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 or complicated, 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 RETURN 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 mode. Modes, then, allow Emacs to be the kind of editor you want for different tasks.
Text mode and C 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 2-1. Major Modes
Mode |
Function |
Fundamental mode |
The default mode; no special behavior |
Text mode |
For writing text (Chapter 2) |
Mail mode |
For writing mail messages (Chapter 6) |
RMAIL mode |
For reading and organizing mail (Chapter 6) |
View mode |
For viewing files but not editing (Chapter 5) |
Shell mode |
For running a UNIX shell within Emacs (Chapter 5) |
Ange-ftp mode |
For downloading or viewing files on remote systems (Chapter 7) |
Telnet mode |
For logging in to remote systems (Chapter 7) |
Outline mode |
For writing outlines (Chapter 8) |
Indented text mode |
For indenting text automatically ... |
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