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 ...