XEmacs User’s Manual
July 1994
(General Public License upgraded, January 1991)
Richard Stallman
Lucid, Inc.
and
Ben Wing
Copyright c 1985, 1986, 1988 Richard M. Stallman.
Copyright c 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 Lucid, Inc.
Copyright c 1993, 1994 Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Copyright c 1995 Amdahl Corporation.
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the
copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the
conditions for verbatim copying, provided also that the sections entitled “The GNU Manifesto”, “Distribution” and “GNU General Public License” are included exactly as in the
original, and provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms
of a permission notice identical to this one.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions, except that the sections entitled
“The GNU Manifesto”, “Distribution” and “GNU General Public License” may be included
in a translation approved by the author instead of in the original English.
Preface
1
Preface
This manual documents the use and simple customization of the XEmacs editor. The
reader is not expected to be a programmer to use this editor, and simple customizations do
not require programming skills either. Users who are not interested in customizing XEmacs
can ignore the scattered customization hints.
This document is primarily a reference manual, but it can also be used as a primer.
However, if you are new to XEmacs, consider using the on-line, learn-by-doing tutorial,
which you get by running XEmacs and typing C-h t. With it, you learn XEmacs by using
XEmacs on a specially designed file which describes commands, tells you when to try them,
and then explains the results you see. Using the tutorial gives a more vivid introduction
than the printed manual. Also consider reading the XEmacs New User’s Guide, which is
intended specifically as an introductory manual rather than as a reference guide.
On first reading, just skim chapters one and two, which describe the notational conventions of the manual and the general appearance of the XEmacs display frame. Note which
questions are answered in these chapters, so you can refer back later. After reading chapter
four you should practice the commands there. The next few chapters describe fundamental
techniques and concepts that are used constantly. You need to understand them thoroughly,
experimenting with them if necessary.
To find the documentation on a particular command, look in the index. Keys (character
commands) and command names have separate indexes. There is also a glossary, with a
cross reference for each term.
This manual comes in two forms: the published form and the Info form. The Info form
is for on-line perusal with the INFO program; it is distributed along with XEmacs. Both
forms contain substantially the same text and are generated from a common source file,
which is also distributed along with XEmacs.
XEmacs is a member of the Emacs editor family. There are many Emacs editors, all
sharing common principles of organization. For information on the underlying philosophy
of Emacs and the lessons learned from its development, write for a copy of AI memo 519a,
“Emacs, the Extensible, Customizable Self-Documenting Display Editor”, to Publications
Department, Artificial Intelligence Lab, 545 Tech Square, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
At last report they charge $2.25 per copy. Another useful publication is LCS TM-165,
“A Cookbook for an Emacs”, by Craig Finseth, available from Publications Department,
Laboratory for Computer Science, 545 Tech Square, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. The price
today is $3.
This manual is for XEmacs installed on UNIX systems. XEmacs also exists on Microsoft
Windows and Windows NT as Win-Emacs (which is actually based on Lucid Emacs 19.6,
an older incarnation of XEmacs).
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XEmacs User’s Manual
GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
3
GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
Version 1, February 1989
Copyright c 1989 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
Preamble
The license agreements of most software companies try to keep users at the mercy of
those companies. By contrast, our General Public License is intended to guarantee your
freedom to share and change free software—to make sure the software is free for all its users.
The General Public License applies to the Free Software Foundation’s software and to any
other program whose authors commit to using it. You can use it for your programs, too.
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Specifically, the
General Public License is designed to make sure that you have the freedom to give away or
sell copies of free software, that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that
you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know
you can do these things.
To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you
these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain
responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it.
For example, if you distribute copies of a such a program, whether gratis or for a fee,
you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure that they,
too, receive or can get the source code. And you must tell them their rights.
We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this
license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software.
Also, for each author’s protection and ours, we want to make certain that everyone
understands that there is no warranty for this free software. If the software is modified by
someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to know that what they have is not the
original, so that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on the original authors’
reputations.
The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification follow.
TERMS AND CONDITIONS
1. This License Agreement applies to any program or other work which contains a notice
placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this
General Public License. The “Program”, below, refers to any such program or work,
and a “work based on the Program” means either the Program or any work containing
the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications. Each licensee is
addressed as “you”.
4
XEmacs User’s Manual
2. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program’s source code as you
receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish
on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all
the notices that refer to this General Public License and to the absence of any warranty;
and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this General Public License along
with the Program. You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy.
3. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, and copy and
distribute such modifications under the terms of Paragraph 1 above, provided that you
also do the following:
• cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the
files and the date of any change; and
• cause the whole of any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part
contains the Program or any part thereof, either with or without modifications, to
be licensed at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this General Public
License (except that you may choose to grant warranty protection to some or all
third parties, at your option).
• If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when run, you
must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in the simplest and
most usual way, to print or display an announcement including an appropriate
copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you
provide a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under these
conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this General Public License.
• You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at
your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.
Mere aggregation of another independent work with the Program (or its derivative) on
a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the
scope of these terms.
4. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a portion or derivative of it, under
Paragraph 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Paragraphs 1 and
2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
• accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code,
which must be distributed under the terms of Paragraphs 1 and 2 above; or,
• accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third
party free (except for a nominal charge for the cost of distribution) a complete
machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under
the terms of Paragraphs 1 and 2 above; or,
• accompany it with the information you received as to where the corresponding
source code may be obtained. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial
distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form
alone.)
Source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications
to it. For an executable file, complete source code means all the source code for all
modules it contains; but, as a special exception, it need not include source code for
modules which are standard libraries that accompany the operating system on which
GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
5
the executable file runs, or for standard header files or definitions files that accompany
that operating system.
5. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, distribute or transfer the Program except as
expressly provided under this General Public License. Any attempt otherwise to copy,
modify, sublicense, distribute or transfer the Program is void, and will automatically
terminate your rights to use the Program under this License. However, parties who
have received copies, or rights to use copies, from you under this General Public License
will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.
6. By copying, distributing or modifying the Program (or any work based on the Program)
you indicate your acceptance of this license to do so, and all its terms and conditions.
7. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the
recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute
or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose
any further restrictions on the recipients’ exercise of the rights granted herein.
6
XEmacs User’s Manual
8. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the General
Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the
present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns.
Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies a version
number of the license which applies to it and “any later version”, you have the option
of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version
published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version
number of the license, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software
Foundation.
9. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to the author to ask for permission. For software
which is copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation, write to the Free Software Foundation; we sometimes make exceptions for this. Our decision will be guided by the two
goals of preserving the free status of all derivatives of our free software and of promoting
the sharing and reuse of software generally.
NO WARRANTY
10. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO
WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM “AS
IS” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED,
INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE
RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH
YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST
OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
11. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN
WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO
MAY MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED
ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL,
SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF
THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR
LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE
PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH
HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
SUCH DAMAGES.
END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS
GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
7
Appendix: How to Apply These Terms to Your New
Programs
If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest possible use to
humanity, the best way to achieve this is to make it free software which everyone can
redistribute and change under these terms.
To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safest to attach them to the
start of each source file to most effectively convey the exclusion of warranty; and each file
should have at least the “copyright” line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.
one line to give the program’s name and a brief idea of what it does.
Copyright (C) 19yy name of author
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 1, or (at your option)
any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail.
If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice like this when it starts in an
interactive mode:
Gnomovision version 69, Copyright (C) 19yy name of author
Gnomovision comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type ‘show w’.
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; type ‘show c’ for details.
The hypothetical commands ‘show w’ and ‘show c’ should show the appropriate parts
of the General Public License. Of course, the commands you use may be called something
other than ‘show w’ and ‘show c’; they could even be mouse-clicks or menu items—whatever
suits your program.
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XEmacs User’s Manual
You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or your school, if any,
to sign a “copyright disclaimer” for the program, if necessary. Here a sample; alter the
names:
Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright interest in the
program ‘Gnomovision’ (a program to direct compilers to make passes
at assemblers) written by James Hacker.
signature of Ty Coon, 1 April 1989
Ty Coon, President of Vice
That’s all there is to it!
Distribution
9
Distribution
XEmacs is free; this means that everyone is free to use it and free to redistribute it on a
free basis. XEmacs is not in the public domain; it is copyrighted and there are restrictions
on its distribution, but these restrictions are designed to permit everything that a good
cooperating citizen would want to do. What is not allowed is to try to prevent others from
further sharing any version of XEmacs that they might get from you. The precise conditions
are found in the GNU General Public License that comes with XEmacs and also appears
following this section.
The easiest way to get a copy of XEmacs is from someone else who has it. You need not
ask for permission to do so, or tell any one else; just copy it.
If you have access to the Internet, you can get the latest version of XEmacs from the
anonymous FTP server ‘ftp.xemacs.org’ in the directory ‘/pub/xemacs’. It can also be
found at numerous other archive sites around the world; check the file ‘etc/DISTRIB’ in an
XEmacs distribution for the latest known list.
Getting Other Versions of Emacs
The Free Software Foundation’s version of Emacs (called FSF Emacs in this manual and
often referred to as GNU Emacs) is available by anonymous FTP from ‘prep.ai.mit.edu’.
Win-Emacs, an older version of XEmacs that runs on Microsoft Windows and Windows NT, is available by anonymous FTP from ‘ftp.netcom.com’ in the directory
‘/pub/pe/pearl’, or from ‘ftp.cica.indiana.edu’ as the files ‘wemdemo*.zip’ in the
directory ‘/pub/pc/win3/demo’.
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XEmacs User’s Manual
Introduction
11
Introduction
You are reading about XEmacs, an incarnation of the advanced, self-documenting, customizable, extensible real-time display editor Emacs. XEmacs provides many powerful
display and user-interface capabilities not found in other Emacsen and is mostly upwardly
compatible with GNU Emacs from the Free Software Foundation (referred to as FSF Emacs
in this manual). XEmacs also comes standard with a great number of useful packages.
We say that XEmacs is a display editor because normally the text being edited is visible
on the screen and is updated automatically as you type. See Chapter 1 [Frame], page 13.
We call XEmacs a real-time editor because the display is updated very frequently, usually
after each character or pair of characters you type. This minimizes the amount of information you must keep in your head as you edit. See Chapter 4 [Basic Editing], page 47.
We call XEmacs advanced because it provides facilities that go beyond simple insertion
and deletion: filling of text; automatic indentation of programs; viewing two or more files
at once; and dealing in terms of characters, words, lines, sentences, paragraphs, and pages,
as well as expressions and comments in several different programming languages. It is much
easier to type one command meaning “go to the end of the paragraph” than to find that
spot with simple cursor keys.
Self-documenting means that at any time you can type a special character, Control-h,
to find out what your options are. You can also use C-h to find out what a command does,
or to find all the commands relevant to a topic. See Chapter 8 [Help], page 67.
Customizable means you can change the definitions of XEmacs commands. For example,
if you use a programming language in which comments start with ‘<**’ and end with
‘**>’, you can tell the XEmacs comment manipulation commands to use those strings (see
Section 22.6 [Comments], page 190). Another sort of customization is rearrangement of
the command set. For example, you can set up the four basic cursor motion commands
(up, down, left and right) on keys in a diamond pattern on the keyboard if you prefer. See
Chapter 29 [Customization], page 291.
