisp code from your .emacs file that caused the problem.
You can also evaluate an individual function or argument to a function in your .emacs file by moving the cursor to the end of the function or argument and typing C-x C-e (M-x eval-last-sexp).
Use C-h v (M-x describe-variable) to check the value of variables which you are trying to set or use.
To have Emacs automatically display the current line number of the point in the mode line, do M-x line-number-mode. You can also put the form
(setq line-number-mode t)
in your .emacs file to achieve this whenever you start Emacs.
(Line number display is on by default, unless your site-specific
initialization disables it.) Note that Emacs will not display the line
number if the buffer's size in bytes is larger than the value of the
variable line-number-display-limit.
As of Emacs 20, you can similarly display the current column with M-x column-number-mode, or by putting the form
(setq column-number-mode t)
in your .emacs file.
The "%c" format specifier in the variable mode-line-format
will insert the current column's value into the mode line. See the
documentation for mode-line-format (using C-h v
mode-line-format <RET>) for more information on how to set and use
this variable.
Users of all Emacs versions can display the current column using the `column' package written by Per Abrahamsen. See Packages that do not come with Emacs, for instructions on how to get it.
None of the vi emulation modes provide the “set number”
capability of vi (as far as we know).
The contents of an Emacs frame's titlebar is controlled by the variable
frame-title-format, which has the same structure as the variable
mode-line-format. (Use C-h v or M-x
describe-variable to get information about one or both of these
variables.)
By default, the titlebar for a frame does contain the name of the buffer
currently being visited, except if there is a single frame. In such a
case, the titlebar contains Emacs invocation name and the name of the
machine at which Emacs was invoked. This is done by setting
frame-title-format to the default value of
(multiple-frames "%b" ("" invocation-name "@" system-name))
To modify the behavior such that frame titlebars contain the buffer's name regardless of the number of existing frames, include the following in your .emacs:
(setq frame-title-format "%b")
(condition-case ()
(quietly-read-abbrev-file)
(file-error nil))
(add-hook 'mymode-mode-hook
(lambda ()
(setq abbrev-mode t)))
auto-fill-mode by default?
To turn on auto-fill-mode just once for one buffer, use M-x
auto-fill-mode.
To turn it on for every buffer in a certain mode, you must use the hook
for that mode. For example, to turn on auto-fill mode for all
text buffers, including the following in your .emacs file:
(add-hook 'text-mode-hook 'turn-on-auto-fill)
If you want auto-fill mode on in all major modes, do this:
(setq-default auto-fill-function 'do-auto-fill)
If you want to use a certain mode foo for all files whose names end with the extension .bar, this will do it for you:
(setq auto-mode-alist (cons '("\\.bar\\'" . foo-mode) auto-mode-alist))
Otherwise put this somewhere in the first line of any file you want to edit in the mode foo (in the second line, if the first line begins with `#!'):
-*- foo -*-
Beginning with Emacs 19, the variable interpreter-mode-alist
specifies which mode to use when loading a shell script. (Emacs
determines which interpreter you're using by examining the first line of
the script.) This feature only applies when the file name doesn't
indicate which mode to use. Use C-h v (or M-x
describe-variable) on interpreter-mode-alist to learn more.
To search for a single character that appears in the buffer as, for
example, `\237', you can type C-s C-q 2 3 7. (This assumes
the value of search-quote-char is 17 (i.e., C-q).)
Searching for all unprintable characters is best done with a
regular expression (regexp) search. The easiest regexp to use for
the unprintable chars is the complement of the regexp for the printable
chars.
To type these special characters in an interactive argument to
isearch-forward-regexp or re-search-forward, you need to
use C-q. (`\t', `\n', `\r', and `\f' stand
respectively for <TAB>, <LFD>, <RET>, and C-l.) So,
to search for unprintable characters using re-search-forward:
M-x re-search-forward <RET> [^ <TAB> C-q <LFD> C-q <RET> C-q C-l <SPC> -~] <RET>
Using isearch-forward-regexp:
M-C-s [^ <TAB> <LFD> C-q <RET> C-q C-l <SPC> -~]
To delete all unprintable characters, simply use replace-regexp:
M-x replace-regexp <RET> [^ <TAB> C-q <LFD> C-q <RET> C-q C-l <SPC> -~] <RET> <RET>
Replacing is similar to the above. To replace all unprintable characters with a colon, use:
M-x replace-regexp <RET> [^ <TAB> C-q <LFD> C-q <RET> C-q C-l <SPC> -~] <RET> : <RET>
You can cause the region to be highlighted when the mark is active by including
(transient-mark-mode t)
in your .emacs file. (Also see Turning on syntax highlighting.)
For searching, the value of the variable case-fold-search
determines whether they are case sensitive:
(setq case-fold-search nil) ; make searches case sensitive
(setq case-fold-search t) ; make searches case insensitive
Similarly, for replacing, the variable case-replace determines
whether replacements preserve case.
To change the case sensitivity just for one major mode, use the major mode's hook. For example:
(add-hook 'foo-mode-hook
(lambda ()
(setq case-fold-search nil)))
Use auto-fill-mode, activated by typing M-x auto-fill-mode.
The default maximum line width is 70, determined by the variable
fill-column. To learn how to turn this on automatically, see
Turning on auto-fill by default.
Use Ispell. See Ispell.
Use Ispell. Ispell can handle TeX and *roff documents. See Ispell.
load-path?
In general, you should only add to the load-path. You can add
directory /dir/subdir to the load path like this:
(setq load-path (cons "/dir/subdir/" load-path))
To do this relative to your home directory:
(setq load-path (cons "~/mysubdir/" load-path)
emacsclient, which comes with Emacs, is for editing a file using
an already running Emacs rather than starting up a new Emacs. It does
this by sending a request to the already running Emacs, which must be
expecting the request.
Emacs must have executed the server-start function for
`emacsclient' to work. This can be done either by a command line
option:
emacs -f server-start
or by invoking server-start from .emacs:
(if (some conditions are met) (server-start))
When this is done, Emacs starts a subprocess running a program called `emacsserver'. `emacsserver' creates a Unix domain socket. The socket is either named .emacs_server, in the user's home directory, or esrv-userid-systemname, in the /tmp directory, depending on how `emacsserver' was compiled.
To get your news reader, mail reader, etc., to invoke
`emacsclient', try setting the environment variable EDITOR
(or sometimes VISUAL) to the value `emacsclient'. You may
have to specify the full pathname of the `emacsclient' program
instead. Examples:
# csh commands:
setenv EDITOR emacsclient
# using full pathname
setenv EDITOR /usr/local/emacs/etc/emacsclient
# sh command:
EDITOR=emacsclient ; export EDITOR
When `emacsclient' is run, it connects to the .emacs_server
socket and passes its command line options to `server'. When
`server' receives these requests, it sends this information to the
the Emacs process, which at the next opportunity will visit the files
specified. (Line numbers can be specified just like with Emacs.) The
user will have to switch to the Emacs window by hand. When the user is
done editing a file, the user can type C-x # (or M-x
server-edit) to indicate this. If there is another buffer requested by
emacsclient, Emacs will switch to it; otherwise
emacsclient will exit, signaling the calling program to continue.
`emacsclient' and `server' must be running on machines which
share the same filesystem for this to work. The pathnames that
`emacsclient' specifies should be correct for the filesystem that
the Emacs process sees. The Emacs process should not be suspended at
the time `emacsclient' is invoked. On Unix and GNU/Linux systems,
`emacsclient' should either be invoked from another X window, or
from a shell window inside Emacs itself, or from another interactive
session, e.g., by means of a screen program.
There is an enhanced version of `emacsclient'/server called `gnuserv', written by Andy Norman which is available in the Emacs Lisp Archive (see Packages that do not come with Emacs). `gnuserv' uses Internet domain sockets, so it can work across most network connections. It also supports the execution of arbitrary Emacs Lisp forms and does not require the client program to wait for completion.
The alpha version of an enhanced `gnuserv' is available at
ftp://ftp.wellfleet.com/netman/psmith/emacs/gnuserv-2.1alpha.tar.gz
The variable compilation-error-regexp-alist helps control how
Emacs parses your compiler output. It is a list of triplets of the form:
(regexp file-idx line-idx), where regexp,
file-idx and line-idx are strings. To help determine what
the constituent elements should be, load compile.el and then type
C-h v compilation-error-regexp-alist <RET> to see the current
value. A good idea is to look at compile.el itself as the
comments included for this variable are quite useful—the regular
expressions required for your compiler's output may be very close to one
already provided. Once you have determined the proper regexps, use the
following to inform Emacs of your changes:
(setq compilation-error-regexp-alist
(cons '(regexp file-idx line-idx)
compilation-error-regexp-alist))
switch?
Many people want to indent their switch statements like this:
f()
{
switch(x) {
case A:
x1;
break;
case B:
x2;
break;
default:
x3;
}
}
The solution at first appears to be: set c-indent-level to 4 and
c-label-offset to -2. However, this will give you an indentation
spacing of four instead of two.
The real solution is to use cc-mode (the default mode for
C programming in Emacs 20 and later) and add the following line to yoyr
.emacs:
(c-set-offset 'case-label '+)
There appears to be no way to do this with the old c-mode.
The Emacs cc-mode features an interactive procedure for
customizing the indentation style, which is fully explained in the
CC Mode manual that is part of the Emacs distribution, see
Customization Indentation. Here's a short summary of the procedure:
0+-++--*/ (c-set-offset 'syntactic-symbol offset)
where syntactic-symbol is the name Emacs shows in the minibuffer
when you type C-c C-o at the beginning of the line, and
offset is one of the indentation symbols listed above (+,
/, 0, etc.) that you've chosen during the interactive
procedure.
It is recommended to put all the resulting (c-set-offset ...)
customizations inside a C mode hook, like this:
(defun my-c-mode-hook ()
(c-set-offset ...)
(c-set-offset ...))
(add-hook 'c-mode-hook 'my-c-mode-hook)
Using c-mode-hook avoids the need to put a (require 'cc-mode) into your .emacs file, because c-set-offset
might be unavailable when cc-mode is not loaded.
