Being Productive With Emacs

Wednesdays, January 17, 24, and 31, 2007
4-5pm
35-225

Read the SIPB listing for this class.

Description: Emacs is a text editor which is far more powerful than most users realize. It can be customized extensively to suit one's needs and extended to do almost arbitrary things. This class covers useful emacs features, customizing emacs, and extending emacs to do your bidding.

Prerequisites: Everyone is welcome. If at all possible, do the built-in emacs tutorial first. On Athena, you can start emacs like so:

athena% emacs

Then, to start the tutorial, press Ctrl-h followed by t.

Useful links: Emacs on Athena, Emacs reference card

Schedule and slides:

• January 17. An introduction to emacs (PDF, ODP): working quickly in emacs; modes; macros; useful features; acquiring emacs; how to learn more.
• January 24. Customization (PDF, ODP): basic elisp; keybindings; variables; hooks; the .emacs file; defining simple commands
• January 31. Extending emacs (PDF, ODP): elisp control flow; interactive arguments; advice; defining new modes.

These slides are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Contact: Phil Sung, sipb-iap-emacs at mit.edu