Extensible means you can go beyond simple customization and write entirely new commands, programs in the Lisp language to be run by XEmacs’s own Lisp interpreter. XEmacs
is an “on-line extensible” system: it is divided into many functions that call each other.
You can redefine any function in the middle of an editing session and replace any part of
XEmacs without making a separate copy of all of XEmacs. Most of the editing commands
of XEmacs are written in Lisp; the few exceptions could have been written in Lisp but are
written in C for efficiency. Only a programmer can write an extension to XEmacs, but
anybody can use it afterward.
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XEmacs User’s Manual
Chapter 1: The XEmacs Frame
13
1 The XEmacs Frame
Frame
In many environments, such as a tty terminal, an XEmacs frame literally takes
up the whole screen. If you are running XEmacs in a multi-window system
like the X Window System, the XEmacs frame takes up one X window. See
Section 1.12 [XEmacs under X], page 19, for more information.
Window
No matter what environment you are running in, XEmacs allows you to look
at several buffers at the same time by having several windows be part of the
frame. Often, the whole frame is taken up by just one window, but you can
split the frame into two or more subwindows. If you are running XEmacs under
the X window system, that means you can have several XEmacs windows inside
the X window that contains the XEmacs frame. You can even have multiple
frames in different X windows, each with their own set of subwindows.
Each XEmacs frame displays a variety of information:
• The biggest area usually displays the text you are editing. It may consist of one window
or of two or more windows if you need to look at two buffers a the same time.
• Below each text window’s last line is a mode line (see Section 1.3 [Mode Line], page 15),
which describes what is going on in that window. The mode line is in inverse video if
the terminal supports that. If there are several XEmacs windows in one frame, each
window has its own mode line.
• At the bottom of each XEmacs frame is the echo area or minibuffer window(see Section 1.2 [Echo Area], page 14). It is used by XEmacs to exchange information with the
user. There is only one echo area per XEmacs frame.
• If you are running XEmacs under a graphical windowing system, a menu bar at the
top of the frame makes shortcuts to several of the commands available (see Section 2.4
[Pull-down Menus], page 29).
• Under a graphical windowing system, a toolbar at the top of the frame, just under the
menu bar if it exists, provides “one-touch” shortcuts to several commands. (Not yet
documented.)
• Under a graphical windowing system, a gutter at the top (under the toolbar) and/or
bottom of the frame provides advanced GUI facilities like tab controls for rapid switching among related windows and progress bars for time-consuming operations like downloads across the Internet. Gutters are an experimental feature introduced in XEmacs
version 21.2. (Not yet documented.)
You can subdivide the XEmacs frame into multiple text windows, and use each window
for a different file (see Chapter 17 [Windows], page 145). Multiple XEmacs windows are
tiled vertically on the XEmacs frame. The upper XEmacs window is separated from the
lower window by its mode line.
When there are multiple, tiled XEmacs windows on a single XEmacs frame, the XEmacs
window receiving input from the keyboard has the keyboard focus and is called the selected
window. The selected window contains the cursor, which indicates the insertion point. If
you are working in an environment that permits multiple XEmacs frames, and you move
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XEmacs User’s Manual
the focus from one XEmacs frame into another, the selected window is the one that was
last selected in that frame.
The same text can be displayed simultaneously in several XEmacs windows, which can
be in different XEmacs frames. If you alter the text in an XEmacs buffer by editing it in
one XEmacs window, the changes are visible in all XEmacs windows containing that buffer.
1.1 Point
When XEmacs is running, the cursor shows the location at which editing commands will
take effect. This location is called point. You can use keystrokes or the mouse cursor to
move point through the text and edit the text at different places.
While the cursor appears to point at a character, you should think of point as between
two characters: it points before the character on which the cursor appears. The exception
is at the end of the line, where the cursor appears after the last character of the line. Where
the display is capable, the cursor at the end of the line will appear differently from a cursor
over whitespace at the end of the line. (In an X Windows frame, the end-of-line cursor is
half the width of a within-line cursor.) Sometimes people speak of “the cursor” when they
mean “point,” or speak of commands that move point as “cursor motion” commands.
Each XEmacs frame has only one cursor. When output is in progress, the cursor must
appear where the typing is being done. This does not mean that point is moving. It is only
that XEmacs has no way to show you the location of point except when the terminal is idle.
If you are editing several files in XEmacs, each file has its own point location. A file
that is not being displayed remembers where point is. Point becomes visible at the correct
location when you look at the file again.
When there are multiple text windows, each window has its own point location. The
cursor shows the location of point in the selected window. The visible cursor also shows
you which window is selected. If the same buffer appears in more than one window, point
can be moved in each window independently.
The term ‘point’ comes from the character ‘.’, which was the command in TECO (the
language in which the original Emacs was written) for accessing the value now called ‘point’.
1.2 The Echo Area
The line at the bottom of the frame (below the mode line) is the echo area. XEmacs
uses this area to communicate with the user:
• Echoing means printing out the characters that the user types. XEmacs never echoes
single-character commands. Multi-character commands are echoed only if you pause
while typing them: As soon as you pause for more than one second in the middle of
a command, all the characters of the command so far are echoed. This is intended
to prompt you for the rest of the command. Once echoing has started, the rest of
the command is echoed immediately as you type it. This behavior is designed to give
confident users fast response, while giving hesitant users maximum feedback. You can
change this behavior by setting a variable (see Section 12.4 [Display Vars], page 95).
Chapter 1: The XEmacs Frame
15
• If you issue a command that cannot be executed, XEmacs may print an error message
in the echo area. Error messages are accompanied by a beep or by flashing the frame.
Any input you have typed ahead is thrown away when an error happens.
• Some commands print informative messages in the echo area. These messages look
similar to error messages, but are not announced with a beep and do not throw away
input. Sometimes a message tells you what the command has done, when this is
not obvious from looking at the text being edited. Sometimes the sole purpose of
a command is to print a message giving you specific information. For example, the
command C-x = is used to print a message describing the character position of point
in the text and its current column in the window. Commands that take a long time
often display messages ending in ‘...’ while they are working, and add ‘done’ at the
end when they are finished.
• The echo area is also used to display the minibuffer, a window that is used for reading
arguments to commands, such as the name of a file to be edited. When the minibuffer
is in use, the echo area displays with a prompt string that usually ends with a colon.
The cursor appears after the prompt. You can always get out of the minibuffer by
typing C-g. See Chapter 6 [Minibuffer], page 57.
1.3 The Mode Line
Each text window’s last line is a mode line which describes what is going on in that
window. When there is only one text window, the mode line appears right above the echo
area. The mode line is in inverse video if the terminal supports that, starts and ends with
dashes, and contains text like ‘XEmacs: something’.
If a mode line has something else in place of ‘XEmacs: something’, the window above
it is in a special subsystem such as Dired. The mode line then indicates the status of the
subsystem.
Normally, the mode line has the following appearance:
--ch-XEmacs: buf
(major minor)----pos------
This gives information about the buffer being displayed in the window: the buffer’s name,
what major and minor modes are in use, whether the buffer’s text has been changed, and
how far down the buffer you are currently looking.
ch contains two stars (‘**’) if the text in the buffer has been edited (the buffer is “modified”), or two dashes (‘--’) if the buffer has not been edited. Exception: for a read-only
buffer, it is ‘%%’.
buf is the name of the window’s chosen buffer. The chosen buffer in the selected window
(the window that the cursor is in) is also XEmacs’s selected buffer, the buffer in which
editing takes place. When we speak of what some command does to “the buffer”, we mean
the currently selected buffer. See Chapter 16 [Buffers], page 139.
pos tells you whether there is additional text above the top of the screen or below the
bottom. If your file is small and it is completely visible on the screen, pos is ‘All’. Otherwise,
pos is ‘Top’ if you are looking at the beginning of the file, ‘Bot’ if you are looking at the
end of the file, or ‘nn%’, where nn is the percentage of the file above the top of the screen.
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XEmacs User’s Manual
major is the name of the major mode in effect in the buffer. At any time, each buffer is
in one and only one major mode. The available major modes include Fundamental mode
(the least specialized), Text mode, Lisp mode, and C mode. See Chapter 19 [Major Modes],
page 161, for details on how the modes differ and how you select one.
minor is a list of some of the minor modes that are turned on in the window’s chosen
buffer. For example, ‘Fill’ means that Auto Fill mode is on. Abbrev means that Word
Abbrev mode is on. Ovwrt means that Overwrite mode is on. See Section 29.1 [Minor
Modes], page 291, for more information. ‘Narrow’ means that the buffer being displayed
has editing restricted to only a portion of its text. This is not really a minor mode, but
is like one. See Section 28.3 [Narrowing], page 284. Def means that a keyboard macro is
being defined. See Section 29.3 [Keyboard Macros], page 301.
Some buffers display additional information after the minor modes. For example, Rmail
buffers display the current message number and the total number of messages. Compilation
buffers and Shell mode display the status of the subprocess.
If XEmacs is currently inside a recursive editing level, square brackets (‘[...]’) appear
around the parentheses that surround the modes. If XEmacs is in one recursive editing level
within another, double square brackets appear, and so on. Since information on recursive
editing applies to XEmacs in general and not to any one buffer, the square brackets appear
in every mode line on the screen or not in any of them. See Section 28.5 [Recursive Edit],
page 286.
XEmacs can optionally display the time and system load in all mode lines. To enable this
feature, type M-x display-time. The information added to the mode line usually appears
after the file name, before the mode names and their parentheses. It looks like this:
hh:mmpm l.ll [d]
(Some fields may be missing if your operating system cannot support them.) hh and mm
are the hour and minute, followed always by ‘am’ or ‘pm’. l.ll is the average number of
running processes in the whole system recently. d is an approximate index of the ratio of
disk activity to CPU activity for all users.
The word ‘Mail’ appears after the load level if there is mail for you that you have not
read yet.
Customization note: the variable mode-line-inverse-video controls whether the mode
line is displayed in inverse video (assuming the terminal supports it); nil means no inverse
video. The default is t. For X frames, simply set the foreground and background colors
appropriately.
1.4 GUI Components
When executed in a graphical windowing environment such as the X Window System or
Microsoft Windows, XEmacs displays several graphical user interface components such as
scrollbars, menubars, toolbars, and gutters. By default there is a vertical scrollbar at the
right of each frame, and at the top of the frame there is a menubar, a toolbar, and a gutter,
in that order. Gutters can contain any of several widgets, but the default configuration
puts a set of "notebook tabs" which you can use as a shortcut for selecting any of several
related buffers in a given frame. Operating the GUI components is "obvious": click on the
Chapter 1: The XEmacs Frame
17
menubar to pull down a menu, on a button in the toolbar to invoke a function, and on a
tab in the gutter to switch buffers.
1.5 The XEmacs Menubar
The XEmacs menubar is intended to be conformant to the usual conventions for
menubars, although conformance is not yet perfect. The menu at the extreme right is
the ‘Help’ menu, which should always be available. It provides access to all the XEmacs
help facilities available through C-h, as well as samples of various configuration files like
‘~/.Xdefaults’ and ‘~/.emacs’. At the extreme left is the ‘Files’ menu, which provides
the usual file reading, writing, and printing operations, as well as operations like revert
buffer from most recent save. The next menu from the left is the ‘Edit’ menu, which provides the ‘Undo’ operation as well as cutting and pasting, searching, and keyboard macro
definition and execution.
