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Learning GNU Emacs, 3rd Edition
book

Learning GNU Emacs, 3rd Edition

by Debra Cameron, James Elliott, Marc Loy, Eric S. Raymond, Bill Rosenblatt
December 2004
Beginner to intermediate content levelBeginner to intermediate
536 pages
19h 28m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Learning GNU Emacs, 3rd Edition

A Word About Modes

Emacs achieves some of its famed versatility by having various editing modes in which it behaves slightly differently. The word mode may sound technical, but what it really means is that Emacs becomes sensitive to the task at hand. When you're writing, you often want features like word wrap so that you don't have to press Enter at the end of every line. When you're programming, the code must be formatted correctly depending on the language. For writing, there's text mode; for programming, there are modes for different languages, including C, Java, and Perl. Modes, then, allow Emacs to be the kind of editor you want for different tasks.

Text mode and Java mode are major modes. A buffer can be in only one major mode at a time; to exit a major mode, you have to enter another one. Table 1-1 lists some of the major modes, what they do, and where they're covered in this book.

Table 1-1. Major modes

Mode

Function

Fundamental mode

The default mode (Chapter 6)

Text mode

For writing text (Chapter 2)

View mode

For viewing files but not editing (Chapter 4)

Shell mode

For running a shell within Emacs (Chapter 5)

Outline mode

For writing outlines (Chapter 7)

Indented text mode

For indenting text automatically (Chapter 7)

Paragraph indent text mode

For indenting the first line of each paragraph (Chapter 7)

Picture mode

For creating ASCII drawings using the keyboard (Chapter 7)

HTML mode

For writing HTML (Chapter 8)

SGML mode

For ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596006489Supplemental ContentErrata Page