New Commands
Improvements over Vi
Some Emacs packages are mentioned here as an aid to the new Viper user, to indicate what Viper is capable of. A vast number comes with the standard Emacs distribution, and many more exist on the net and on the archives.
This manual also mentions some Emacs features a new user should know about. The details of these are found in the GNU Emacs Manual.
The features first. For details, look up the Emacs Manual.
`Make'
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Makes and Compiles can be done from the editor. Error messages will be parsed and you can move to the error lines. |
`Shell'
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You can talk to Shells from inside the editor. Your entire shell session can be treated as a file. |
`Mail'
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Mail can be read from and sent within the editor. Several sophisticated packages exist. |
`Language Sensitive Editing'
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Editing modes are written for most computer languages in existence. By controlling indentation, they catch punctuation errors. |
The packages, below, represents a drop in the sea of special-purpose packages that come with standard distribution of Emacs.
`Transparent FTP'
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`RCS Interfaces'
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vc.el for doing RCS commands from inside the editor
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`Directory Editor'
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dired.el for editing contents of directories and for navigating in
the file system.
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`Syntactic Highlighting'
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font-lock.el for automatic highlighting various parts of a buffer
using different fonts and colors.
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`Saving Emacs Configuration'
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desktop.el for saving/restoring configuration on Emacs exit/startup.
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`Spell Checker'
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ispell.el for spell checking the buffer, words, regions, etc.
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`File and Buffer Comparison'
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ediff.el for finding differences between files and for applying
patches.
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Emacs Lisp archives exist on
`archive.cis.ohio-state.edu'
and `wuarchive.wustl.edu'
New Commands
Improvements over Vi