XEmacs provides a very dynamic environment, and the Lisp language makes for highly
flexible applications. The menubar reflects this: many menus (eg, the ‘Buffers’ menu,
see Section 2.4.5 [Buffers Menu], page 34) contain items determined by the current state
of XEmacs, and most major modes and many minor modes add items to menus and even
whole menus to the menubar. In fact, some applications like w3.el and VM provide so
many menus that they define a whole new menubar and add a button that allows convenient switching between the “XEmacs menubar” and the “application menubar”. Such
applications normally bind themselves to a particular frame, and this switching only takes
place on frames where such an application is active (ie, the current window of the frame is
displaying a buffer in the appropriate major mode).
Other menus which are typically available are the ‘Options’, ‘Tools’, ‘Buffers’, ‘Apps’,
and ‘Mule’ menus. For detailed descriptions of these menus, Section 2.4 [Pull-down Menus],
page 29. (In 21.2 XEmacsen, the ‘Mule’ menu will be moved under ‘Options’.)
1.6 XEmacs Scrollbars
XEmacs scrollbars provide the usual interface. Arrow buttons at either end allow for
line by line scrolling, including autorepeat. Clicking in the scrollbar itself provides scrolling
by windowsfull, depending on which side of the slider is clicked. The slider itself may be
dragged for smooth scrolling.
The position of the slider corresponds to the position of the window in the buffer. In
particular, the length of the slider is proportional to the fraction of the buffer which appears
in the window.
The presence of the scrollbars is under control of the application or may be customized
by the user. By default a vertical scrollbar is present in all windows (except the minibuffer),
and there is no horizontal scrollbar.
1.7 XEmacs Mode Lines
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XEmacs User’s Manual
When used in a windowing system, the XEmacs modelines can be dragged vertically. The
effect is to resize the windows above and below the modeline (this includes the minibuffer
window).
Additionally, a modeline can be dragged horizontally, in which case it scrolls its own
text. This behavior is not enabled by default because it could be considered as disturbing
when dragging vertically. When this behavior is enabled, the modeline’s text can be dragged
either in the same direction as the mouse, or in the opposite sense, making the modeline
act as a scrollbar for its own text.
You can select the behavior you want from the ‘Display’ submenu of the ‘Options’
menu.
1.8 XEmacs Toolbars
XEmacs has a default toolbar which provides shortcuts for some of the commonly used
operations (such as opening files) and applications (such as the Info manual reader). Operations which require arguments will pop up dialogs to get them.
The position of the default toolbar can be customized. Also, several toolbars may be
present simultaneously (in different positions). VM, for example, provides an application
toolbar which shortcuts for mail-specific operations like sending, saving, and deleting messages.
1.9 XEmacs Gutters
Gutters are the most flexible of the GUI components described in this section. In theory,
the other GUI components could be implemented by customizing a gutter, but in practice
the other components were introduced earlier and have their own special implementations.
Gutters tend to be more transient than the other components. Buffer tabs, for example,
change every time the selected buffer in the frame changes. And for progress gauges a gutter
to contain the gauge is typically created on the fly when needed, then destroyed when the
operation whose staus is being displayed is completed.
Buffer tabs, having somewhat complex behavior, deserve a closer look. By default, a
row of buffer tabs is displayed at the top of every frame. (The tabs could be placed in the
bottom gutter, but would be oriented the same way and look rather odd. The horizontal
orientation makes putting them in a side gutter utterly impractical.) The buffer displayed
in the current window of a frame can be changed to a specific buffer by clicking [mouse-1]
on the corresponding tab in the gutter.
Each tab contains the name of its buffer. The tab for the current buffer in each frame
is displayed in raised relief. The list of buffers chosen for display in the buffer tab row is
derived by filtering the buffer list (like the Buffers menu). The list starts out with all
existing buffers, with more recently selected buffers coming earlier in the list.
Then "uninteresting" buffers, like internal XEmacs buffers, the *Message Log* buffer,
and so on are deleted from the list. Next, the frame’s selected buffer is determined. Buffers
Chapter 1: The XEmacs Frame
19
with a different major mode from the selected buffer are removed from the list. Finally, if
the list is too long, the least recently used buffers are deleted from the list. By default up
to 6 most recently used buffers with the same mode are displayed on tabs in the gutter.
1.10 Inhibiting Display of GUI Components
Use of GUI facilities is a personal thing. Almost everyone agrees that drawing via
keyboard-based "turtle graphics" is acceptable to hardly anyone if a mouse is available,
but conversely emulating a keyboard with a screenful of buttons is a painful experience.
But between those extremes the complete novice will require a fair amount of time before
toolbars and menus become dispensable, but many an "Ancien Haquer" sees them as a
complete waste of precious frame space that could be filled with text.
Display of all of the GUI components created by XEmacs can be inhibited through
the use of Customize. Customize can be accessed through ‘Options | Customize’ in the
menu bar, or via M-x customize. Then navigate through the Customize tree to ‘Emacs |
Environment’. Scrollbar and toolbar visibility is controlled via the ‘Display’ group, options
‘Scrollbars visible’ and ‘Toolbar visible’ respectively. Gutter visibility is controlled
by group ‘Gutter’, option ‘Visible’.
Or they can be controlled directly by M-x customize-variable, by changing the values of the variables menubar-visible-p, scrollbars-visible-p, toolbar-visible-p, or
gutter-buffers-tab-visible-p respectively. (The strange form of the last variable is
due to the fact that gutters are often used to display transient widgets like progress gauges,
which you probably don’t want to inhibit. It is more likely that you want to inhibit the
default display of the buffers tab widget, which is what that variable controls. This interface
is subject to change depending on developer experience and user feedback.)
Control of frame configuration can controlled automatically according to various parameters such as buffer or frame because these are specifiers hundefinedi [Specifiers], page hundefinedi. Using these features requires programming in Lisp; Customize is not yet that
sophisticated. Also, components that appear in various positions and orientations can have
display suppressed according to position. C-h a visible-p gives a list of variables which
can be customized. E.g., to control the visibility of specifically the left-side toolbar only,
customize left-toolbar-visible-p.
1.11 Changing the Position, Orientation, and Appearance of
GUI Components
#### Not documented yet.
1.12 Using XEmacs Under the X Window System
XEmacs can be used with the X Window System and a window manager like MWM or
TWM. In that case, the X window manager opens, closes, and resizes XEmacs frames. You
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use the window manager’s mouse gestures to perform the operations. Consult your window
manager guide or reference manual for information on manipulating X windows.
When you are working under X, each X window (that is, each XEmacs frame) has a
menu bar for mouse-controlled operations (see Section 2.4 [Pull-down Menus], page 29).
XEmacs under X is also a multi-frame XEmacs. You can use the New Frame menu
item from the File menu to create a new XEmacs frame in a new X window from the same
process. The different frames will share the same buffer list, but you can look at different
buffers in the different frames.
The function find-file-other-frame is just like find-file, but creates a new frame
to display the buffer in first. This is normally bound to C-x 5 C-f, and is what the Open
File, New Frame menu item does.
The function switch-to-buffer-other-frame is just like switch-to-buffer, but creates a new frame to display the buffer in first. This is normally bound to C-x 5 b.
You can specify a different default frame size other than the one provided. Use the
variable default-frame-plist, which is a plist of default values for frame creation other
than the first one. These may be set in your init file, like this:
(setq default-frame-plist ’(width 80 height 55))
This variable has replaced default-frame-alist, which is considered obsolete.
For values specific to the first XEmacs frame, you must use X resources. The variable
x-frame-defaults takes an alist of default frame creation parameters for X window frames.
These override what is specified in ‘~/.Xdefaults’ but are overridden by the arguments to
the particular call to x-create-frame.
When you create a new frame, the variable create-frame-hook is called with one argument, the frame just created.
If you want to close one or more of the X windows you created using New Frame, use
the Delete Frame menu item from the File menu.
If you are working with multiple frames, some special information applies:
• Two variables, frame-title-format and frame-icon-title-format determine the
title of the frame and the title of the icon that results if you shrink the frame.
• The variables auto-lower-frame and auto-raise-frame position a frame. If true,
auto-lower-frame lowers a frame to the bottom when it is no longer selected. If
true, auto-raise-frame raises a frame to the top when it is selected. Under X, most
ICCCM-compliant window managers will have options to do this for you, but these
variables are provided in case you are using a broken window manager.
• There is a new frame/modeline format directive, %S, which expands to the name of the
current frame (a frame’s name is distinct from its title; the name is used for resource
lookup, among other things, and the title is simply what appears above the window.)
1.13 Using XEmacs Under Microsoft Windows
Use of XEmacs under MS Windows is not separately documented here, but most operations available under the X Window System are also available with MS Windows.
Chapter 1: The XEmacs Frame
21
Where possible, native MS Windows GUI components and capabilities are used in
XEmacs.
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Chapter 2: Keystrokes, Key Sequences, and Key Bindings
23
2 Keystrokes, Key Sequences, and Key Bindings
This chapter discusses the character set Emacs uses for input commands and inside files.
You have already learned that the more frequently used Emacs commands are bound to
keys. For example, Control-f is bound to forward-char. The following issues are covered:
• How keystrokes can be represented
• How you can create key sequences from keystrokes
• How you can add to the available modifier keys by customizing your keyboard: for
example, you could have the hCapslocki key be understood as the hSuperi key by Emacs.
A hSuperi key is used like hControli or hMetai in that you hold it while typing another key.
You will also learn how to customize existing key bindings and create new ones.
2.1 Keystrokes as Building Blocks of Key Sequences
Earlier versions of Emacs used only the ASCII character set, which defines 128 different
character codes. Some of these codes are assigned graphic symbols like ‘a’ and ‘=’; the rest
are control characters, such as Control-a (also called C-a). C-a means you hold down the
hCTRLi key and then press a.
Keybindings in XEmacs are not restricted to the set of keystrokes that can be represented
in ASCII. XEmacs can tell the difference between, for example, Control-h, ControlShift-h, and Backspace.
A keystroke is like a piano chord: you get it by simultaneously striking several keys.
To be more precise, a keystroke consists of a possibly empty set of modifiers followed by a
single keysym. The set of modifiers is small; it consists of Control, Meta, Super, Hyper,
and Shift.
The rest of the keys on your keyboard, along with the mouse buttons, make up the set
of keysyms. A keysym is usually what is printed on the keys on your keyboard. Here is a
table of some of the symbolic names for keysyms:
a,b,c...
alphabetic keys
f1,f2...
function keys
button1
left mouse button
button2
middle mouse button
button3
right mouse button
button1up
upstroke on the left mouse button
button2up
upstroke on the middle mouse button
button3up
upstroke on the right mouse button
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Return key
Use the variable keyboard-translate-table only if you are on a dumb tty, as it cannot
handle input that cannot be represented as ASCII. The value of this variable is a string
used as a translate table for keyboard input or nil. Each character is looked up in this
string and the contents used instead. If the string is of length n, character codes N and up
are untranslated. If you are running Emacs under X, you should do the translations with
the xmodmap program instead.