Note that c-mode-hook runs for C source files only; use
c++-mode-hook for C++ sources, java-mode-hook for
Java sources, etc. If you want the same customizations to be in
effect in all languages supported by cc-mode, use
c-mode-common-hook.
In Emacs 21 and later, this is on by default: if the variable
truncate-lines is non-nil in the current buffer, Emacs
automatically scrolls the display horizontally when point moves off the
left or right edge of the window.
In Emacs 20, use the hscroll-mode. Here is some information from
the documentation, available by typing C-h f hscroll-mode <RET>:
Automatically scroll horizontally when the point moves off the left or right edge of the window.
turn-on-hscroll is useful in mode hooks as in:
(add-hook 'text-mode-hook 'turn-on-hscroll)
hscroll-margin controls how close the cursor can get to the
edge of the window.
hscroll-step-percent controls how far to jump once we decide to do so.
M-x overwrite-mode (a minor mode). This toggles
overwrite-mode on and off, so exiting from overwrite-mode
is as easy as another M-x overwrite-mode.
On some systems, <Insert> toggles overwrite-mode on and off.
Martin R. Frank writes:
Tell Emacs to use the visible bell instead of the audible bell, and set the visible bell to nothing.
That is, put the following in your TERMCAP environment variable
(assuming you have one):
... :vb=: ...
And evaluate the following Lisp form:
(setq visible-bell t)
On X Window system, you can adjust the bell volume and duration for all
programs with the shell command xset.
Invoking xset without any arguments produces some basic
information, including the following:
usage: xset [-display host:dpy] option ...
To turn bell off:
-b b off b 0
To set bell volume, pitch and duration:
b [vol [pitch [dur]]] b on
Such behavior is automatic in Emacs 20 and later. From the etc/NEWS file for Emacs 20.2:
** In Text mode, now only blank lines separate paragraphs. This makes
it possible to get the full benefit of Adaptive Fill mode in Text mode,
and other modes derived from it (such as Mail mode). <TAB> in Text
mode now runs the command indent-relative; this makes a practical
difference only when you use indented paragraphs.
As a result, the old Indented Text mode is now identical to Text mode,
and is an alias for it.
If you want spaces at the beginning of a line to start a paragraph, use
the new mode, Paragraph Indent Text mode.
If you have auto-fill-mode turned on (see Turning on auto-fill by default), you can tell Emacs to prefix every line with a certain
character sequence, the fill prefix. Type the prefix at the
beginning of a line, position point after it, and then type C-x .
(set-fill-prefix) to set the fill prefix. Thereafter,
auto-filling will automatically put the fill prefix at the beginning of
new lines, and M-q (fill-paragraph) will maintain any fill
prefix when refilling the paragraph.
If you have paragraphs with different levels of indentation, you will have to set the fill prefix to the correct value each time you move to a new paragraph. To avoid this hassle, try one of the many packages available from the Emacs Lisp Archive (see Packages that do not come with Emacs.) Look up “fill” and “indent” in the Lisp Code Directory for guidance.
As of version 19, Emacs comes with paren.el, which (when loaded) will automatically highlight matching parentheses whenever point (i.e., the cursor) is located over one. To load paren.el automatically, include the line
(require 'paren)
in your .emacs file. Alan Shutko
reports that as of version 20.1, you must also call show-paren-mode in
your .emacs file:
(show-paren-mode 1)
Customize will let you turn on show-paren-mode. Use M-x
customize-group <RET> paren-showing <RET>. From within
Customize, you can also go directly to the “paren-showing” group.
Alternatives to paren include:
forward-sexp) and M-C-b (backward-sexp)
will skip over one set of balanced parentheses, so you can see which
parentheses match. (You can train it to skip over balanced brackets
and braces at the same time by modifying the syntax table.)
vi. In addition, if the cursor isn't over a
parenthesis, it simply inserts a % like normal.
;; By an unknown contributor
(global-set-key "%" 'match-paren)
(defun match-paren (arg)
"Go to the matching paren if on a paren; otherwise insert %."
(interactive "p")
(cond ((looking-at "\\s\(") (forward-list 1) (backward-char 1))
((looking-at "\\s\)") (forward-char 1) (backward-list 1))
(t (self-insert-command (or arg 1)))))
#ifdef commands are handled by the compiler?M-x hide-ifdef-mode. (This is a minor mode.) You might also want to try cpp.el, available at the Emacs Lisp Archive (see Packages that do not come with Emacs).
. (dot) command of vi?
(. is the redo command in vi. It redoes the last
insertion/deletion.)
As of Emacs 20.3, there is indeed a repeat command (C-x z)
that repeats the last command. If you preface it with a prefix
argument, the prefix arg is applied to the command.
You can also type C-x <ESC> <ESC>
(repeat-complex-command) to reinvoke commands that used the
minibuffer to get arguments. In repeat-complex-command you can
type M-p and M-n (and also up-arrow and down-arrow, if your
keyboard has these keys) to scan through all the different complex
commands you've typed.
To repeat a set of commands, use keyboard macros. (see Keyboard Macros.)
If you're really desperate for the . command, use VIPER, a
vi emulation mode which comes with Emacs, and which appears to
support it. (See VIPER.)
see Resources X.
You can also use a resource editor, such as editres (for X11R5 and onwards), to look at the resource names for the menu bar, assuming Emacs was compiled with the X toolkit.
There are a number of ways to execute (evaluate, in Lisp lingo) an Emacs Lisp form:
emacs-lisp-mode, typing M-C-x evaluates a top-level form
before or around point.
load
instead.)
The functions load-library, eval-region,
eval-current-buffer, require, and autoload are also
useful; see Emacs Lisp documentation, if you want to learn more
about them.
Set the variable default-tab-width. For example, to set
<TAB> stops every 10 characters, insert the following in your
.emacs file:
(setq default-tab-width 10)
Do not confuse variable tab-width with variable
tab-stop-list. The former is used for the display of literal
<TAB> characters. The latter controls what characters are inserted
when you press the <TAB> character in certain modes.
To do this to an entire buffer, type M-< M-x replace-regexp <RET> ^ <RET> > <RET>.
To do this to a region, use string-insert-rectangle.
Set the mark (C-<SPC>) at the beginning of the first line you
want to prefix, move the cursor to last line to be prefixed, and type
M-x string-insert-rectangle <RET>. To do this for the whole
buffer, type C-x h M-x string-insert-rectangle <RET>.
If you are trying to prefix a yanked mail message with `>', you
might want to set the variable mail-yank-prefix. Better yet, use
the Supercite package (see Supercite), which provides flexible
citation for yanked mail and news messages; it is included in Emacs
since version 19.20. See Changing the included text prefix, for
additional information.
Mark the region and then type M-x underline-region <RET>.
Use C-x ( and C-x ) to make a keyboard macro that invokes the command and then type M-0 C-x e.
Any messages your command prints in the echo area will be suppressed.
If you need to repeat a command a small number of times, you can use C-x z, see Repeating commands.
C-z iconifies Emacs when running under X and suspends Emacs otherwise. see Misc X.
see Regexps.
The or operator is `\|', not `|', and the grouping operators
are `\(' and `\)'. Also, the string syntax for a backslash is
`\\'. To specify a regular expression like `xxx\(foo\|bar\)'
in a Lisp string, use `xxx\\(foo\\|bar\\)'.
Note the doubled backslashes!
The “tags” feature of Emacs includes the command
tags-query-replace which performs a query-replace across all the
files mentioned in the TAGS file. see Tags Search.
As of Emacs 19.29, Dired mode (M-x dired <RET>, or C-x
d) supports the command dired-do-query-replace, which allows
users to replace regular expressions in multiple files.
etags?
The etags man page should be in the same place as the
emacs man page.
Quick command-line switch descriptions are also available. For example, `etags -H'.
You probably don't want to do this, since backups are useful, especially when something goes wrong.
To avoid seeing backup files (and other "uninteresting" files) in Dired,
load dired-x by adding the following to your .emacs file:
(add-hook 'dired-load-hook
(lambda ()
(load "dired-x")))
With dired-x loaded, M-o toggles omitting in each dired buffer.
You can make omitting the default for new dired buffers by putting the
following in your .emacs:
(add-hook 'dired-mode-hook 'dired-omit-toggle)
If you're tired of seeing backup files whenever you do an `ls' at
the Unix shell, try GNU ls with the `-B' option. GNU
ls is part of the GNU Fileutils package, available from
`ftp.gnu.org' and its mirrors (see Current GNU distributions).
To disable or change the way backups are made, see Backup Names.
Beginning with Emacs 21.1, you can control where Emacs puts backup files
by customizing the variable backup-directory-alist. This
variable's value specifies that files whose names match specific patters
should have their backups put in certain directories. A typical use is
to add the element ("." . dir) to force Emacs to put
all backup files in the directory dir.
auto-save-mode?You probably don't want to do this, since auto-saving is useful, especially when Emacs or your computer crashes while you are editing a document.
Instead, you might want to change the variable
auto-save-interval, which specifies how many keystrokes Emacs
waits before auto-saving. Increasing this value forces Emacs to wait
longer between auto-saves, which might annoy you less.
You might also want to look into Sebastian Kremer's auto-save
package, available from the Lisp Code Archive (see Packages that do not come with Emacs). This
package also allows you to place all auto-save files in one directory,
such as /tmp.
To disable or change how auto-save-mode works, see Auto Save.
Are you sure you indeed need to go to a line by its number? Perhaps all
you want is to display a line in your source file for which a compiler
printed an error message? If so, compiling from within Emacs using the
M-x compile and M-x recompile commands is a much more
effective way of doing that. Emacs automatically intercepts the compile
error messages, inserts them into a special buffer called
*compilation*, and lets you visit the locus of each message in
the source. Type C-x ` to step through the offending lines one by
one. Click Mouse-2 or press <RET> on a message text in the
*compilation* buffer to go to the line whose number is mentioned
in that message.
But if you indeed need to go to a certain text line, type M-x goto-line <RET>. Emacs will prompt you for the number of the line and go to that line.
You can do this faster by invoking goto-line with a numeric
argument that is the line's number. For example, C-u 286 M-x
goto-line <RET> will jump to line number 286 in the current
buffer.
