Learning GNU Emacs (3rd Edition)

GNU Emacs is the most popular and widespread of the Emacs family of editors. It is also the most powerful and flexible. Unlike all other text editors, GNU Emacs is a complete working environment—you can stay within Emacs all day without leaving. Learning GNU Emacs, 3rd Edition tells readers how to get started with the GNU Emacs editor. It is a thorough guide that will also "grow" with you: as you become more proficient, this book will help you learn how to use Emacs more effectively. It takes you from basic Emacs usage (simple text editing) to moderately complicated customization and programming.

The third edition of Learning GNU Emacs describes Emacs 21.3 from the ground up, including new user interface features such as an icon-based toolbar and an interactive interface to Emacs customization. A new chapter details how to install and run Emacs on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux, including tips for using Emacs effectively on those platforms.

Learning GNU Emacs, third edition, covers:

• How to edit files with Emacs
• Using the operating system shell through Emacs
• How to use multiple buffers, windows, and frames
• Customizing Emacs interactively and through startup files
• Writing macros to circumvent repetitious tasks
• Emacs as a programming environment for Java, C++, and Perl, among others
• Using Emacs as an integrated development environment (IDE)
• Integrating Emacs with CVS, Subversion and other change control systems for projects with multiple developers
• Writing HTML, XHTML, and XML with Emacs
• The basics of Emacs Lisp

GNU Emacs is the most popular and widespread of the Emacs family of editors. It is also the most powerful and flexible. Unlike all other text editors, GNU Emacs is a complete working environment--you can stay within Emacs all day without leaving. "Learning GNU Emacs," 3rd Edition tells readers how to get started with the GNU Emacs editor. It is a thorough guide that will also "grow" with you: as you become more proficient, this book will help you learn how to use Emacs more effectively. It takes you from basic Emacs usage (simple text editing) to moderately complicated customization and programming.

The third edition of "Learning GNU Emacs" describes Emacs 21.3 from the ground up, including new user interface features such as an icon-based toolbar and an interactive interface to Emacs customization. A new chapter details how to install and run Emacs on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux, including tips for using Emacs effectively on those platforms.

"Learning GNU Emacs," third edition, covers:

How to edit files with Emacs

Using the operating system shell through Emacs

How to use multiple buffers, windows, and frames

Customizing Emacs interactively and through startup files

Writing macros to circumvent repetitious tasks

Emacs as a programming environment for Java, C++, and Perl, among others

Using Emacs as an integrated development environment (IDE)

Integrating Emacs with CVS, Subversion and other change control systems for projects with multiple developers

Writing HTML, XHTML, and XML with Emacs

The basics of Emacs Lisp

The book is aimed at new Emacs users, whether or not they are programmers. Also useful for readers switching fromother Emacsimplementations to GNU Emacs.

Debra Cameron is president of Cameron Consulting. In addition to her love for Emacs, Deb researches and writes about emerging technologies and their applications. Her latest book, Optical Networking: A Wiley Tech Brief, published in 2002 by John Wiley & Sons, covers the practical applications of optical networking and was written in the hope that true broadband will be more widely deployed. Deb also edits OReilly titles, including DNS and Bind, DNS on Windows 2000, TCP/IP Network Administration, HTML and XHTML: The Definitive Guide, Java Security, Java Swing, Learning Java, and Java Performance Tuning. She has presented numerous videos for WatchIT.com, covering security and networking as well as e-business topics. She has moderated roundtables on PlanetIT on advanced networking and intranet design. Deb resides in Gaithersburg, Maryland with her husband Jim and their three children, Meg, David, and Bethany.

James Elliott is a senior software engineer at Singlewire Software, with two decades of professional experience as a systems developer. He started designing with objects well before work environments made it convenient, and has a passion for building high-quality Java tools and frameworks to simplify the tasks of other developers.

Marc Loy is a senior programmer at Galileo Systems, LLC, but his day job seems to be teaching Java and Perl to various companies — including Sun Microsystems. He has played with Java since the alpha days and can't find his way back to C. He is developing an interactive learning application at Galileo written entirely in Java. He received his master's degree in computer science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and still lives in Madison with his partner, Ron Becker. He does find time to relax by playing the piano and/or throwing darts, depending on how successful the day of teaching or programming was.

Eric Raymond is an Open Source evangelist and author of the highly influential paper "The Cathedral and the Bazaar".

Bill Rosenblatt is president of GiantSteps/Media Technology Strategies, a consulting firm in New York City. Before founding GiantSteps, Bill was CTO of Fathom, an online content and education company associated with Columbia University and other scholarly institutions. He has been a technology executive at McGraw-Hill and Times Mirror, and head of strategic marketing for media and publishing at Sun Microsystems. Bill was also one of the architects of the Digital Object Identifier (DOI), a standard for online content identification and DRM.