2.1.1 Representing Keystrokes
XEmacs represents keystrokes as lists. Each list consists of an arbitrary combination of
modifiers followed by a single keysym at the end of the list. If the keysym corresponds to an
ASCII character, you can use its character code. (A keystroke may also be represented by
an event object, as returned by the read-key-sequence function; non-programmers need
not worry about this.)
The following table gives some examples of how to list representations for keystrokes.
Each list consists of sets of modifiers followed by keysyms:
(control a)
Pressing hCTRLi and a simultaneously.
(control ?a)
Another way of writing the keystroke C-a.
(control 65)
Yet another way of writing the keystroke C-a.
(break)
Pressing the hBREAKi key.
(control meta button2up)
Release the middle mouse button, while pressing hCTRLi and hMETAi.
Note: As you define keystrokes, you can use the shift key only as a modifier with
characters that do not have a second keysym on the same key, such as backspace and tab.
It is an error to define a keystroke using the hshifti modifier with keysyms such as a and =.
The correct forms are A and +.
2.1.2 Representing Key Sequences
A complete key sequence is a sequence of keystrokes that Emacs understands as a unit.
Key sequences are significant because you can bind them to commands. Note that not all
sequences of keystrokes are possible key sequences. In particular, the initial keystrokes in a
key sequence must make up a prefix key sequence.
Emacs represents a key sequence as a vector of keystrokes. Thus, the schematic representation of a complete key sequence is as follows:
[(modifier .. modifier keysym) ... (modifier .. modifier keysym)]
Here are some examples of complete key sequences:
Chapter 2: Keystrokes, Key Sequences, and Key Bindings
25
[(control c) (control a)]
Typing C-c followed by C-a
[(control c) (control 65)]
Typing C-c followed by C-a. (Using the ASCII code for the character ‘a’)
[(control c) (break)]
Typing C-c followed by the break character.
A prefix key sequence is the beginning of a series of longer sequences that are valid key
sequences; adding any single keystroke to the end of a prefix results in a valid key sequence.
For example, control-x is standardly defined as a prefix. Thus there is a two-character
key sequence starting with C-x for each valid keystroke, giving numerous possibilities. Here
are some samples:
• [(control x) (c)]
• [(control x) (control c)]
Adding one character to a prefix key does not have to form a complete key. It could make
another, longer prefix. For example, [(control x) (\4)] is itself a prefix that leads to any
number of different three-character keys, including [(control x) (\4) (f)], [(control x)
(\4) (b)] and so on. It would be possible to define one of those three-character sequences
as a prefix, creating a series of four-character keys, but we did not define any of them this
way.
By contrast, the two-character sequence [(control f) (control k)] is not a key, because the (control f) is a complete key sequence in itself. You cannot give [(control
f (control k)] an independent meaning as a command while (control f) is a complete
sequence, because Emacs would understand hC-f C-ki as two commands.
The predefined prefix key sequences in Emacs are (control c), (control x), (control
h), [(control x) (\4)], and escape. You can customize Emacs and could make new prefix keys or eliminate the default key sequences. See Section 29.4 [Key Bindings], page 303.
For example, if you redefine (control f) as a prefix, [(control f) (control k)] automatically becomes a valid key sequence (complete, unless you define it as a prefix as well).
Conversely, if you remove the prefix definition of [(control x) (\4)], [(control x) (\4)
(f)] (or [(control x) (\4) anything]) is no longer a valid key sequence.
Note that the above paragraphs uses \4 instead of simply 4, because \4 is the symbol
whose name is "4", and plain 4 is the integer 4, which would have been interpreted as the
ASCII value. Another way of representing the symbol whose name is "4" is to write ?4,
which would be interpreted as the number 52, which is the ASCII code for the character
"4". We could therefore actually have written 52 directly, but that is far less clear.
2.1.3 String Key Sequences
For backward compatibility, you may also represent a key sequence using strings. For
example, we have the following equivalent representations:
"\C-c\C-c"
[(control c) (control c)]
"\e\C-c"
[(meta control c)]
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2.1.4 Assignment of the
XEmacs User’s Manual
hMETAi
Key
Not all terminals have the complete set of modifiers. Terminals that have a hMetai key
allow you to type Meta characters by just holding that key down. To type Meta-a, hold
down hMETAi and press a. On those terminals, the hMETAi key works like the hSHIFTi key.
Such a key is not always labeled hMETAi, however, as this function is often a special option
for a key with some other primary purpose.
If there is no hMETAi key, you can still type Meta characters using two-character sequences
starting with hESCi. To enter M-a, you could type hESCi a. To enter C-M-a, you would type
ESC C-a. hESCi is allowed on terminals with Meta keys, too, in case you have formed a habit
of using it.
If you are running under X and do not have a hMETAi key, it is possible to reconfigure
some other key to be a hMETAi key. See Section 2.1.5 [Super and Hyper Keys], page 26.
Emacs believes the terminal has a hMETAi key if the variable meta-flag is non-nil.
Normally this is set automatically according to the termcap entry for your terminal type.
However, sometimes the termcap entry is wrong, and then it is useful to set this variable
yourself. See Section 29.2 [Variables], page 291, for how to do this.
Note: If you are running under the X window system, the setting of the meta-flag
variable is irrelevant.
2.1.5 Assignment of the
hSUPERi
and
hHYPERi
Keys
Most keyboards do not, by default, have hSUPERi or hHYPERi modifier keys. Under X, you
can simulate the hSUPERi or hHYPERi key if you want to bind keys to sequences using super
and hyper. You can use the xmodmap program to do this.
For example, to turn your hCAPS-LOCKi key into a hSUPERi key, do the following:
Create a file called ~/.xmodmap. In this file, place the lines
remove Lock = Caps_Lock
keysym Caps_Lock = Super_L
add Mod2 = Super_L
The first line says that the key that is currently called Caps_Lock should no longer behave
as a “lock” key. The second line says that this should now be called Super_L instead. The
third line says that the key called Super_L should be a modifier key, which produces the
Mod2 modifier.
To create a hMETAi or hHYPERi key instead of a hSUPERi key, replace the word Super above
with Meta or Hyper.
Just after you start up X, execute the command xmodmap /.xmodmap. You can add this
command to the appropriate initialization file to have the command executed automatically.
If you have problems, see the documentation for the xmodmap program. The X keyboard
model is quite complicated, and explaining it is beyond the scope of this manual. However,
we reprint the following description from the X Protocol document for your convenience:
A list of keysyms is associated with each keycode. If that list (ignoring trailing NoSymbol
entries) is a single keysym ‘K’, then the list is treated as if it were the list ‘‘K NoSymbol
Chapter 2: Keystrokes, Key Sequences, and Key Bindings
27
K NoSymbol’’. If the list (ignoring trailing NoSymbol entries) is a pair of keysyms ‘K1 K2’,
then the list is treated as if it were the list ‘‘K1 K2 K1 K2’’. If the list (ignoring trailing
NoSymbol entries) is a triple of keysyms ‘K1 K2 K3’, then the list is treated as if it were the
list ‘‘K1 K2 K3 NoSymbol’’.
The first four elements of the list are split into two groups of keysyms. Group 1 contains
the first and second keysyms; Group 2 contains third and fourth keysyms. Within each
group, if the second element of the group is NoSymbol, then the group should be treated
as if the second element were the same as the first element, except when the first element
is an alphabetic keysym ‘K’ for which both lowercase and uppercase forms are defined. In
that case, the group should be treated as if the first element were the lowercase form of ‘K’
and the second element were the uppercase form of ‘K’.
The standard rules for obtaining a keysym from a KeyPress event make use of only the
Group 1 and Group 2 keysyms; no interpretation of other keysyms in the list is given here.
(That is, the last four keysyms are unused.)
Which group to use is determined by modifier state. Switching between groups is controlled by the keysym named Mode_switch. Attach that keysym to some keycode and
attach that keycode to any one of the modifiers Mod1 through Mod5. This modifier is
called the group modifier. For any keycode, Group 1 is used when the group modifier is off,
and Group 2 is used when the group modifier is on.
Within a group, which keysym to use is also determined by modifier state. The first
keysym is used when the Shift and Lock modifiers are off. The second keysym is used
when the Shift modifier is on, or when the Lock modifier is on and the second keysym
is uppercase alphabetic, or when the Lock modifier is on and is interpreted as ShiftLock.
Otherwise, when the Lock modifier is on and is interpreted as CapsLock, the state of the
Shift modifier is applied first to select a keysym, but if that keysym is lower-case alphabetic,
then the corresponding upper-case keysym is used instead.
In addition to the above information on keysyms, we also provide the following description of modifier mapping from the InterClient Communications Conventions Manual:
X11 supports 8 modifier bits, of which 3 are pre-assigned to Shift, Lock, and Control.
Each modifier bit is controlled by the state of a set of keys, and these sets are specified in
a table accessed by GetModifierMapping() and SetModifierMapping().
A client needing to use one of the pre-assigned modifiers should assume that the modifier
table has been set up correctly to control these modifiers. The Lock modifier should be
interpreted as Caps Lock or Shift Lock according to whether the keycodes in its controlling
set include XK_Caps_Lock or XK_Shift_Lock.
Clients should determine the meaning of a modifier bit from the keysyms being used to
control it.
A client needing to use an extra modifier, for example Meta, should:
1. Scan the existing modifier mappings.
1. If it finds a modifier that contains a keycode whose set of keysyms includes XK_
Meta_L or XK_Meta_R, it should use that modifier bit.
2. If there is no existing modifier controlled by XK_Meta_L or XK_Meta_R, it should
select an unused modifier bit (one with an empty controlling set) and:
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2. If there is a keycode with XL_Meta_L in its set of keysyms, add that keycode to the set
for the chosen modifier, and then:
1. If there is a keycode with XL_Meta_R in its set of keysyms, add that keycode to
the set for the chosen modifier, and then:
2. If the controlling set is still empty, interact with the user to select one or more
keys to be Meta.
3. If there are no unused modifier bits, ask the user to take corrective action.
This means that the Mod1 modifier does not necessarily mean Meta, although some
applications (such as twm and emacs 18) assume that. Any of the five unassigned modifier
bits could mean Meta; what matters is that a modifier bit is generated by a keycode which
is bound to the keysym Meta_L or Meta_R.
Therefore, if you want to make a hMETAi key, the right way is to make the keycode in
question generate both a Meta keysym and some previously-unassigned modifier bit.
2.2 Representation of Characters
This section briefly discusses how characters are represented in Emacs buffers. See
Section 2.1.2 [Key Sequences], page 24, for information on representing key sequences to
create key bindings.
ASCII graphic characters in Emacs buffers are displayed with their graphics. hLFDi is
the same as a newline character; it is displayed by starting a new line. hTABi is displayed
by moving to the next tab stop column (usually every 8 spaces). Other control characters
are displayed as a caret (‘^’) followed by the non-control version of the character; thus,
C-a is displayed as ‘^A’. Non-ASCII characters 128 and up are displayed with octal escape
sequences; thus, character code 243 (octal), also called M-# when used as an input character,
is displayed as ‘\243’.
The variable ctl-arrow may be used to alter this behavior. See Section 12.4 [Display
Vars], page 95.
2.3 Keys and Commands
This manual is full of passages that tell you what particular keys do. But Emacs does
not assign meanings to keys directly. Instead, Emacs assigns meanings to functions, and
then gives keys their meanings by binding them to functions.