If you need to use this command frequently, you might consider binding
it to a key. The following snippet, if added to your ~/.emacs
file, will bind the sequence C-x g to goto-line:
(global-set-key "\C-xg" 'goto-line)
Each menu title (e.g., `File', `Edit', `Buffers') represents a local or global keymap. Selecting a menu title with the mouse displays that keymap's non-nil contents in the form of a menu.
So to add a menu option to an existing menu, all you have to do is add a new definition to the appropriate keymap. Adding a `Forward Word' item to the `Edit' menu thus requires the following Lisp code:
(define-key global-map
[menu-bar edit forward]
'("Forward word" . forward-word))
The first line adds the entry to the global keymap, which includes
global menu bar entries. Replacing the reference to global-map
with a local keymap would add this menu option only within a particular
mode.
The second line describes the path from the menu-bar to the new entry.
Placing this menu entry underneath the `File' menu would mean
changing the word edit in the second line to file.
The third line is a cons cell whose first element is the title that will be displayed, and whose second element is the function that will be called when that menu option is invoked.
To add a new menu, rather than a new option to an existing menu, we must define an entirely new keymap:
(define-key global-map [menu-bar words]
(cons "Words" (make-sparse-keymap "Words")))
The above code creates a new sparse keymap, gives it the name `Words', and attaches it to the global menu bar. Adding the `Forward Word' item to this new menu would thus require the following code:
(define-key global-map
[menu-bar words forward]
'("Forward word" . forward-word))
Note that because of the way keymaps work, menu options are displayed with the more recently defined items at the top. Thus if you were to define menu options `foo', `bar', and `baz' (in that order), the menu option `baz' would appear at the top, and `foo' would be at the bottom.
One way to avoid this problem is to use the function define-key-after,
which works the same as define-key, but lets you modify where items
appear. The following Lisp code would insert the `Forward Word'
item in the `Edit' menu immediately following the `Undo' item:
(define-key-after
(lookup-key global-map [menu-bar edit])
[forward]
'("Forward word" . forward-word)
'undo)
Note how the second and third arguments to define-key-after are
different from those of define-key, and that we have added a new
(final) argument, the function after which our new key should be
defined.
To move a menu option from one position to another, simply evaluate
define-key-after with the appropriate final argument.
More detailed information—and more examples of how to create and modify menu options—are in the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, under “Menu Keymaps”. (See Emacs Lisp documentation, for information on this manual.)
The simplest way to remove a menu is to set its keymap to `nil'. For example, to delete the `Words' menu (see Modifying pull-down menus), use:
(define-key global-map [menu-bar words] nil)
Similarly, removing a menu option requires redefining a keymap entry to
nil. For example, to delete the `Forward word' menu option
from the `Edit' menu (we added it in Modifying pull-down menus), use:
(define-key global-map [menu-bar edit forward] nil)
font-lock-mode is the standard way to have Emacs perform syntax
highlighting in the current buffer. With font-lock-mode turned
on, different types of text will appear in different colors. For
instance, if you turn on font-lock-mode in a programming mode,
variables will appear in one face, keywords in a second, and comments in
a third.
Earlier versions of Emacs supported hilit19, a similar package. Use of hilit19 is now considered non-standard, although hilit19.el comes with the stock Emacs distribution. It is no longer maintained.
To turn font-lock-mode on within an existing buffer, use M-x
font-lock-mode <RET>.
To automatically invoke font-lock-mode when a particular major
mode is invoked, set the major mode's hook. For example, to fontify all
c-mode buffers, add the following to your .emacs file:
(add-hook 'c-mode-hook 'turn-on-font-lock)
To automatically invoke font-lock-mode for all major modes, you
can turn on global-font-lock-mode by including the following line
in your .emacs file:
(global-font-lock-mode 1)
This instructs Emacs to turn on font-lock mode in those buffers for
which a font-lock mode definition has been provided (in the variable
font-lock-global-modes). If you edit a file in
pie-ala-mode, and no font-lock definitions have been provided for
pie-ala files, then the above setting will have no effect on that
particular buffer.
Highlighting a buffer with font-lock-mode can take quite a while,
and cause an annoying delay in display, so several features exist to
work around this.
In Emacs 21 and later, turning on font-lock-mode automatically
activates the new Just-In-Time fontification provided by
jit-lock-mode. jit-lock-mode defers the fontification of
portions of buffer until you actually need to see them, and can also
fontify while Emacs is idle. This makes display of the visible portion
of a buffer almost instantaneous. For details about customizing
jit-lock-mode, type C-h f jit-lock-mode <RET>.
In versions of Emacs before 21, different levels of decoration are
available, from slight to gaudy. More decoration means you need to wait
more time for a buffer to be fontified (or a faster machine). To
control how decorated your buffers should become, set the value of
font-lock-maximum-decoration in your .emacs file, with a
nil value indicating default (usually minimum) decoration, and a
t value indicating the maximum decoration. For the gaudiest
possible look, then, include the line
(setq font-lock-maximum-decoration t)
in your .emacs file. You can also set this variable such that
different modes are highlighted in a different ways; for more
information, see the documentation for
font-lock-maximum-decoration with C-h v (or M-x
describe-variable <RET>).
You might also want to investigate fast-lock-mode and
lazy-lock-mode, versions of font-lock-mode that speed up
highlighting. These are the alternatives for jit-lock-mode in
versions of Emacs before 21.1. The advantage of lazy-lock-mode
is that it only fontifies buffers when certain conditions are met, such
as after a certain amount of idle time, or after you have finished
scrolling through text. See the documentation for lazy-lock-mode
by typing C-h f lazy-lock-mode (M-x describe-function
<RET> lazy-lock-mode <RET>).
Also see the documentation for the function font-lock-mode,
available by typing C-h f font-lock-mode (M-x
describe-function <RET> font-lock-mode <RET>).
For more information on font-lock mode, take a look at the
font-lock-mode FAQ, maintained by
Jari Aalto at
ftp://cs.uta.fi/pub/ssjaaa/ema-font.gui
To print buffers with the faces (i.e., colors and fonts) intact, use
M-x ps-print-buffer-with-faces or M-x
ps-print-region-with-faces. You will need a way to send text to a
PostScript printer, or a PostScript interpreter such as Ghostscript;
consult the documentation of the variables ps-printer-name,
ps-lpr-command, and ps-lpr-switches for more details.
Place the following Lisp form in your .emacs file:
(setq scroll-step 1)
see Scrolling.
Use delete-selection-mode, which you can start automatically by
placing the following Lisp form in your .emacs file:
(delete-selection-mode t)
According to the documentation string for delete-selection-mode
(which you can read using M-x describe-function <RET>
delete-selection-mode <RET>):
When ON, typed text replaces the selection if the selection is active. When OFF, typed text is just inserted at point.
This mode also allows you to delete (not kill) the highlighted region by pressing <DEL>.
As of Emacs 20, detection and handling of MS-DOS (and Windows) files is performed transparently. You can open MS-DOS files on a Unix system, edit it, and save it without having to worry about the file format.
When editing an MS-DOS style file, the mode line will indicate that it is a DOS file. On Unix and GNU/Linux systems, and also on a Macintosh, the string `(DOS)' will appear near the left edge of the mode line; on DOS and Windows, where the DOS end-of-line (EOL) format is the default, a backslash (`\') will appear in the mode line.
If you are running a version of Emacs before 20.1, get crypt++
from the Emacs Lisp Archive (see Packages that do not come with Emacs). Among other things, crypt++ transparently modifies
MS-DOS files as they are loaded and saved, allowing you to ignore the
different conventions that Unix and MS-DOS have for delineating the end
of a line.
Ulrich Mueller suggests adding the following two lines to your .emacs file:
(setq sentence-end "[.?!][]\"')}]*\\($\\|[ \t]\\)[ \t\n]*")
(setq sentence-end-double-space nil)
ls from the Shell mode?
This happens because ls is aliased to `ls --color' in your
shell init file. You have two alternatives to solve this:
EMACS variable in the
environment. When Emacs runs a subsidiary shell, it exports the
EMACS variable with the value t to that shell. You can
unalias ls when that happens, thus limiting the alias to your
interactive sessions.
ansi-color package (bundled with Emacs 21.1 and
later), which converts these ANSI escape sequences into colors.
The Emacs manual lists some common kinds of trouble users could get into, see Dealing with Emacs Trouble, so you might look there if the problem you encounter isn't described in this chapter. If you decide you've discovered a bug, see Reporting Bugs, for instructions how to do that.
The file etc/PROBLEMS in the Emacs distribution lists various known problems with building and using Emacs on specific platforms; type C-h P to read it.
Old versions (i.e., anything before 19.29) of Emacs had problems editing files larger than 8 megabytes. As of version 19.29, the maximum buffer size is at least 2^27-1, or 134,217,727 bytes, or 132 MBytes. Emacs 20 can be compiled on some 64-bit systems in a way that enlarges the buffer size up to 576,460,752,303,423,487 bytes, or 549,755,813 GBytes.
If you are using a version of Emacs older than 19.29 and cannot upgrade, you will have to recompile. Leonard N. Zubkoff suggests putting the following two lines in src/config.h before compiling Emacs to allow for 26-bit integers and pointers (and thus file sizes of up to 33,554,431 bytes):
#define VALBITS 26
#define GCTYPEBITS 5
This method may result in "ILLEGAL DATATYPE" and other random errors on some machines.
David Gillespie explains how this problems crops up; while his numbers are true only for pre-19.29 versions of Emacs, the theory remains the same with current versions.
Emacs is largely written in a dialect of Lisp; Lisp is a freely-typed language in the sense that you can put any value of any type into any variable, or return it from a function, and so on. So each value must carry a tag along with it identifying what kind of thing it is, e.g., integer, pointer to a list, pointer to an editing buffer, and so on. Emacs uses standard 32-bit integers for data objects, taking the top 8 bits for the tag and the bottom 24 bits for the value. So integers (and pointers) are somewhat restricted compared to true C integers and pointers.
