Modes
One of the features that makes Emacs popular is its editing
modes . The modes set up an environment designed for the
type of editing you are doing, with features like having appropriate
key bindings available, and automatically indenting according to
standard conventions for a particular type of document. There are
two types of modes, major and minor. The major modes include modes
for various programming languages like C or Java, for text
processing (e.g., SGML or even straight text), and many more. One
particularly useful major mode is Dired (Directory Editor), which
has commands that let you manage directories. Minor modes set or
unset features that are independent of the major mode, such as
auto-fill (which controls line wrapping), insert versus overwrite,
and auto-save. For a full discussion of modes, see
Learning GNU Emacs or the Emacs Info documentation system (C-h i).
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