A function is a Lisp object that can be executed as a program. Usually it is a Lisp
symbol that has been given a function definition; every symbol has a name, usually made
of a few English words separated by dashes, such as next-line or forward-word. It also
has a definition, which is a Lisp program. Only some functions can be the bindings of
keys; these are functions whose definitions use interactive to specify how to call them
interactively. Such functions are called commands, and their names are command names.
More information on this subject will appear in the XEmacs Lisp Reference Manual.
Chapter 2: Keystrokes, Key Sequences, and Key Bindings
29
The bindings between keys and functions are recorded in various tables called keymaps.
See Section 29.4 [Key Bindings], page 303, for more information on key sequences you can
bind commands to. See Section 29.4.1 [Keymaps], page 303, for information on creating
keymaps.
When we say “C-n moves down vertically one line” we are glossing over a distinction
that is irrelevant in ordinary use but is vital in understanding how to customize Emacs.
The function next-line is programmed to move down vertically. C-n has this effect because
it is bound to that function. If you rebind C-n to the function forward-word then C-n will
move forward by words instead. Rebinding keys is a common method of customization.
The rest of this manual usually ignores this subtlety to keep things simple. To give the
customizer the information needed, we often state the name of the command that really
does the work in parentheses after mentioning the key that runs it. For example, we will say
that “The command C-n (next-line) moves point vertically down,” meaning that nextline is a command that moves vertically down and C-n is a key that is standardly bound
to it.
While we are on the subject of information for customization only, it’s a good time to
tell you about variables. Often the description of a command will say, “To change this, set
the variable mumble-foo.” A variable is a name used to remember a value. Most of the
variables documented in this manual exist just to facilitate customization: some command
or other part of Emacs uses the variable and behaves differently depending on its setting.
Until you are interested in customizing, you can ignore the information about variables.
When you are ready to be interested, read the basic information on variables, and then the
information on individual variables will make sense. See Section 29.2 [Variables], page 291.
2.4 XEmacs Pull-down Menus
If you are running XEmacs under X, a menu bar on top of the Emacs frame provides
access to pull-down menus of file, edit, and help-related commands. The menus provide
convenient shortcuts and an easy interface for novice users. They do not provide additions
to the functionality available via key commands; you can still invoke commands from the
keyboard as in previous versions of Emacs.
File
Perform file and buffer-related operations, such as opening and closing files,
saving and printing buffers, as well as exiting Emacs.
Edit
Perform standard editing operations, such as cutting, copying, pasting, and
killing selected text.
Apps
Access to sub-applications implemented within XEmacs, such as the mail
reader, the World Wide Web browser, the spell-checker, and the calendar
program.
Options
Control various options regarding the way XEmacs works, such as controlling
which elements of the frame are visible, selecting the fonts to be used for text,
specifying whether searches are case-sensitive, etc.
Buffers
Present a menu of buffers for selection as well as the option to display a buffer
list.
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Tools
Perform various actions designed to automate software development and similar
technical work, such as searching through many files, compiling a program, and
comparing or merging two or three files.
Help
Access to Emacs Info.
There are two ways of selecting an item from a pull-down menu:
• Select an item in the menu bar by moving the cursor over it and click the left mousebutton. Then move the cursor over the menu item you want to choose and click left
again.
• Select an item in the menu bar by moving the cursor over it and click and hold the left
mouse-button. With the mouse-button depressed, move the cursor over the menu item
you want, then release it to make your selection.
If a command in the pull-down menu is not applicable in a given situation, the command
is disabled and its name appears faded. You cannot invoke items that are faded. For
example, many commands on the Edit menu appear faded until you select text on which
they are to operate; after you select a block of text, edit commands are enabled. See
Section 9.2 [Mouse Selection], page 76, for information on using the mouse to select text.
See Section 10.3 [Using X Selections], page 83, for related information.
There are also M-x equivalents for each menu item. To find the equivalent for any
left-button menu item, do the following:
1. Type C-h k to get the Describe Key prompt.
2. Select the menu item and click.
Emacs displays the function associated with the menu item in a separate window, usually
together with some documentation.
2.4.1 The File Menu
The File menu bar item contains the items New Frame, Open File..., Save Buffer, Save
Buffer As..., Revert Buffer, Print Buffer, Delete Frame, Kill Buffer and Exit Emacs on the
pull-down menu. If you select a menu item, Emacs executes the equivalent command.
Open File, New Frame...
Prompts you for a filename and loads that file into a new buffer in a new Emacs
frame, that is, a new X window running under the same Emacs process. You
can remove the frame using the Delete Frame menu item. When you remove
the last frame, you exit Emacs and are prompted for confirmation.
Open File...
Prompts you for a filename and loads that file into a new buffer. Open File...
is equivalent to the Emacs command find-file (C-x C-f).
Insert File...
Prompts you for a filename and inserts the contents of that file into the current buffer. The file associated with the current buffer is not changed by this
command. This is equivalent to the Emacs command insert-file (C-x i).
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Save Buffer
Writes and saves the current Emacs buffer as the latest version of the current
visited file. Save Buffer is equivalent to the Emacs command save-buffer (C-x
C-s).
Save Buffer As...
Writes and saves the current Emacs buffer to the filename you specify. Save
Buffer As... is equivalent to the Emacs command write-file (C-x C-w).
Revert Buffer
Restores the last saved version of the file to the current buffer. When you edit
a buffer containing a text file, you must save the buffer before your changes
become effective. Use Revert Buffer if you do not want to keep the changes
you have made in the buffer. Revert Buffer is equivalent to the Emacs command
revert-file (M-x revert-buffer).
Kill Buffer
Kills the current buffer, prompting you first if there are unsaved changes. This
is roughly equivalent to the Emacs command kill-buffer (C-x k), except that
kill-buffer prompts for the name of a buffer to kill.
Print Buffer
Prints a hardcopy of the current buffer. Equivalent to the Emacs command
print-buffer (M-x print-buffer).
New Frame
Creates a new Emacs frame displaying the *scratch* buffer. This is like the
Open File, New Frame... menu item, except that it does not prompt for or load
a file.
Delete Frame
Allows you to close all but one of the frames created by New Frame. If you
created several Emacs frames belonging to the same Emacs process, you can
close all but one of them. When you attempt to close the last frame, Emacs
informs you that you are attempting to delete the last frame. You have to
choose Exit Emacs for that.
Split Frame
Divides the current window on the current frame into two equal-sized windows,
both displaying the same buffer. Equivalent to the Emacs command splitwindow-vertically (C-x 2).
Un-split (Keep This)
If the frame is divided into multiple windows, this removes all windows other
than the selected one. Equivalent to the Emacs command delete-otherwindows (C-x 1).
Un-split (Keep Others)
If the frame is divided into multiple windows, this removes the selected window
from the frame, giving the space back to one of the other windows. Equivalent
to the Emacs command delete-window (C-x 0).
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Exit Emacs
Shuts down (kills) the Emacs process. Equivalent to the Emacs command savebuffers-kill-emacs (C-x C-c). Before killing the Emacs process, the system
asks which unsaved buffers to save by going through the list of all buffers in
that Emacs process.
2.4.2 The Edit Menu
The Edit pull-down menu contains the Undo, Cut, Copy, Paste, and Clear menu items.
When you select a menu item, Emacs executes the equivalent command. Most commands on
the Edit menu work on a block of text, the X selection. They appear faded until you select
a block of text (activate a region) with the mouse. See Section 10.3 [Using X Selections],
page 83, see Section 10.1 [Killing], page 79, and see Section 10.2 [Yanking], page 81 for more
information.
Undo
Undoes the previous command. Undo is equivalent to the Emacs command
undo (C-x u).
Cut
Removes the selected text block from the current buffer, makes it the X clipboard selection, and places it in the kill ring. Before executing this command,
you have to select a region using Emacs region selection commands or with the
mouse.
Copy
Makes a selected text block the X clipboard selection, and places it in the kill
ring. You can select text using one of the Emacs region selection commands or
by selecting a text region with the mouse.
Paste
Inserts the current value of the X clipboard selection in the current buffer. Note
that this is not necessarily the same as the Emacs yank command, because the
Emacs kill ring and the X clipboard selection are not the same thing. You
can paste in text you have placed in the clipboard using Copy or Cut. You
can also use Paste to insert text that was pasted into the clipboard from other
applications.
Clear
Removes the selected text block from the current buffer but does not place it
in the kill ring or the X clipboard selection.
Start Macro Recording
After selecting this, Emacs will remember every keystroke you type until End
Macro Recording is selected. This is the same as the Emacs command startkbd-macro (C-x ().
End Macro Recording
Selecting this tells emacs to stop remembering your keystrokes. This is the
same as the Emacs command end-kbd-macro (C-x )).
Execute Last Macro
Selecting this item will cause emacs to re-interpret all of the keystrokes which
were saved between selections of the Start Macro Recording and End Macro
Recording menu items. This is the same as the Emacs command call-lastkbd-macro (C-x e).
Chapter 2: Keystrokes, Key Sequences, and Key Bindings
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2.4.3 The Apps Menu
The Apps pull-down menu contains the Read Mail (VM)..., Read Mail (MH)..., Send
Mail..., Usenet News, Browse the Web, Gopher, Spell-Check Buffer and Emulate VI menu
items, and the Calendar and Games sub-menus. When you select a menu item, Emacs
executes the equivalent command. For some of the menu items, there are sub-menus which
you will need to select.
2.4.4 The Options Menu
The Options pull-down menu contains the Read Only, Case Sensitive Search, Overstrike,
Auto Delete Selection, Teach Extended Commands, Syntax Highlighting, Paren Highlighting, Font, Size, Weight, Buffers Menu Length..., Buffers Sub-Menus and Save Options menu
items. When you select a menu item, Emacs executes the equivalent command. For some
of the menu items, there are sub-menus which you will need to select.
Read Only
Selecting this item will cause the buffer to visit the file in a read-only mode.
Changes to the file will not be allowed. This is equivalent to the Emacs command toggle-read-only (C-x C-q).
Case Sensitive Search
Selecting this item will cause searches to be case-sensitive. If its not selected
then searches will ignore case. This option is local to the buffer.
Overstrike After selecting this item, when you type letters they will replace existing text
on a one-to-one basis, rather than pushing it to the right. At the end of a line,
such characters extend the line. Before a tab, such characters insert until the
tab is filled in. This is the same as Emacs command quoted-insert (C-q).
Auto Delete Selection
Selecting this item will cause automatic deletion of the selected region. The
typed text will replace the selection if the selection is active (i.e. if its highlighted). If the option is not selected then the typed text is just inserted at the
point.
Teach Extended Commands
After you select this item, any time you execute a command with M-xwhich
has a shorter keybinding, you will be shown the alternate binding before the
command executes.
Syntax Highlighting
You can customize your init file to include the font-lock mode so that when you
select this item, the comments will be displayed in one face, strings in another,
reserved words in another, and so on. See Section 29.6 [Init File], page 311.
When Fonts is selected, different parts of the program will appear in different
Fonts. When Colors is selected, then the program will be displayed in different
colors. Selecting None causes the program to appear in just one Font and Color.
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Selecting Less resets the Fonts and Colors to a fast, minimal set of decorations.
Selecting More resets the Fonts and Colors to a larger set of decorations. For
example, if Less is selected (which is the default setting) then you might have
all comments in green color. Whereas, if More is selected then a function name
in the comments themselves might appear in a different Color or Font.