Try typing M-x shell-strip-ctrl-m <RET> while in shell-mode to
make them go away. If that doesn't work, you have several options:
For tcsh, put this in your .cshrc (or .tcshrc)
file:
if ($?EMACS) then
if ("$EMACS" == t) then
if ($?tcsh) unset edit
stty nl
endif
endif
Or put this in your .emacs_tcsh file:
unset edit
stty nl
Alternatively, use csh in your shell buffers instead of
tcsh. One way is:
(setq explicit-shell-file-name "/bin/csh")
and another is to do this in your .cshrc (or .tcshrc) file:
setenv ESHELL /bin/csh
(You must start Emacs over again with the environment variable properly set for this to take effect.)
You can also set the ESHELL environment variable in Emacs Lisp
with the following Lisp form,
(setenv "ESHELL" "/bin/csh")
The above solutions try to prevent the shell from producing the `^M' characters in the first place. If this is not possible (e.g., if you use a Windows shell), you can get Emacs to remove these characters from the buffer by adding this to your .emacs init file:
(add-hook 'comint-output-filter-functions 'shell-strip-ctrl-m)
On a related note: If your shell is echoing your input line in the shell buffer, you might want to try the following command in your shell start-up file:
stty -icrnl -onlcr -echo susp ^Z
The most likely reason for this message is that the `env' program
is not properly installed. Compile this program for your architecture,
and install it with `a+x' permission in the architecture-dependent
Emacs program directory. (You can find what this directory is at your
site by inspecting the value of the variable exec-directory by
typing C-h v exec-directory <RET>.)
You should also check for other programs named `env' in your path (e.g., SunOS has a program named /usr/bin/env). We don't understand why this can cause a failure and don't know a general solution for working around the problem in this case.
The `make clean' command will remove `env' and other vital programs, so be careful when using it.
It has been reported that this sometimes happened when Emacs was started as an X client from an xterm window (i.e., had a controlling tty) but the xterm was later terminated.
See also `PROBLEMS' (in the etc subdirectory of the top-level directory when you unpack the Emacs source) for other possible causes of this message.
On MS-Windows, this might happen because Emacs tries to look for the
shell in a wrong place. The default file name /bin/sh is
usually incorrect for non-Unix systems. If you know where your shell
executable is, set the variable explicit-shell-file-name in
your .emacs file to point to its full file name, like this:
(setq explicit-shell-file-name "d:/shells/bash.exe")
If you don't know what shell does Emacs use, try the M-! command; if that works, put the following line into your .emacs:
(setq explicit-shell-file-name shell-file-name)
Some people have trouble with Shell Mode because of intrusive antivirus software; disabling the resident antivirus program solves the problems in those cases.
The termcap entry for terminal type `emacs' is ordinarily put in the `TERMCAP' environment variable of subshells. It may help in certain situations (e.g., using rlogin from shell buffer) to add an entry for `emacs' to the system-wide termcap file. Here is a correct termcap entry for `emacs':
emacs:tc=unknown:
To make a terminfo entry for `emacs', use tic or
captoinfo. You need to generate
/usr/lib/terminfo/e/emacs. It may work to simply copy
/usr/lib/terminfo/d/dumb to /usr/lib/terminfo/e/emacs.
Having a termcap/terminfo entry will not enable the use of full screen programs in shell buffers. Use M-x terminal-emulator for that instead.
A workaround to the problem of missing termcap/terminfo entries is to
change terminal type `emacs' to type `dumb' or `unknown'
in your shell start up file. csh users could put this in their
.cshrc files:
if ("$term" == emacs) set term=dumb
Your terminal (or something between your terminal and the computer) is
sending C-s and C-q for flow control, and Emacs is receiving
these characters and interpreting them as commands. (The C-s
character normally invokes the isearch-forward command.) For
possible solutions, see Handling C-s and C-q with flow control.
The problem may be that Emacs is linked with a wimpier version of
gethostbyname than the rest of the programs on the machine. This
is often manifested as a message on startup of “X server not responding.
Check your `DISPLAY' environment variable.” or a message of
“Unknown host” from open-network-stream.
On a Sun, this may be because Emacs had to be linked with the static C
library. The version of gethostbyname in the static C library
may only look in /etc/hosts and the NIS (YP) maps, while the
version in the dynamic C library may be smart enough to check DNS in
addition to or instead of NIS. On a Motorola Delta running System V
R3.6, the version of gethostbyname in the standard library works,
but the one that works with NIS doesn't (the one you get with -linet).
Other operating systems have similar problems.
Try these options:
#define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv
gethostbyname and friends in libc.a with more
useful versions such as the ones in libresolv.a. Then relink
Emacs.
ypbind is
properly told to do DNS lookups with the correct command line switch.
An error occurred while loading either your .emacs file or the system-wide file lisp/default.el. Emacs 21.1 and later pops the *Messages* buffer, and puts there some additional information about the error, to provide some hints for debugging.
For information on how to debug your .emacs file, see Debugging a customization file.
It may be the case that you need to load some package first, or use a hook that will be evaluated after the package is loaded. A common case of this is explained in Terminal setup code works after Emacs has begun.
As of version 19, Emacs searches for X resources in the files specified by the following environment variables:
XFILESEARCHPATH
XUSERFILESEARCHPATH
XAPPLRESDIR
This emulates the functionality provided by programs written using the Xt toolkit.
XFILESEARCHPATH and XUSERFILESEARCHPATH should be a list
of file names separated by colons. XAPPLRESDIR should be a list
of directory names separated by colons.
Emacs searches for X resources:
LANG
environment variable), if the `LANG' environment variable is set,
LANG environment variable
is set),
XFILESEARCHPATH.
This probably happens because you have set the frame parameters in the
variable initial-frame-alist. That variable holds parameters
used only for the first frame created when Emacs starts. To customize
the parameters of all frames, change the variable
default-frame-alist instead.
These two variables exist because many users customize the initial frame in a special way. For example, you could determine the position and size of the initial frame, but would like to control the geometry of the other frames by individually positioning each one of them.
Old versions of Emacs (i.e., versions before Emacs 20.x) often encountered this when the master lock file, !!!SuperLock!!!, has been left in the lock directory somehow. Delete it.
Mark Meuer says that NeXT NFS has a bug
where an exclusive create succeeds but returns an error status. This
can cause the same problem. Since Emacs's file locking doesn't work
over NFS anyway, the best solution is to recompile Emacs with
CLASH_DETECTION undefined.
When entering a file name in the minibuffer, Emacs will attempt to expand a `$' followed by a word as an environment variable. To suppress this behavior, type $$ instead.
Emacs has no way of knowing when the shell actually changes its directory. This is an intrinsic limitation of Unix. So it tries to guess by recognizing `cd' commands. If you type cd followed by a directory name with a variable reference (cd $HOME/bin) or with a shell metacharacter (cd ../lib*), Emacs will fail to correctly guess the shell's new current directory. A huge variety of fixes and enhancements to shell mode for this problem have been written to handle this problem. Check the Lisp Code Directory (see Finding a package with particular functionality).
You can tell Emacs the shell's current directory with the command M-x dirs.
In his book The Cuckoo's Egg, Cliff Stoll describes this in
chapter 4. The site at LBL had installed the /etc/movemail
program setuid root. (As of version 19, movemail is in your
architecture-specific directory; type C-h v exec-directory
<RET> to see what it is.) Since movemail had not been
designed for this situation, a security hole was created and users could
get root privileges.
movemail has since been changed so that this security hole will
not exist, even if it is installed setuid root. However,
movemail no longer needs to be installed setuid root, which
should eliminate this particular risk.
We have heard unverified reports that the 1988 Internet worm took advantage of this configuration problem.
file-local-variable feature. (Yes, a risk, but easy to
change.)
There is an Emacs feature that allows the setting of local values for variables when editing a file by including specially formatted text near the end of the file. This feature also includes the ability to have arbitrary Emacs Lisp code evaluated when the file is visited. Obviously, there is a potential for Trojan horses to exploit this feature.
Emacs 18 allowed this feature by default; users could disable it by
setting the variable inhibit-local-variables to a non-nil value.
As of Emacs 19, Emacs has a list of local variables that create a
security risk. If a file tries to set one of them, it asks the user to
confirm whether the variables should be set. You can also tell Emacs
whether to allow the evaluation of Emacs Lisp code found at the bottom
of files by setting the variable enable-local-eval.
For more information, see File Variables.
Emacs accepts synthetic X events generated by the SendEvent
request as though they were regular events. As a result, if you are
using the trivial host-based authentication, other users who can open X
connections to your X workstation can make your Emacs process do
anything, including run other processes with your privileges.
The only fix for this is to prevent other users from being able to open
X connections. The standard way to prevent this is to use a real
authentication mechanism, such as `MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1'. If using
the xauth program has any effect, then you are probably using
`MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1'. Your site may be using a superior
authentication method; ask your system administrator.
If real authentication is not a possibility, you may be satisfied by just allowing hosts access for brief intervals while you start your X programs, then removing the access. This reduces the risk somewhat by narrowing the time window when hostile users would have access, but does not eliminate the risk.
On most computers running Unix and X, you enable and disable
access using the xhost command. To allow all hosts access to
your X server, use
xhost +
at the shell prompt, which (on an HP machine, at least) produces the following message:
access control disabled, clients can connect from any host
To deny all hosts access to your X server (except those explicitly allowed by name), use
xhost -
On the test HP computer, this command generated the following message:
access control enabled, only authorized clients can connect
Chances are you're using a localized version of Unix that doesn't use US date format in dired listings. You can check this by looking at dired listings or by typing ls -l to a shell and looking at the dates that come out.
Dired uses a regular expression to find the beginning of a file name. In a long Unix-style directory listing (`ls -l'), the file name starts after the date. The regexp has thus been written to look for the date, the format of which can vary on non-US systems.
There are two approaches to solving this. The first one involves setting things up so that `ls -l' outputs US date format. This can be done by setting the locale. See your OS manual for more information.
The second approach involves changing the regular expression used by
dired, dired-move-to-filename-regexp.
This answer is meant for users of Unix and Unix-like systems. Users of other operating systems should see the series of questions beginning with Emacs for MS-DOS, which describe where to get non-Unix source and binaries, and how to install Emacs on those systems.
