How to learn Emacs

hsmyers · on April 10, 2012

For those bound to Windows, GNU Emacs 23.4.1 (i386-mingw-nt6.0.6002) provides a current version with an installer as part of the DL---actually the installer is the initial DL, the rest is done as part of the install. In so far as I can tell comparing Unix version(s) with the Windows version there doesn't appear to be any difference in ability or performance. The http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/big.html does a reasonable job of covering the water front for better information than mine.

drothlis · on April 14, 2012

Thanks for the tip. Where did you get this installer from? I just installed emacs-23.4-bin-i386.zip from http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/emacs/windows/ on a Windows VM, and it's a plain zipfile you extract to C:\Program Files (and optionally run addpm.exe for start menu shortcuts) and it just works -- except for things like grep, which require cygwin or equivalent.

Did your installer also install the cygwin (or equivalent) tools?

nic-ferrier · on April 10, 2012

I read this yesterday, it's a really great tutorial. It should be added to the emacs wiki as a learning resource.

drothlis · on April 10, 2012

Thanks. :-) http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/LearningEmacs

justncase80 · on April 11, 2012

Emacs is a great operating system. It just lacks a decent text editor.

terryk88a · on April 10, 2012

dang! don't do this! don't teach anybody how to use emacs!

it's my productivity secret weapon and I don't wanna share!

terryk88a · on April 10, 2012

Oh all right. Great job.