Paren Highlighting
After selecting Blink from this item, if you place the cursor on a parenthesis,
the matching parenthesis will blink. If you select Highlight and place the cursor on a parenthesis, the whole expression of the parenthesis under the cursor
will be highlighted. Selecting None will turn off the options (regarding Paren
Highlighting) which you had selected earlier.
Font
You can select any Font for your program by choosing from one of the available
Fonts.
Size
You can select any size ranging from 2 to 24 by selecting the appropriate option.
Weight
You can choose either Bold or Medium for the weight.
Buffers Menu Length...
Prompts you for the number of buffers to display. Then it will display that
number of most recently selected buffers.
Buffers Sub-Menus
After selection of this item the Buffers menu will contain several commands,
as submenus of each buffer line. If this item is unselected, then there are no
submenus for each buffer line, the only command available will be selecting that
buffer.
Save Options
Selecting this item will save the current settings of your Options menu to your
init file. See Section 29.6 [Init File], page 311.
2.4.5 The Buffers Menu
The Buffers menu provides a selection of up to ten buffers and the item List All Buffers,
which provides a Buffer List. See Section 16.2 [List Buffers], page 140, for more information.
2.4.6 The Tools Menu
The Tools pull-down menu contains the Grep..., Compile..., Shell Command..., Shell
Command on Region..., Debug(GDB)... and Debug(DBX)... menu items, and the Compare, Merge, Apply Patch and Tags sub-menus. When you select a menu item, Emacs
executes the equivalent command. For some of the menu items, there are sub-menus which
you will need to select.
Chapter 2: Keystrokes, Key Sequences, and Key Bindings
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2.4.7 The Help Menu
The Help Menu gives you access to Emacs Info and provides a menu equivalent for each of
the choices you have when using C-h. See Chapter 8 [Help], page 67, for more information.
The Help menu also gives access to UNIX online manual pages via the UNIX Manual
Page option.
2.4.8 Customizing XEmacs Menus
You can customize any of the pull-down menus by adding or removing menu items and
disabling or enabling existing menu items.
The following functions are available:
add-menu: (menu-path menu-name menu-items &optional before)
Add a menu to the menu bar or one of its submenus.
add-menu-item: (menu-path item-name function
enabled-p &optional before) Add a menu item to a menu, creating the menu
first if necessary.
delete-menu-item: (path)
Remove the menu item defined by path from the menu hierarchy.
disable-menu-item: (path)
Disable the specified menu item.
enable-menu-item: (path)
Enable the specified previously disabled menu item.
relabel-menu-item: (path new-name)
Change the string of the menu item specified by path to new-name.
Use the function add-menu to add a new menu or submenu. If a menu or submenu of
the given name exists already, it is changed.
menu-path identifies the menu under which the new menu should be inserted. It is a list
of strings; for example, ("File") names the top-level File menu. ("File" "Foo") names
a hypothetical submenu of File. If menu-path is nil, the menu is added to the menu bar
itself.
menu-name is the string naming the menu to be added.
menu-items is a list of menu item descriptions. Each menu item should be a vector of
three elements:
• A string, which is the name of the menu item
• A symbol naming a command, or a form to evaluate
• t or nil to indicate whether the item is selectable
The optional argument before is the name of the menu before which the new menu or
submenu should be added. If the menu is already present, it is not moved.
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The function add-menu-item adds a menu item to the specified menu, creating the menu
first if necessary. If the named item already exists, the menu remains unchanged.
menu-path identifies the menu into which the new menu item should be inserted. It is
a list of strings; for example, ("File") names the top-level File menu. ("File" "Foo")
names a hypothetical submenu of File.
item-name is the string naming the menu item to add.
function is the command to invoke when this menu item is selected. If it is a symbol,
it is invoked with call-interactively, in the same way that functions bound to keys are
invoked. If it is a list, the list is simply evaluated.
enabled-p controls whether the item is selectable or not. It should be t, nil, or a form
to evaluate to decide. This form will be evaluated just before the menu is displayed, and
the menu item will be selectable if that form returns non-nil.
For example, to make the rename-file command available from the File menu, use the
following code:
(add-menu-item ’("File") "Rename File" ’rename-file t)
To add a submenu of file management commands using a File Management item, use
the following code:
(add-menu-item ’("File" "File Management") "Copy File" ’copy-file t)
(add-menu-item ’("File" "File Management") "Delete File" ’delete-file t)
(add-menu-item ’("File" "File Management") "Rename File" ’rename-file t)
The optional before argument is the name of a menu item before which the new item
should be added. If the item is already present, it is not moved.
To remove a specified menu item from the menu hierarchy, use delete-menu-item.
path is a list of strings that identify the position of the menu item in the menu hierarchy.
("File" "Save") means the menu item called Save under the top level File menu. ("Menu"
"Foo" "Item") means the menu item called Item under the Foo submenu of Menu.
To disable a menu item, use disable-menu-item. The disabled menu item is grayed
and can no longer be selected. To make the item selectable again, use enable-menu-item.
disable-menu-item and enable-menu-item both have the argument path.
To change the string of the specified menu item, use relabel-menu-item. This function
also takes the argument path.
new-name is the string to which the menu item will be changed.
Chapter 3: Entering and Exiting Emacs
37
3 Entering and Exiting Emacs
The usual way to invoke XEmacs is to type xemacs hRETi at the shell. XEmacs clears the
screen and then displays an initial advisory message and copyright notice. You can begin
typing XEmacs commands immediately afterward.
Some operating systems insist on discarding all type-ahead when XEmacs starts up; they
give XEmacs no way to prevent this. Therefore, it is advisable to wait until XEmacs clears
the screen before typing your first editing command.
If you run XEmacs from a shell window under the X Window System, run it in the
background with ‘xemacs&’. This way, XEmacs does not tie up the shell window, so you
can use that to run other shell commands while XEmacs operates its own X windows. You
can begin typing XEmacs commands as soon as you direct your keyboard input to the
XEmacs frame.
Before Emacs reads the first command, you have not had a chance to give a command to
specify a file to edit. Since Emacs must always have a current buffer for editing, it presents
a buffer, by default, a buffer named ‘*scratch*’. The buffer is in Lisp Interaction mode;
you can use it to type Lisp expressions and evaluate them, or you can ignore that capability
and simply doodle. (You can specify a different major mode for this buffer by setting the
variable initial-major-mode in your init file. See Section 29.6 [Init File], page 311.)
It is possible to specify files to be visited, Lisp files to be loaded, and functions to be
called, by giving Emacs arguments in the shell command line. See Section 3.2 [Command
Switches], page 39. But we don’t recommend doing this. The feature exists mainly for
compatibility with other editors.
Many other editors are designed to be started afresh each time you want to edit. You
edit one file and then exit the editor. The next time you want to edit either another file or
the same one, you must run the editor again. With these editors, it makes sense to use a
command-line argument to say which file to edit.
But starting a new Emacs each time you want to edit a different file does not make
sense. For one thing, this would be annoyingly slow. For another, this would fail to take
advantage of Emacs’s ability to visit more than one file in a single editing session. And it
would lose the other accumulated context, such as registers, undo history, and the mark
ring.
The recommended way to use XEmacs is to start it only once, just after you log in,
and do all your editing in the same Emacs session. Each time you want to edit a different
file, you visit it with the existing Emacs, which eventually comes to have many files in it
ready for editing. Usually you do not kill the Emacs until you are about to log out. See
Chapter 15 [Files], page 115, for more information on visiting more than one file.
3.1 Exiting Emacs
There are two commands for exiting Emacs because there are two kinds of exiting:
suspending Emacs and killing Emacs.
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Suspending means stopping Emacs temporarily and returning control to its parent process (usually a shell), allowing you to resume editing later in the same Emacs job, with the
same buffers, same kill ring, same undo history, and so on. This is the usual way to exit.
Killing Emacs means destroying the Emacs job. You can run Emacs again later, but
you will get a fresh Emacs; there is no way to resume the same editing session after it has
been killed.
C-z
Suspend Emacs or iconify a frame (suspend-emacs-or-iconify-frame). If
used under the X window system, shrink the X window containing the Emacs
frame to an icon (see below).
C-x C-c
Kill Emacs (save-buffers-kill-emacs).
If you use XEmacs under the X window system, C-z shrinks the X window containing
the Emacs frame to an icon. The Emacs process is stopped temporarily, and control is
returned to the window manager. If more than one frame is associated with the Emacs
process, only the frame from which you used C-z is iconified.
To activate the "suspended" Emacs, use the appropriate window manager mouse gestures. Usually left-clicking on the icon reactivates and reopens the X window containing
the Emacs frame, but the window manager you use determines what exactly happens. To
actually kill the Emacs process, use C-x C-c or the Exit XEmacs item on the File menu.
To suspend Emacs, type C-z (suspend-emacs). This takes you back to the shell from
which you invoked Emacs. You can resume Emacs with the shell command ‘%xemacs’ in
most common shells.
On systems that do not support suspending programs, C-z starts an inferior shell that
communicates directly with the terminal. Emacs waits until you exit the subshell. (The
way to do that is probably with C-d or ‘exit’, but it depends on which shell you use.) The
only way on these systems to get back to the shell from which Emacs was run (to log out,
for example) is to kill Emacs.
Suspending also fails if you run Emacs under a shell that doesn’t support suspending
programs, even if the system itself does support it. In such a case, you can set the variable
cannot-suspend to a non-nil value to force C-z to start an inferior shell. (One might also
describe Emacs’s parent shell as “inferior” for failing to support job control properly, but
that is a matter of taste.)
When Emacs communicates directly with an X server and creates its own dedicated
X windows, C-z has a different meaning. Suspending an applications that uses its own
X windows is not meaningful or useful. Instead, C-z runs the command iconify-ordeiconify-frame, which temporarily closes up the selected Emacs frame. The way to get
back to a shell window is with the window manager.
To kill Emacs, type C-x C-c (save-buffers-kill-emacs). A two-character key is used
for this to make it harder to type. Selecting the Exit XEmacs option of the File menu is an
alternate way of issuing the command.
Unless a numeric argument is used, this command first offers to save any modified filevisiting buffers. If you do not save all buffers, you are asked for reconfirmation with yes
before killing Emacs, since any changes not saved will be lost forever. If any subprocesses
are still running, C-x C-c asks you to confirm killing them, since killing Emacs will kill the
subprocesses immediately.
Chapter 3: Entering and Exiting Emacs
39
There is no way to restart an Emacs session once you have killed it. You can, however,
arrange for Emacs to record certain session information, such as which files are visited,
when you kill it, so that the next time you restart Emacs it will try to visit the same files
and so on.
The operating system usually listens for certain special characters whose meaning is to
kill or suspend the program you are running. This operating system feature is turned off
while you are in Emacs. The meanings of C-z and C-x C-c as keys in Emacs were inspired
by the use of C-z and C-c on several operating systems as the characters for stopping or
killing a program, but that is their only relationship with the operating system. You can
customize these keys to run any commands of your choice (see Section 29.4.1 [Keymaps],
page 303).
3.2 Command Line Switches and Arguments
XEmacs supports command line arguments you can use to request various actions when
invoking Emacs. The commands are for compatibility with other editors and for sophisticated activities. If you are using XEmacs under the X window system, you can also use a
number of standard Xt command line arguments. Command line arguments are not usually
needed for editing with Emacs; new users can skip this section.