For Unix and Unix-like systems, the easiest way is often to compile it from scratch. You will need:
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/emacs/emacs-21.2.tar.gz
The above will obviously change as new versions of Emacs come out. For instance, when Emacs 21.42 is released, it will most probably be available as
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/emacs/emacs-21.42.tar.gz
Again, you should use one of the GNU mirror sites (see Current GNU distributions, and adjust the URL accordingly) so as to reduce load on ftp.gnu.org.
gzip, the GNU compression utility. You can get gzip via
anonymous ftp at mirrors of ftp.gnu.org sites; it should compile
and install without much trouble on most systems. Once you have
retrieved the Emacs sources, you will probably be able to uncompress
them with the command
gunzip --verbose emacs-21.2.tar.gz
changing the Emacs version (21.2), as necessary. Once
gunzip has finished doing its job, a file by the name of
emacs-21.2.tar should be in your build directory.
tar, the tape archiving program, which moves multiple files
into and out of archive files, or tarfiles. All of the files
comprising the Emacs source come in a single tarfile, and must be
extracted using tar before you can build Emacs. Typically, the
extraction command would look like
tar -xvvf emacs-21.2.tar
The `x' indicates that we want to extract files from this tarfile,
the two `v's force verbose output, and the `f' tells
tar to use a disk file, rather than one on the tape drive.
If you're using GNU tar (available at mirrors of
ftp.gnu.org), you can combine this step and the previous one by
using the command
tar -zxvvf emacs-21.2.tar.gz
The additional `z' at the beginning of the options list tells GNU
tar to uncompress the file with gunzip before extracting
the tarfile's components.
At this point, the Emacs sources (all 70+ megabytes of them) should be sitting in a directory called emacs-21.2. On most common Unix and Unix-like systems, you should be able to compile Emacs (with X Window system support) with the following commands:
cd emacs-21.2 # change directory to emacs-21.2
./configure # configure Emacs for your particular system
make # use Makefile to build components, then Emacs
If the make completes successfully, the odds are fairly good that
the build has gone well. (See Problems building Emacs, if you weren't
successful.)
By default, Emacs is installed in the following directories:
To install files in those default directories, become the superuser and type
make install
Note that `make install' will overwrite /usr/local/bin/emacs and any Emacs Info files that might be in /usr/local/info.
Much more verbose instructions (with many more hints and suggestions) come with the Emacs sources, in the file INSTALL.
See Installing Emacs, and follow the instructions there for installation.
Most files are placed in version-specific directories. Emacs 21.2, for instance, places files in /usr/local/share/emacs/21.2.
Upgrading should overwrite only, /usr/local/bin/emacs (the Emacs binary) and documentation in /usr/local/info. Back up these files before you upgrade, and you shouldn't have too much trouble.
First look in the file etc/PROBLEMS (where you unpack the Emacs source) to see if there is already a solution for your problem. Next, look for other questions in this FAQ that have to do with Emacs installation and compilation problems.
If you'd like to have someone look at your problem and help solve it, see Help installing Emacs.
If you cannot find a solution in the documentation, send a message to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
Please don't post it to news:gnu.emacs.help or send e-mail to help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. For further guidelines, see Guidelines for newsgroup postings and Reporting bugs.
Emacs needs to be linked with the static version of the X11 library, libX11.a. This may be missing.
On OpenWindows, you may need to use add_services to add the
"OpenWindows Programmers" optional software category from the CD-ROM.
On HP-UX 8.0, you may need to run update again to load the
X11-PRG “fileset”. This may be missing even if you specified “all
filesets” the first time. If libcurses.a is missing, you may
need to load the “Berkeley Development Option.”
David Zuhn says that MIT X builds shared
libraries by default, and only shared libraries, on those platforms that
support them. These shared libraries can't be used when undumping
temacs (the last stage of the Emacs build process). To get
regular libraries in addition to shared libraries, add this to
site.cf:
#define ForceNormalLib YES
Other systems may have similar problems. You can always define
CANNOT_DUMP and link with the shared libraries instead.
To get the Xmenu stuff to work, you need to find a copy of MIT's liboldX.a.
Look in the files etc/DISTRIB and etc/FTP for information on nearby archive sites and etc/ORDERS for mail orders. If you don't already have Emacs, see Informational files for Emacs, for how to get these files.
See Installing Emacs, for information on how to obtain and build the latest version of Emacs, and see Current GNU distributions, for a list of archive sites that make GNU software available.
First of all, you should check to make sure that the package isn't already available. For example, typing M-x apropos <RET> wordstar <RET> lists all functions and variables containing the string `wordstar'.
It is also possible that the package is on your system, but has not been loaded. To see which packages are available for loading, look through your computer's lisp directory (see File-name conventions). The Lisp source to most packages contains a short description of how they should be loaded, invoked, and configured—so before you use or modify a Lisp package, see if the author has provided any hints in the source code.
If a package does not come with Emacs, check the Lisp Code Directory. The LCD was originally maintained by Dave Brennan, but was recently taken over by toby knudsen, who maintains http://www.emacs.org. The LCD is currently being reorganized and updated, but you can meanwhile find many packages at ftp://ftp.emacs.org/pub.
For now, you can search through the LCD with lispdir.el, which is in the process of being updated. Download it from the LCD, in the emacs-lisp-attic/misc directory, and then evaluate the following Lisp form (see Evaluating Emacs Lisp code):
(setq lisp-code-directory
"/anonymous@ftp.emacs.org:pub/emacs-lisp-attic/emacs-lisp/LCD-datafile.gz"
elisp-archive-host "ftp.emacs.org"
elisp-archive-directory "/pub/emacs-lisp-attic/emacs-lisp/")
Once you have installed lispdir.el, you can use M-x lisp-dir-apropos to search the listing. For example, M-x lisp-dir-apropos <RET> ange-ftp <RET> produces this output:
GNU Emacs Lisp Code Directory Apropos --- "ange-ftp"
"~/" refers to archive.cis.ohio-state.edu:pub/elisp-archive/
ange-ftp (4.18) 15-Jul-1992
Andy Norman, <ange@hplb.hpl.hp.com>
~/packages/ange-ftp.tar.Z
transparent FTP Support for GNU Emacs
auto-save (1.19) 01-May-1992
Sebastian Kremer, <sk@thp.uni-koeln.de>
~/misc/auto-save.el.Z
Safer autosaving with support for ange-ftp and /tmp
ftp-quik (1.0) 28-Jul-1993
Terrence Brannon, <tb06@pl122f.eecs.lehigh.edu>
~/modes/ftp-quik.el.Z
Quik access to dired'ing of ange-ftp and normal paths
First, check the Lisp Code Directory to find the name of the package you are looking for (see Finding a package with particular functionality). Next, check local archives and the Emacs Lisp Archive to find a copy of the relevant files. If you still haven't found it, you can send e-mail to the author asking for a copy. If you find Emacs Lisp code that doesn't appear in the LCD, please submit a copy to the LCD (see Submitting to the Emacs Lisp Archive).
You can access the Emacs Lisp Archive at
ftp://archive.cis.ohio-state.edu/pub/emacs-lisp/
or at
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/emacs-lisp
Retrieve and read the file README first.
Guidelines and procedures for submission to the archive can be found in
the file GUIDELINES in the archive directory (see Packages that do not come with Emacs). It covers documentation, copyrights,
packaging, submission, and the Lisp Code Directory Record. Anonymous
FTP uploads are not permitted. Instead, all submissions are mailed to
elisp-archive@cis.ohio-state.edu. The lispdir.el
package has a function named submit-lcd-entry which will help you
with this.
The most up-to-date official GNU software is normally kept at
Read the files etc/DISTRIB and etc/FTP for more information.
A list of sites mirroring `ftp.gnu.org' can be found at
http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html
First of all, they're both GNU Emacs. XEmacs is just as much a later version of GNU Emacs as the FSF-distributed version. This FAQ refers to the latest version to be distributed by the FSF as “Emacs,” partly because the XEmacs maintainers now refer to their product using the “XEmacs” name, and partly because there isn't any accurate way to differentiate between the two without getting mired in paragraphs of legalese and history.
XEmacs, which began life as Lucid Emacs, is based on an early version of Emacs 19 and Epoch, an X-aware version of Emacs 18.
Emacs (i.e., the version distributed by the FSF) has a larger installed base and now always contains the MULE multilingual facilities. XEmacs can do some clever tricks with X and MS-Windows, such as putting arbitrary graphics in a buffer. Similar facilities have been implemented for Emacs as part of a new redisplay implementation for Emacs 21, and are available in the latest Emacs releases. Emacs and XEmacs each come with Lisp packages that are lacking in the other; RMS says that the FSF would include more packages that come with XEmacs, but that the XEmacs maintainers don't always keep track of the authors of contributed code, which makes it impossible for the FSF to have certain legal papers signed. (Without these legal papers, the FSF will not distribute Lisp packages with Emacs.) The two versions have some significant differences at the Lisp programming level.
Many XEmacs features have found their way into recent versions of Emacs, and more features can be expected in the future, but there are still many differences between the two.
The latest stable version of XEmacs as of this writing is 21.1.14; you can get it at
ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/xemacs-21.1/xemacs-21.1.14.tar.gz
More information about XEmacs, including a list of frequently asked questions (FAQ), is available at
A pre-built binary distribution of Emacs is available from the SimTel.NET archives. This version apparently works under MS-DOS and Windows (3.X, 9X, ME, NT, and 2000) and supports long file names under Windows 9X, Windows ME, and Windows 2000. More information is available from
http://www.simtel.net/pub/djgpp/v2gnu/emacs.README
The binary itself is available in the files em*.zip in the directory
http://www.simtel.net/pub/djgpp/v2gnu/
If you prefer to compile Emacs for yourself, you can do so with the current distribution directly. You will need a 386 (or better) processor, and to be running MS-DOS 3.0 or later. According to Eli Zaretskii and Darrel Hankerson, you will need the following:
You can get the latest release of DJGPP by retrieving all of the files in
djtar which comes with DJGPP v2.x,
because it can open gzip'ed tarfiles (i.e., those ending with
.tar.gz) in one step. Djtar comes in
djdevnnn.zip archive (where nnn is the DJGPP version
number), from the URL mentioned above.
