Emacs- overview

                   Emacs-History

—Emacs -created by Richard Stallman in 1975.

—GNU Emacs is the most popular version of Emacs and is directly derived from Stallman's original version.

—The GNU (Gnu is Not UNIX) project - associated with Stallman's Free Software Foundation.

—There are other versions of Emacs that are not free.

How to Start

—To run Emacs, type at the UNIX prompt :

 

  emacs  file_to_edit

Emacs will be run and start editing the file specified.

 

BASICS

— The mode line is the one that is next to the last line from the bottom and will be highlighted.

— This line divides the editing portion of the screen from the command line at the very bottom.

— When a file is loaded into Emacs, it is loaded into a buffer. Buffers are edited, not files.

— The mode line shows the name of the buffer.

— To update the actual file, the buffer must be saved.

— Emacs will prompt the user to save any modified buffers when it exits

 Emacs maintains a backup file when a file is saved. The backup file is a copy of the last version of the file.

Its name is the original file name with a tilde (~) appended to the end. 

 One other distinction between emacs and vi is that emacs allows you to edit several files at once.

The window for emacs can be divided into several windows, each of which contains a view into a buffer.

Each buffer typically corresponds to a different file.