Many editors are designed to be started afresh each time you want to edit. You start the
editor to edit one file; then exit the editor. The next time you want to edit either another
file or the same one, you start the editor again. Under these circumstances, it makes sense
to use a command line argument to say which file to edit.
The recommended way to use XEmacs is to start it only once, just after you log in, and
do all your editing in the same Emacs process. Each time you want to edit a file, you visit
it using the existing Emacs. Emacs creates a new buffer for each file, and (unless you kill
some of the buffers) Emacs eventually has many files in it ready for editing. Usually you
do not kill the Emacs process until you are about to log out. Since you usually read files
by typing commands to Emacs, command line arguments for specifying a file when Emacs
is started are seldom needed.
Emacs accepts command-line arguments that specify files to visit, functions to call, and
other activities and operating modes. If you are running XEmacs under the X window
system, a number of standard Xt command line arguments are available, as well as a few
X parameters that are XEmacs-specific.
Options with long names with a single initial hyphen are also recognized with the GNU
double initial hyphen syntax. (The reverse is not true.)
The following subsections list:
• Command line arguments that you can always use
• Command line arguments that have to appear at the beginning of the argument list
• Command line arguments that are only relevant if you are running XEmacs under X
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3.2.1 Command Line Arguments for Any Position
Command line arguments are processed in the order they appear on the command line;
however, certain arguments (the ones in the second table) must be at the front of the list if
they are used.
Here are the arguments allowed:
‘file’
Visit file using find-file. See Section 15.2 [Visiting], page 116.
‘+linenum file’
Visit file using find-file, then go to line number linenum in it.
‘-load file’
‘-l file’
Load a file file of Lisp code with the function load. See Section 23.3 [Lisp
Libraries], page 211.
‘-funcall function’
‘-f function’
Call Lisp function function with no arguments.
‘-eval function’
Interpret the next argument as a Lisp expression, and evaluate it. You must be
very careful of the shell quoting here.
‘-insert file’
‘-i file’
Insert the contents of file into the current buffer. This is like what M-x insertbuffer does; See Section 15.10 [Misc File Ops], page 137.
‘-kill’
Exit from Emacs without asking for confirmation. Always the last argument
processed, no matter where it appears in the command line.
‘-version’
‘-V’
Prints version information. This implies ‘-batch’.
% xemacs -version
XEmacs 19.13 of Mon Aug 21 1995 on willow (usg-unix-v) [formerly Lucid Ema
‘-help’
Prints a summary of command-line options and then exits.
3.2.2 Command Line Arguments (Beginning of Line Only)
The following arguments are recognized only at the beginning of the command line. If
more than one of them appears, they must appear in the order in which they appear in this
table.
‘--show-dump-id’
‘-sd’
Print the ID for the new portable dumper’s dump file on the terminal and exit.
(Prints an error message and exits if XEmacs was not configured ‘--pdump’.)
‘--no-dump-file’
‘-nd’
Don’t load the dump file. Roughly equivalent to old temacs. (Ignored if XEmacs
was not configured ‘--pdump’.)
‘--terminal file’
‘-t file’
Use file instead of the terminal for input and output. This implies the ‘-nw’
option, documented below.
Chapter 3: Entering and Exiting Emacs
‘-batch’
41
Run Emacs in batch mode, which means that the text being edited is not
displayed and the standard Unix interrupt characters such as C-z and C-c
continue to have their normal effect. Emacs in batch mode outputs to stderr
only what would normally be printed in the echo area under program control.
Batch mode is used for running programs written in Emacs Lisp from shell
scripts, makefiles, and so on. Normally the ‘-l’ switch or ‘-f’ switch will be
used as well, to invoke a Lisp program to do the batch processing.
‘-batch’ implies ‘-q’ (do not load an init file). It also causes Emacs to kill itself
after all command switches have been processed. In addition, auto-saving is
not done except in buffers for which it has been explicitly requested.
‘--no-windows’
‘-nw’
Start up XEmacs in TTY mode (using the TTY XEmacs was started from),
rather than trying to connect to an X display. Note that this happens automatically if the ‘DISPLAY’ environment variable is not set.
‘-debug-init’
Enter the debugger if an error in the init file occurs.
‘-debug-paths’
Displays information on how XEmacs constructs the various paths into its hierarchy on startup. (See also see Section 3.3 [Startup Paths], page 43.)
‘-unmapped’
Do not map the initial frame. This is useful if you want to start up XEmacs as
a server (e.g. for gnuserv screens or external client widgets).
‘-no-init-file’
‘-q’
Do not load your Emacs init file. See Section 29.6 [Init File], page 311.
‘-no-site-file’
Do not load the site-specific init file ‘lisp/site-start.el’.
‘-no-autoloads’
Do not load global symbol files (‘auto-autoloads’) at startup. This implies
‘-vanilla’.
‘-no-early-packages’
Do not process early packages. (For more information on startup issues concerning the package system, See Section 3.3 [Startup Paths], page 43.)
‘-vanilla’
This is equivalent to ‘-q -no-site-file -no-early-packages’.
‘-user-init-file file’
Load file as your Emacs init file instead of ‘~/.xemacs/init.el’/‘~/.emacs’.
‘-user-init-directory directory’
Use directory as the location of your early package hierarchies and the various
user-specific initialization files.
‘-user user’
‘-u user’ Equivalent to ‘-user-init-file ~user/.xemacs/init.el -user-init-directory
~user/.xemacs’, or ‘-user-init-file ~user/.emacs -user-init-directory
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~user/.xemacs’, whichever init file comes first. See Section 29.6 [Init File],
page 311.
Note that the init file can get access to the command line argument values as the elements
of a list in the variable command-line-args. (The arguments in the second table above
will already have been processed and will not be in the list.) The init file can override the
normal processing of the other arguments by setting this variable.
One way to use command switches is to visit many files automatically:
xemacs *.c
passes each .c file as a separate argument to Emacs, so that Emacs visits each file (see
Section 15.2 [Visiting], page 116).
Here is an advanced example that assumes you have a Lisp program file called
‘hack-c-program.el’ which, when loaded, performs some useful operation on the current buffer, expected to be a C program.
xemacs -batch foo.c -l hack-c-program -f save-buffer -kill > log
Here Emacs is told to visit ‘foo.c’, load ‘hack-c-program.el’ (which makes changes in
the visited file), save ‘foo.c’ (note that save-buffer is the function that C-x C-s is bound
to), and then exit to the shell from which the command was executed. ‘-batch’ guarantees
there will be no problem redirecting output to ‘log’, because Emacs will not assume that
it has a display terminal to work with.
3.2.3 Command Line Arguments (for XEmacs Under X)
If you are running XEmacs under X, a number of options are available to control color,
border, and window title and icon name:
‘-title title’
‘-wn title’
‘-T title’
Use title as the window title. This sets the frame-title-format variable,
which controls the title of the X window corresponding to the selected frame.
This is the same format as mode-line-format.
‘-iconname title’
‘-in title’ Use title as the icon name. This sets the frame-icon-title-format variable,
which controls the title of the icon corresponding to the selected frame.
‘-mc color’
Use color as the mouse color.
‘-cr color’
Use color as the text-cursor foreground color.
‘-private’
Install a private colormap for XEmacs.
In addition, XEmacs allows you to use a number of standard Xt command line arguments.
‘-background color’
‘-bg color’
Use color as the background color.
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‘-bordercolor color’
‘-bd color’
Use color as the border color.
‘-borderwidth width’
‘-bw width’
Use width as the border width.
‘-display display’
‘-d display’
When running under the X window system, create the window containing the
Emacs frame on the display named display.
‘-foreground color’
‘-fg color’
Use color as the foreground color.
‘-font name’
‘-fn name’
Use name as the default font.
‘-geometry spec’
‘-geom spec’
‘-g spec’ Use the geometry (window size and/or position) specified by spec.
‘-iconic’
Start up iconified.
‘-rv’
Bring up Emacs in reverse video.
‘-name name’
Use the resource manager resources specified by name. The default is to use
the name of the program (argv[0]) as the resource manager name.
‘-xrm’
Read something into the resource database for this invocation of Emacs only.
3.3 How XEmacs finds Directories and Files
XEmacs deals with a multitude of files during operation. These files are spread over many
directories, and XEmacs determines the location of most of these directories at startup and
organizes them into various paths. (A path, for the purposes of this section, is simply a list
of directories which XEmacs searches successively in order to locate a file.)
3.3.1 XEmacs Directory Hierarchies
Many of the files XEmacs looks for are located within the XEmacs installation itself.
However, there are several views of what actually constitutes the "XEmacs installation":
XEmacs may be run from the compilation directory, it may be installed into arbitrary
directories, spread over several directories unrelated to each other. Moreover, it may subsequently be moved to a different place. (This last case is not as uncommon as it sounds.
Binary kits work this way.) Consequently, XEmacs has quite complex procedures in place
to find directories, no matter where they may be hidden.
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XEmacs will always respect directory options passed to configure. However, if it cannot
locate a directory at the configured place, it will initiate a search for the directory in any
of a number of hierarchies rooted under a directory which XEmacs assumes contain parts
of the XEmacs installation; it may locate several such hierarchies and search across them.
(Typically, there are just one or two hierarchies: the hierarchy where XEmacs was or will
be installed, and the one where it is being built.) Such a directory containing a hierarchy
is called a root. Whenever this section refers to a directory using the shorthand <root>, it
means that XEmacs searches for it under all hierarchies XEmacs was able to scrounge up.
In a running XEmacs, the hierarchy roots are stored in the variable emacs-roots.
3.3.2 Package Hierarchies
Many relevant directories and files XEmacs uses are actually not part of the core installation. They are part of any of the many packages usually installed on top of an XEmacs
installation. (See Section 23.8 [Packages], page 217.) Hence, they play a prominent role in
the various paths XEmacs sets up.
XEmacs locates packages in any of a number of package hierarchies. Package hierarchies
fall into three groups: early, late, and last, according to the relative location at which they
show up in the various XEmacs paths. Early package hierarchies are at the very front, late
ones somewhere in the middle, and last hierarchies are (you guessed it) last.
By default, XEmacs expects an early package hierarchy in the subdirectory ‘.xemacs/xemacs-packages’
of the user’s home directory.
Moreover, XEmacs expects late hierarchies in the subdirectories ‘site-packages’,
‘mule-packages’, and ‘xemacs-packages’ (in that order) of the ‘<root>/lib/xemacs’
subdirectory of one of the installation hierarchies. (If you run in-place, these are direct
subdirectories of the build directory.) Furthermore, XEmacs will also search these subdirectories in the ‘<root>/lib/xemacs-<VERSION>’ subdirectory and prefer directories found
there.
By default, XEmacs does not have a pre-configured last package hierarchy. Last hierarchies are primarily for using package hierarchies of outdated versions of XEmacs as
a fallback option. For example, it is possible to run XEmacs 21 with the 20.4 package
hierarchy as a last hierarchy.
It is possible to specify at configure-time the location of the various package hierarchies
with the --package-path option to configure. The early, late, and last components of
the package path are separated by double instead of single colons. If all three components
are present, they locate the early, late, and last package hierarchies respectively. If two
components are present, they locate the early and late hierarchies. If only one component
is present, it locates the late hierarchy. At run time, the package path may also be specified
via the EMACSPACKAGEPATH environment variable.