Warning! Do not use the popular WinZip program to
unpack the Emacs distribution! WinZip is known to corrupt some of the
files by converting them to the DOS CR-LF format, it doesn't always
preserve the directory structure recorded in the compressed Emacs
archive, and commits other atrocities. Some of these problems could
actually prevent Emacs from building successfully!
http://www.simtel.net/pub/djgpp/v2gnu
16-bit utilities can be found in GNUish, at
http://www.simtel.net/pub/gnuish/
(mv and rm are in the Fileutils package, sed and
make are each one in a separate package named after them.)
The files INSTALL (near its end) and etc/PROBLEMS in the directory of the Emacs sources contains some additional information regarding Emacs under MS-DOS.
For a list of other MS-DOS implementations of Emacs (and Emacs look-alikes), consult the list of "Emacs implementations and literature," available at
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/comp.emacs/
Note that while many of these programs look similar to Emacs, they often lack certain features, such as the Emacs Lisp extension language.
For information on Emacs for Windows 95 and NT, read the FAQ produced by Geoff Voelker, available at
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/ntemacs.html
See Emacs for MS-DOS, for Windows 3.1.
A port of Emacs 20.7 for Windows CE, based on NTEmacs, is available at
http://www.rainer-keuchel.de/software.html
This port was done by Rainer Keuchel, and supports all Emacs features except async subprocesses and menus. You will need MSVC 6.0 and a Windows CE SDK to build this port.
Emacs 20.6 is ported for emx on OS/2 2.0 or 2.1, and is available at
ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/apps/editors/emacs/e206*.zip
and also at
http://archiv.leo.org/pub/comp/os/os2/leo/gnu/emacs%2d20/
Instructions for installation, basic setup, and other useful information for OS/2 users of Emacs can be found at
http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~oheiabbd/emacs/emacs206-os2.html
Roland Schäuble reports that Emacs 18.58 running on plain TOS and MiNT is available at ftp://atari.archive.umich.edu/Editors/Emacs-18-58/1858b-d3.zoo.
The files you need are available at
ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/pub/aminet/util/gnu/
David Gilbert has released a beta version of Emacs 19.25 for the Amiga. You can get the binary at
ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/pub/aminet/util/gnu/a2.0bEmacs-bin.lha
Emacs.app is a NeXTSTEP version of Emacs 19.34 which supports colors, menus, and multiple frames. You can get it from
ftp://next-ftp.peak.org/pub/next/apps/emacs/Emacs_for_NeXTstep.4.20a1.NIHS.b.tar.gz
An unofficial port of GNU Emacs 18.59 to the Macintosh is available at a number of ftp sites, the home being ftp://ftp.cs.cornell.edu/pub/parmet/Emacs-1.17.sit.bin.
A port of Emacs 20.4 is available at http://www.cs.hku.hk/~choi/emacs/index.html.
Beginning with version 21.1, the Macintosh is supported in the official Emacs distribution; see the files mac/README and mac/INSTALL in the Emacs distribution for build instructions.
Apple's forthcoming "OS X" is based largely on NeXTSTEP and OpenStep. See Emacs for NeXTSTEP, for more details about that version.
Up-to-date information about GNU software (including Emacs) for VMS is available at http://vms.gnu.org/.
Most of these modes are now available in standard Emacs distribution.
To get additional modes, look in the Lisp Code Directory (see Finding a package with particular functionality). For C++, if you use
lisp-dir-apropos, you must specify the pattern with something
like M-x lisp-dir-apropos <RET> c\+\+ <RET>.2
Barry Warsaw's cc-mode now works for C, C++, Objective-C, and
Java code. You can get the latest version from the Emacs Lisp Archive;
see Packages that do not come with Emacs for details. A FAQ for
cc-mode is available at
http://www.python.org/emacs/cc-mode/.
If you are on a Unix machine, try using the `nslookup' command,
included in the Berkeley BIND package. For example, to find the IP
address of `ftp.gnu.org', you would type nslookup
ftp.gnu.org.
Your computer should then provide the IP address of that machine.
If your site's nameserver is deficient, you can use IP addresses to FTP files. You can get this information by e-mail:
To: dns@[134.214.84.25] (to grasp.insa-lyon.fr)
Body: ip XXX.YYY.ZZZ (or "help" for more information
and options - no quotes)
or:
To: resolve@[147.31.254.130] (to laverne.cs.widener.edu)
Body: site XXX.YYY.ZZZ
VM 6 works with Emacs 20.4, and may cause problems with Emacs 20.3 and below. (But note that many people seem to use Emacs 20.3 with VM 6, without any problems.) Risk-averse users might wish to try VM 5.97, available from the same FTP site.
Superyank is an old version of Supercite.
Note that Calc 2.02f needs patching to work with Emacs 21 and later.
Emacs 21.1 and later comes with a package called calculator.el.
It doesn't support all the mathematical wizardry offered by Calc, such
as matrices, special functions, and statistics, but is more than
adequate as a replacement for xcalc and similar programs.
vi emulation for Emacs
Since Emacs 19.29, the preferred vi emulation in Emacs is VIPER
(M-x viper-mode <RET>), which comes with Emacs. It extends
and supersedes VIP (including VIP 4.3) and provides vi emulation
at several levels, from one that closely follows vi to one that
departs from vi in several significant ways.
For Emacs 19.28 and earlier, the following version of VIP is generally better than the one distributed with Emacs:
w3-mode at w3-dev@indiana.edu
Keys can be bound to commands either interactively or in your .emacs file. To interactively bind keys for all modes, type M-x global-set-key <RET> key cmd <RET>.
To bind a key just in the current major mode, type M-x local-set-key <RET> key cmd <RET>.
see Key Bindings, for further details.
To make the process of binding keys interactively eaiser, use the following “trick”: First bind the key interactively, then immediately type C-x <ESC> <ESC> C-a C-k C-g. Now, the command needed to bind the key is in the kill ring, and can be yanked into your .emacs file. If the key binding is global, no changes to the command are required. For example,
(global-set-key (quote [f1]) (quote help-for-help))
can be placed directly into the .emacs file. If the key binding is local, the command is used in conjunction with the "add-hook" command. For example, in tex-mode, a local binding might be
(add-hook 'tex-mode-hook
(lambda ()
(local-set-key (quote [f1]) (quote help-for-help))))
(global-unset-key [?\e ?{]) ;; or
(local-unset-key [?\e ?{])
(global-set-key [f10] [?\C-x?\e?\e?\C-a?\C-k?\C-g]) ;; or
(global-set-key [f10] "\C-x\e\e\C-a\C-k\C-g")
Usually, one of two things has happened. In one case, the control character in the key sequence has been misspecified (e.g. `C-f' used instead of `\C-f' within a Lisp expression). In the other case, a prefix key in the keystroke sequence you were trying to bind was already bound as a complete key. Historically, the `ESC [' prefix was usually the problem, in which case you should evaluate either of these forms before attempting to bind the key sequence:
(global-unset-key [?\e ?[]) ;; or
(global-unset-key "\e[")
During startup, Emacs initializes itself according to a given code/file order. If some of the code executed in your .emacs file needs to be postponed until the initial terminal or window-system setup code has been executed but is not, then you will experience this problem (this code/file execution order is not enforced after startup).
To postpone the execution of Emacs Lisp code until after terminal or
window-system setup, treat the code as a lambda list and set the
value of either the term-setup-hook or window-setup-hook
variable to this lambda function. For example,
(add-hook 'term-setup-hook
(lambda ()
(when (string-match "\\`vt220" (or (getenv "TERM") ""))
;; Make vt220's "Do" key behave like M-x:
(global-set-key [do] 'execute-extended-command))))
For information on what Emacs does every time it is started, see the lisp/startup.el file.
With Emacs 19, functions keys under X are bound like any other key. See Binding keys to commands, for details.
Type C-h c then the function or arrow keys. The command will return either a function key symbol or character sequence (see the Emacs on-line documentation for an explanation). This works for other keys as well.
Emacs is not written using the Xt library by default, so there are no “translations” to be set. (We aren't sure how to set such translations if you do build Emacs with Xt; please let us know if you've done this!)
The only way to affect the behavior of keys within Emacs is through
xmodmap (outside Emacs) or define-key (inside Emacs). The
define-key command should be used in conjunction with the
function-key-map map. For instance,
(define-key function-key-map [M-<TAB>] [?\M-\t])
defines the M-<TAB> key sequence.
C-s and C-q are used in the XON/XOFF flow control protocol. This messes things up when you're using Emacs over a serial line, because Emacs binds these keys to commands by default. Because Emacs won't honor them as flow control characters, too many of these characters are not passed on and overwhelm output buffers. Sometimes, intermediate software using XON/XOFF flow control will prevent Emacs from ever seeing C-s and C-q.
Possible solutions:
You need to determine the cause of the flow control.
Your terminal may use XON/XOFF flow control to have time to display all the characters it receives. For example, VT series terminals do this. It may be possible to turn this off from a setup menu. For example, on a VT220 you may select “No XOFF” in the setup menu. This is also true for some terminal emulation programs on PCs.
When you turn off flow control at the terminal, you will also need to turn it off at the other end, which might be at the computer you are logged in to or at some terminal server in between.
If you turn off flow control, characters may be lost; using a printer connected to the terminal may fail. You may be able to get around this problem by modifying the `termcap' entry for your terminal to include extra NUL padding characters.
If you are using a dialup connection, the modems may be using XON/XOFF flow control. It's not clear how to get around this.
Some network box between the terminal and your computer may be using XON/XOFF flow control. It may be possible to make it use some other kind of flow control. You will probably have to ask your local network experts for help with this.
tty and/or pty devices
If your connection to Emacs goes through multiple tty and/or
pty devices, they may be using XON/XOFF flow control even when it
is not necessary.
Eirik Fuller writes:
Some versions ofrlogin(and possiblytelnet) do not pass flow control characters to the remote system to which they connect. On such systems, Emacs on the remote system cannot disable flow control on the local system. Sometimes `rlogin -8' will avoid this problem.One way to cure this is to disable flow control on the local host (the one running
rlogin, not the one runningrlogind) using thesttycommand, before starting therloginprocess. On many systems, `stty start u stop u' will do this.Some versions of `tcsh' will prevent even this from working. One way around this is to start another shell before starting rlogin, and issue the `stty' command to disable flow control from that shell.
