Exploring Emacs

Emacs is like no other piece of software in existence.

In some sense it is simply a text editor. There are many editors out there, of various degrees of sophisitication, and on some level, Emacs is just another member of that category. If all you are trying to do is edit a text file, then Emacs will do the job as well as any editor. Granted, with Emacs there is a learning curve for even basic editing tasks. Mark and point? Kill and yank? What is this all about?

If what you are most concerned about is editing configuration files on a Linux server, then by all means, stick with vi or vim. They are more likely to be available on any random system you happen to find yourself on, and have a nice terse set of key strokes for editing commands.

Once you have the basics of Emacs down, however, you will find it has much more to offer. Start looking into what Emacs can do, and you will find any number of rabbit holes to go down, some of them far removed from what you might think is in scope for an editor. Emacs can be anything from a calculator to a terminal emulator to a Tetris clone. Like Walt Whitman, Emacs contains multitudes.

It should be pointed out in this inaugural post that I am an Emacs enthusiast but not an expert. I have been using it for more than a decade, and feel very comfortable within it, but there is a long way to go still in understanding and mastering what it is capable of. This blog is meant as "show and tell", to give me a reason to explore this labyrinth of an editor, to scurry down one rabbit hole after another and report on what I find.

Topics that I may address in this blog, in no particular order:

• Emacs history
• Basic usage
• Emacs Lisp programming
• Major and minor mode development
• Fun and games
• Org-mode

If any of that sounds interesting, I hope you are ready to follow along with me as I go exploring Emacs.