Use `stty -ixon' instead of `stty start u stop u' on some systems.
You can make Emacs treat C-s and C-q as flow control characters by evaluating the form
(enable-flow-control)
to unconditionally enable flow control or
(enable-flow-control-on "vt100" "h19")
(using your terminal names instead of `vt100' or `h19') to
enable selectively. These commands will automatically swap C-s
and C-q to C-\ and C-^. Variables can be used to
change the default swap keys (flow-control-c-s-replacement and
flow-control-c-q-replacement).
If you are fixing this for yourself, simply put the form in your .emacs file. If you are fixing this for your entire site, the best place to put it is in the site-lisp/site-start.el file. (Here site-lisp is actually a subdirectory of your Emacs installation directory, typically /usr/local/share/emacs.) Putting this form in site-lisp/default.el has the problem that if the user's .emacs file has an error, this will prevent default.el from being loaded and Emacs may be unusable for the user, even for correcting their .emacs file (unless they're smart enough to move it to another name).
enable-flow-control can be invoked interactively as well:
M-x enable-flow-control <RET>.
For further discussion of this issue, read the file etc/PROBLEMS (in the Emacs source directory when you unpack the Emacs distribution).
To bind C-s and C-q, use either enable-flow-control
or enable-flow-control-on. See Handling C-s and C-q with flow control, for usage and implementation details.
To bind other keys, use keyboard-translate. See Swapping keys, for usage details. To do this for an entire site, you should
swap the keys in site-lisp/site-start.el. See Handling C-s and C-q with flow control, for an explanation of why
site-lisp/default.el should not be used.
The <Backspace> key (on most keyboards) generates ASCII code 8. C-h sends the same code. In Emacs by default C-h invokes help-command. This is intended to be easy to remember since the first letter of `help' is `h'. The easiest solution to this problem is to use C-h (and <Backspace>) for help and <DEL> (the <Delete> key) for deleting the previous character.
For many people this solution may be problematic:
stty erase `^?'
normal-erase-is-backspace-mode, or by invoking M-x
normal-erase-is-backspace. See the documentation of these symbols
(see Emacs Lisp documentation) for more info.
(keyboard-translate ?\C-h ?\C-?)
This is the recommended method of forcing <Backspace> to act as
<DEL>, because it works even in modes which bind <DEL> to
something other than delete-backward-char.
Similarly, you could remap <DEL> to act as C-d, which by default deletes forward:
(keyboard-translate ?\C-? ?\C-d)
See Swapping keys, for further details about keyboard-translate.
(global-set-key "\C-h" 'delete-backward-char)
;;; overrides mark-whole-buffer
(global-set-key "\C-xh" 'help-command)
This method is not recommended, though: it only solves the problem for
those modes which bind <DEL> to delete-backward-char. Modes
which bind <DEL> to something else, such as view-mode, will
not work as you expect when you press the <Backspace> key. For this
reason, we recommend the the keyboard-translate method, shown
above.
Other popular key bindings for help are M-? and C-x ?.
Don't try to bind <DEL> to help-command, because there are
many modes that have local bindings of <DEL> that will interfere.
When Emacs 21 or later runs on a windowed display, it binds the <Delete> key to a command which deletes the character at point, to make Emacs more consistent with keyboard operation on these systems.
For more information about troubleshooting this problem, see If <DEL> Fails to Delete.
In Emacs 19, you can swap two keys (or key sequences) by using the
keyboard-translate function. For example, to turn C-h into
<DEL> and <DEL> to C-h, use
(keyboard-translate ?\C-h ?\C-?) ; translate `C-h' to DEL
(keyboard-translate ?\C-? ?\C-h) ; translate DEL to `C-h'.
The first key sequence of the pair after the function identifies what is produced by the keyboard; the second, what is matched for in the keymaps.
Keyboard translations are not the same as key bindings in keymaps. Emacs contains numerous keymaps that apply in different situations, but there is only one set of keyboard translations, and it applies to every character that Emacs reads from the terminal. Keyboard translations take place at the lowest level of input processing; the keys that are looked up in keymaps contain the characters that result from keyboard translation.
On terminals (but not under X), some common "aliases" are:
Often other aliases exist; use the C-h c command and try <CTRL> with all of the digits on your keyboard to see what gets generated. You can also try the C-h w command if you know the name of the command.
On many keyboards, the <Alt> key acts as <Meta>, so try it.
Instead of typing M-a, you can type <ESC> a. In fact,
Emacs converts M-a internally into <ESC> a anyway
(depending on the value of meta-prefix-char). Note that you
press <Meta> and <a> together, but with <ESC>, you press
<ESC>, release it, and then press <a>.
Type C-[ instead. This should send ASCII code 27 just like an Escape key would. C-3 may also work on some terminal (but not under X). For many terminals (notably DEC terminals) <F11> generates <ESC>. If not, the following form can be used to bind it:
;;; F11 is the documented ESC replacement on DEC terminals.
(define-key function-key-map [f11] [?\e])
On a dumb terminal such as a VT220, no. It is rumored that certain
VT220 clones could have their <Compose> key configured this way. If
you're using X, you might be able to do this with the xmodmap
command.
With Emacs 19 and later, you can represent modified function keys in vector format by adding prefixes to the function key symbol. For example (from the on-line documentation):
(global-set-key [?\C-x right] 'forward-page)
where `?\C-x' is the Lisp character constant for the character C-x.
You can use the modifier keys <Control>, <Meta>, <Hyper>, <Super>, <Alt>, and <Shift> with function keys. To represent these modifiers, prepend the strings `C-', `M-', `H-', `s-', `A-', and `S-' to the symbol name. Here is how to make H-M-RIGHT move forward a word:
(global-set-key [H-M-right] 'forward-word)
See Binding keys to commands, for general key binding instructions.
xterm window?see Single-Byte Character Set Support.
If the advice in the Emacs manual fails, try all of these methods before asking for further help:
mwm as your window manager.
(Does anyone know a good generic solution to allow the use of the
<Meta> key in Emacs with mwm?)
xev to
find out what keysym your <Meta> key generates. It should be either
Meta_L or Meta_R. If it isn't, use xmodmap to fix
the situation. If <Meta> does generate Meta_L or
Meta_R, but M-x produces a non-ASCII character, put this in
your ~/.Xdefaults file:
XTerm*eightBitInput: false
XTerm*eightBitOutput: true
pty the xterm is using is passing 8 bit
characters. `stty -a' (or `stty everything') should show
`cs8' somewhere. If it shows `cs7' instead, use `stty
cs8 -istrip' (or `stty pass8') to fix it.
rlogin connection between xterm and Emacs, the
`-8' argument may need to be given to rlogin to make it pass all 8 bits
of every character.
(set-input-mode t nil) helps.
xterm generate <ESC> W when
you type M-W, which is the same conversion Emacs would make if it
got the M-W anyway. In X11R4, the following resource
specification will do this:
XTerm.VT100.EightBitInput: false
(This changes the behavior of the insert-eight-bit action.)
With older xterms, you can specify this behavior with a translation:
XTerm.VT100.Translations: #override \
Meta<KeyPress>: string(0x1b) insert()
You might have to replace `Meta' with `Alt'.
This is a result of an internationalization extension in X11R4 and the
fact that HP is now using this extension. Emacs assumes that the
XLookupString function returns the same result regardless of the
<Meta> key state which is no longer necessarily true. Until Emacs
is fixed, the temporary kludge is to run this command after each time
the X server is started but preferably before any xterm clients are:
xmodmap -e 'remove mod1 = Mode_switch'
This will disable the use of the extra keysyms systemwide, which may be undesirable if you actually intend to use them.
see Single-byte Character Set Support. On a Unix, when Emacs runs on a text-only terminal
display or is invoked with `emacs -nw', you typically need to use
set-terminal-coding-system to tell Emacs what the terminal can
display, even after setting the language environment; otherwise
non-ASCII characters will display as `?'. On other operating
systems, such as MS-DOS and MS-Windows, Emacs queries the OS about the
character set supported by the display, and sets up the required
terminal coding system automatically.
Various methods are available for input of eight-bit characters. See see Single-byte Character Set Support. For more sophisticated methods, see Input Methods.
Emacs 20 and later includes many of the features of MULE, the MULtilingual Enhancement to Emacs. See Installing Emacs, for information on where to find and download the latest version of Emacs.
Emacs 20 and later supports Hebrew characters (ISO 8859-8), but does not yet support right-to-left character entry and display.
Joel M. Hoffman has written a Lisp package called hebrew.el that allows right-to-left editing of Hebrew. It reportedly works out of the box with Emacs 19, but requires patches for Emacs 18. Write to Joel if you want the patches or package.
hebrew.el requires a Hebrew screen font, but no other hardware support. Joel has a screen font for PCs running MS-DOS or GNU/Linux.
You might also try to query archie for files named with hebrew; several ftp sites in Israel may also have the necessary files.
If you read mail with Rmail or news with Gnus, set the variable
mail-yank-prefix. For VM, set vm-included-text-prefix.
For mh-e, set mh-ins-buf-prefix.
For fancier control of citations, use Supercite. See Supercite.
To prevent Emacs from including various headers of the replied-to
message, set the value of mail-yank-ignored-headers to an
appropriate regexp.
You can either mail yourself a copy by including a `BCC' header in the mail message, or store a copy of the message directly to a file by including an `FCC' header.
If you use standard mail, you can automatically create a `BCC' to yourself by putting
(setq mail-self-blind t)
in your .emacs file. You can automatically include an `FCC' field by putting something like the following in your .emacs file:
(setq mail-archive-file-name (expand-file-name "~/outgoing"))
The output file will be in Unix mail format, which can be read directly by VM, but not always by Rmail. See Learning how to do something.
If you use mh-e, add an `FCC' or `BCC' field to your
components file.
It does not work to put `set record filename' in the .mailrc file.
To: Willy Smith <wks@xpnsv.lwyrs.com>
However, you do not need to—and probably should not, unless your
system's version of /usr/ucb/mail (a.k.a. mailx)
supports RFC822—separate addresses with commas in your
~/.mailrc file.
(add-hook 'mail-mode-hook 'mail-abbrevs-setup)
Note that the aliases are expanded automatically only after you type <RET> or a punctuation character (e.g. ,). You can force their expansion by moving point to the end of the alias and typing C-x a e (M-x expand-abbrev).
A file created through the `FCC' field in a message is in Unix mail
format, not the format that Rmail uses (BABYL format). Rmail will try
to convert a Unix mail file into BABYL format on input, but sometimes it
makes errors. For guaranteed safety, you can make the
saved-messages file be an inbox for your Rmail file by using the
function set-rmail-inbox-list.
In Rmail, type C-c C-s C-h to get a list of sorting functions and their key bindings.
This is the behavior of the movemail program which Rmail uses.
This indicates that movemail is configured to use lock files.
RMS writes:
Certain systems require lock files to interlock access to mail files. On these systems,movemailmust write lock files, or you risk losing mail. You simply must arrange to letmovemailwrite them.Other systems use the
flocksystem call to interlock access. On these systems, you should configuremovemailto useflock.
If you have just done M-x rmail-input on a file and you don't want to save it in Rmail's format (called BABYL), just kill the buffer (with C-x k).
If you typed M-x rmail and it read some messages out of your inbox and you want to put them in a Unix mail file, use C-o on each message.
If you want to convert an existing file from BABYL format to Unix mail format, use the command M-x unrmail: it will prompt you for the input and output file names.
Alternatively, you could use the b2m program supplied with
Emacs. b2m is a filter, and is used like this:
b2m < babyl-file > mbox-file
where babyl-file is the name of the BABYL file, and mbox-file is the name of the file where the converted mail will be written.
Ron Isaacson says: When you hit <r> to reply in Rmail, by default it CCs all of the original recipients (everyone on the original `To' and `CC' lists). With a prefix argument (i.e., typing C-u before <r>), it replies only to the sender. However, going through the whole C-u business every time you want to reply is a pain. This is the best fix I've been able to come up with:
(defun rmail-reply-t ()
"Reply only to the sender of the current message. (See rmail-reply.)"
(interactive)
(rmail-reply t))
(add-hook 'rmail-mode-hook
(lambda ()
(define-key rmail-mode-map "r" 'rmail-reply-t)
(define-key rmail-mode-map "R" 'rmail-reply)))
Read the Emacs MIME FAQ, maintained by MacDonald Hall Jackson at
http://bmrc.berkeley.edu/~trey/emacs/mime.html
Version 6.x of VM supports MIME. See VM. Gnus supports MIME in mail and news messages as of version 5.8.1 (Pterodactyl). Rmail has limited support for single-part MIME messages beginning with Emacs 20.3.
emacs -f gnus
in Rmail:
emacs -f rmail
A more convenient way to start with Gnus:
alias gnus 'emacs -f gnus'
gnus
It is probably unwise to automatically start your mail or news reader from your .emacs file. This would cause problems if you needed to run two copies of Emacs at the same time. Also, this would make it difficult for you to start Emacs quickly when you needed to.
Use M-x gnus. It is documented in Info (see Learning how to do something).
There is a bug in NNTP version 1.5.10, such that when multiple requests are sent to the NNTP server, the server only handles the first one before blocking waiting for more input which never comes. NNTP version 1.5.11 claims to fix this.
You can work around the bug inside Emacs like this:
(setq nntp-maximum-request 1)
You can find out what version of NNTP your news server is running by telnetting to the NNTP port (usually 119) on the news server machine (i.e., telnet server-machine 119). The server should give its version number in the welcome message. Type quit to get out.
See Spontaneous entry into isearch-mode, for some additional ideas.
Underlining appears like this:
_^Hu_^Hn_^Hd_^He_^Hr_^Hl_^Hi_^Hn_^Hi_^Hn_^Hg
Per Abrahamsen suggests using the following code, which uses the underline face to turn such text into true underlining, inconjunction with Gnus:
(defun gnus-article-prepare-overstrike ()
;; Prepare article for overstrike commands.
(save-excursion
(set-buffer gnus-article-buffer)
(let ((buffer-read-only nil))
(goto-char (point-min))
(while (search-forward "\b" nil t)
(let ((next (following-char))
(previous (char-after (- (point) 2))))
(cond ((eq next previous)
(delete-region (- (point) 2) (point))
(put-text-property (point) (1+ (point))
'face 'bold))
((eq next ?_)
(delete-region (1- (point)) (1+ (point)))
(put-text-property (1- (point)) (point)
'face 'underline))
((eq previous ?_)
(delete-region (- (point) 2) (point))
(put-text-property (point) (1+ (point))
'face 'underline))))))))
(add-hook 'gnus-article-prepare-hook 'gnus-article-prepare-overstrike)
Latest versions of Gnus do such a conversion automatically.
If you prefer to do away with underlining altogether, you can destructively remove it with M-x ununderline-region; do this automatically via
(add-hook 'gnus-article-prepare-hook
(lambda () (ununderline-region (point-min) (point-max))))
Use gnus-uu. Type C-c C-v C-h in the Gnus summary buffer
to see a list of available commands.
From the Gnus FAQ (see Learning more about Gnus):
Pranav Kumar Tiwari writes: I posted
the same query recently and I got an answer to it. I am going to
repeat the answer. What you need is a newer version of gnus, version
5.0.4+. I am using 5.0.12 and it works fine with me with the
following settings:
(setq gnus-check-new-newsgroups nil
gnus-read-active-file 'some
gnus-nov-is-evil nil
gnus-select-method '(nntp gnus-nntp-server))
In the *Newsgroup* buffer, type M-< C-x ( c y C-x ) M-0 C-x e
Leave off the initial M-< if you only want to catch up from point to the end of the *Newsgroup* buffer.
Gnus will complain that the `Newsgroups', `Keywords', and `Control' headers are “Unknown header” fields.
For the `Newsgroups' header, there is an easy workaround: kill on the `Xref' header instead, which will be present on any cross-posted article (as long as your site carries the cross-post group).
If you really want to kill on one of these headers, you can do it like this:
(gnus-kill nil "^Newsgroups: .*\\(bad\\.group\\|worse\\.group\\)")
Because Gnus is marking crosspostings read. You can control this with
the variable gnus-use-cross-reference.
David Lawrence explains:
The problem is almost always interaction between NNTP and C News. NNTP POST asks C News'sinewsto not background itself but rather hang around and give its exit status so it knows whether the post was successful. (That wait will on some systems not return the exit status of the waited for job is a different sort of problem.) It ends up taking a long time becauseinewsis callingrelaynews, which often waits for anotherrelaynewsto free the lock on the news system so it can file the article.My preferred solution is to change
inewsto not callrelaynews, but rather usenewsspool. This loses some error-catching functionality, but is for the most part safe asinewswill detect a lot of the errors on its own. The C News folks have sped upinews, too, so speed should look better to most folks as that update propagates around.
Look for the Gnus FAQ, available at
http://www.ccs.neu.edu/software/contrib/gnus/
#ifdef, selective display of: Hiding #ifdef lines., equivalent to vi command: Repeating commandsxterm: Meta key does not work in xtermshell-mode: Shell process exits abnormallyload-path: Changing load-pathauto-fill-mode, activating automatically: Turning on auto-fill by defaultauto-fill-mode, introduction to: Wrapping words automaticallyauto-mode-alist, modifying: Associating modes with filesauto-fill-mode: Turning on auto-fill by defaultawk-mode: Modes for various languagescalculator, a package: Calccase-fold-search: Controlling case sensitivitycase-replace: Controlling case sensitivitycc-mode: Modes for various languagesshell-mode: Shell mode loses the current directoryfont-lock-mode: Turning on syntax highlightingdefault-tab-width: Changing the length of a Tabdelete-selection-mode: Replacing highlighted textshell-mode: Shell mode loses the current directoryauto-save-mode: Disabling auto-save-modeetags: Documentation for etagsshell-mode: ^M in the shell bufferemacsclient: Using an already running Emacs processvi: VIPERls output: Escape sequences in shell outputetags, documentation for: Documentation for etagsexplicit-shell-file-name: Problems with Shell Mode on MS-Windowsfont-lock-mode: Turning on syntax highlightingfile-local-variable and security: Security risks with Emacsfill-column, default value: Wrapping words automaticallyfont-lock-mode: Turning on syntax highlightingframe-title-format: Displaying the current file name in the titlebargethostbyname, problematic version: Problems talking to certain hostsgnuserv: Using an already running Emacs processhide-ifdef-mode: Hiding #ifdef lines#ifdef text: Hiding #ifdef lineshscroll-mode: Horizontal scrollingswitch: Indenting switch statementskeyboard-translate: Swapping keysline-number-mode: Displaying the current line or columnload-path, modifying: Changing load-pathls in Shell mode: Escape sequences in shell outputmail-yank-prefix: Inserting > at the beginning of each linemode-line-format: Displaying the current line or columnload-path: Changing load-pathoverwrite-mode: Overwrite modepascal-mode: Modes for various languagespicture-mode: Forcing the cursor to remain in the same columnvi: Repeating commands#ifdef code: Hiding #ifdef linesvi emulators: Displaying the current line or columnsh-mode: Modes for various languagesshell-mode and current directory: Shell mode loses the current directoryshell-mode exits: Shell process exits abnormallyvi: Matching parenthesesswitch, indenting: Indenting switch statementsoverwrite-mode: Overwrite modetransient-mark-mode: Highlighting a regionunderline-region: Underlining paragraphsunrmail command: Recovering mail files when Rmail munges themvi emulation: VIPERw3-mode: w3-modeauto-fill-mode by default?
load-path?
switch?
#ifdef commands are handled by the compiler?
. (dot) command of vi?
etags?
auto-save-mode?
vi emulation for Emacs
xterm window?
[1] DOS and Windows terminals don't set bit 7 when the <Meta> key is pressed.
[2] The backslashes in `\+\+' are required because M-x lisp-dir-apropos expects a regular expression as its argument (see Using regular expressions), and `+' has a special meaning in regular expressions.