An XEmacs package is laid out just like a normal installed XEmacs lisp directory. It may
have ‘lisp’, ‘etc’, ‘info’, and ‘lib-src’ subdirectories. XEmacs adds these at appropriate
places within the various system-wide paths.
There may be any number of package hierarchy directories.
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3.3.3 Directories and Paths
Here is a list of the various directories and paths XEmacs tries to locate during startup.
XEmacs distinguishes between directories and paths specific to version, site, and architecture when looking for them.
version-specific
directories are specific to the version of XEmacs they belong to and typically
reside under ‘<root>/lib/xemacs-<VERSION>’.
site-specific
directories are independent of the version of XEmacs they belong to and typically reside under ‘<root>/lib/xemacs’
architecture-specific
directories are specific both to the version of XEmacs and the architecture it
runs on and typically reside under ‘<root>/lib/xemacs-<VERSION>/<ARCHITECTURE>’.
During installation, all of these directories may also reside directly under ‘<root>’, because that is where they are in the XEmacs tarball.
If XEmacs runs with the -debug-paths option (see Section 3.2 [Command Switches],
page 39), it will print the values of these variables, hopefully aiding in debugging any
problems which come up.
lisp-directory
Contains the version-specific location of the Lisp files that come with the core
distribution of XEmacs. XEmacs will search it recursively to a depth of 1 when
setting up load-path.
load-path
Is where XEmacs searches for XEmacs Lisp files with commands like loadlibrary. It contains the package lisp directories (see further down) and the
version-specific core Lisp directories. If the environment variable EMACSLOADPATH
is set at startup, its directories are prepended to load-path.
Info-directory-list
Contains the location of info files. (See hundefinedi [(info)], page hundefinedi.)
It contains the package info directories and the version-specific core documentation. Moreover, XEmacs will add ‘/usr/info’, ‘/usr/local/info’ as well as
the directories of the environment variable INFOPATH to Info-directory-list.
exec-directory
Is the directory of architecture-dependent files that come with XEmacs, especially executable programs intended for XEmacs to invoke.
exec-path
Is the path for executables which XEmacs may want to start. It contains the
package executable paths as well as exec-directory, and the directories of the
environment variables PATH and EMACSPATH.
doc-directory
Is the directory containing the architecture-specific ‘DOC’ file that contains documentation for XEmacs’ commands.
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data-directory
Is the version-specific directory that contains core data files XEmacs uses. It
may be initialized from the EMACSDATA environment variable.
data-directory-list
Is the path where XEmacs looks for data files. It contains package data directories as well as data-directory.
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4 Basic Editing Commands
We now give the basics of how to enter text, make corrections, and save the text in a
file. If this material is new to you, you might learn it more easily by running the Emacs
learn-by-doing tutorial. To use the tutorial, run Emacs and type Control-h t (help-withtutorial). You can also use Tutorials item from the Help menu.
XEmacs comes with many translations of tutorial. If your XEmacs is with MULE and
you set up language environment correctly, XEmacs chooses right tutorial when available
(see Section 18.2 [Language Environments], page 152). If you want specific translation, give
C-h t a prefix argument, like C-u C-h t.
To clear the screen and redisplay, type C-l (recenter).
4.1 Inserting Text
To insert printing characters into the text you are editing, just type them. This inserts
the characters you type into the buffer at the cursor (that is, at point; see Section 1.1
[Point], page 14). The cursor moves forward, and any text after the cursor moves forward
too. If the text in the buffer is ‘FOOBAR’, with the cursor before the ‘B’, then if you type XX,
you get ‘FOOXXBAR’, with the cursor still before the ‘B’.
To delete text you have just inserted, use hBSi. hBSi deletes the character before the cursor
(not the one that the cursor is on top of or under; that is the character after the cursor).
The cursor and all characters after it move backwards. Therefore, if you type a printing
character and then type hBSi, they cancel out.
To end a line and start typing a new one, type hRETi. This inserts a newline character
in the buffer. If point is in the middle of a line, hRETi splits the line. Typing hDELi when the
cursor is at the beginning of a line deletes the preceding newline, thus joining the line with
the preceding line.
Emacs can split lines automatically when they become too long, if you turn on a special
minor mode called Auto Fill mode. See Section 21.6 [Filling], page 177, for how to use Auto
Fill mode.
If you prefer to have text characters replace (overwrite) existing text rather than shove
it to the right, you can enable Overwrite mode, a minor mode. See Section 29.1 [Minor
Modes], page 291.
Direct insertion works for printing characters and hSPCi, but other characters act as
editing commands and do not insert themselves. If you need to insert a control character
or a character whose code is above 200 octal, you must quote it by typing the character
Control-q (quoted-insert) first. (This character’s name is normally written C-q for
short.) There are two ways to use C-q:
• C-q followed by any non-graphic character (even C-g) inserts that character.
• C-q followed by a sequence of octal digits inserts the character with the specified octal
character code. You can use any number of octal digits; any non-digit terminates
the sequence. If the terminating character is hRETi, it serves only to terminate the
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sequence; any other non-digit is itself used as input after terminating the sequence.
(The use of octal sequences is disabled in ordinary non-binary Overwrite mode, to give
you a convenient way to insert a digit instead of overwriting with it.)
A numeric argument to C-q specifies how many copies of the quoted character should be
inserted (see Section 4.9 [Arguments], page 53).
Customization information: hDELi, in most modes, runs the command backward-orforward-delete-char; hRETi runs the command newline, and self-inserting printing characters run the command self-insert, which inserts whatever character was typed to invoke
it. Some major modes rebind hDELi to other commands.
4.2 Changing the Location of Point
To do more than insert characters, you have to know how to move point (see Section 1.1
[Point], page 14). The simplest way to do this is with arrow keys, or by clicking the left
mouse button where you want to move to.
NOTE: Many of the following commands have two versions, one that uses the function
keys (e.g. hLEFTi or hENDi) and one that doesn’t. The former versions may only be available
on X terminals (i.e. not on TTY’s), but the latter are available on all terminals.
C-a
HOME
Move to the beginning of the line (beginning-of-line).
C-e
END
Move to the end of the line (end-of-line).
C-f
RIGHT
Move forward one character (forward-char).
C-b
LEFT
Move backward one character (backward-char).
M-f
C-RIGHT
Move forward one word (forward-word).
M-b
C-LEFT
Move backward one word (backward-word).
C-n
DOWN
Move down one line, vertically (next-line). This command attempts to keep
the horizontal position unchanged, so if you start in the middle of one line, you
end in the middle of the next. When on the last line of text, C-n creates a new
line and moves onto it.
C-p
UP
Move up one line, vertically (previous-line).
C-v
PGDN
Move down one page, vertically (scroll-up).
M-v
PGUP
Move up one page, vertically (scroll-down).
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C-l
Clear the frame and reprint everything (recenter). Text moves on the frame
to bring point to the center of the window.
M-r
Move point to left margin, vertically centered in the window (move-to-windowline). Text does not move on the screen.
A numeric argument says which screen line to place point on. It counts screen
lines down from the top of the window (zero for the top line). A negative
argument counts lines from the bottom (−1 for the bottom line).
C-t
Transpose two characters, the ones before and after the cursor (transposechars).
M-<
C-HOME
M->
C-END
Move to the top of the buffer (beginning-of-buffer). With numeric argument
n, move to n/10 of the way from the top. See Section 4.9 [Arguments], page 53,
for more information on numeric arguments.
Move to the end of the buffer (end-of-buffer).
M-x goto-char
Read a number n and move point to buffer position n. Position 1 is the beginning of the buffer.
M-g
Read a number n and move point to line number n (goto-line). Line 1 is the
beginning of the buffer.
M-x set-goal-column
Use the current column of point as the semi-permanent goal column for C-n
and C-p (set-goal-column). Henceforth, those commands always move to this
column in each line moved into, or as close as possible given the contents of the
line. This goal column remains in effect until canceled.
C-u M-x set-goal-column
Cancel the goal column. Henceforth, C-n and C-p once again try to avoid
changing the horizontal position, as usual.
If you set the variable track-eol to a non-nil value, then C-n and C-p when at the
end of the starting line move to the end of another line. Normally, track-eol is nil. See
Section 29.2 [Variables], page 291, for how to set variables such as track-eol.
Normally, C-n on the last line of a buffer appends a newline to it. If the variable nextline-add-newlines is nil, then C-n gets an error instead (like C-p on the first line).
4.3 Erasing Text
hDELi
Delete the character before or after point (backward-or-forward-deletechar). You can customize this behavior by setting the variable delete-keydeletes-forward.
C-d
Delete the character after point (delete-char).
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C-k
Kill to the end of the line (kill-line).
M-d
Kill forward to the end of the next word (kill-word).
M-hDELi
Kill back to the beginning of the previous word (backward-kill-word).
You already know about the hDELi key which deletes the character before point (that
is, before the cursor). Another key, Control-d (C-d for short), deletes the character after
point (that is, the character that the cursor is on). This shifts the rest of the text on the
line to the left. If you type C-d at the end of a line, it joins together that line and the next
line.
To erase a larger amount of text, use the C-k key, which kills a line at a time. If you
type C-k at the beginning or middle of a line, it kills all the text up to the end of the line.
If you type C-k at the end of a line, it joins that line and the next line.
See Section 10.1 [Killing], page 79, for more flexible ways of killing text.
4.4 Files
The commands described above are sufficient for creating and altering text in an Emacs
buffer; the more advanced Emacs commands just make things easier. But to keep any text
permanently you must put it in a file. Files are named units of text which are stored by
the operating system for you to retrieve later by name. To look at or use the contents of a
file in any way, including editing the file with Emacs, you must specify the file name.
Consider a file named ‘/usr/rms/foo.c’. To begin editing this file from Emacs, type:
C-x C-f /usr/rms/foo.c hRETi
Here the file name is given as an argument to the command C-x C-f (find-file). That
command uses the minibuffer to read the argument, and you type hRETi to terminate the
argument (see Chapter 6 [Minibuffer], page 57).
You can also use the Open... menu item from the File menu, then type the name of the
file to the prompt.
Emacs obeys the command by visiting the file: creating a buffer, copying the contents
of the file into the buffer, and then displaying the buffer for you to edit. If you alter the
text, you can save the new text in the file by typing C-x C-s (save-buffer) or choosing
Save Buffer from the File menu. This makes the changes permanent by copying the altered
buffer contents back into the file ‘/usr/rms/foo.c’. Until you save, the changes exist only
inside Emacs, and the file ‘foo.c’ is unaltered.
To create a file, visit the file with C-x C-f as if it already existed or choose Open... from
the File menu and provide the name for the new file. Emacs will create an empty buffer in
which you can insert the text you want to put in the file. When you save the buffer with
C-x C-s, or by choosing Save Buffer from the File menu, the file is created.
To learn more about using files, See Chapter 15 [Files], page 115.
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4.5 Help
If you forget what a key does, you can find out with the Help character, which is C-h (or
which is an alias for C-h). Type C-h k followed by the key you want to know about;
for example, C-h k C-n tells you all about what C-n does. C-h is a prefix key; C-h k is just
one of its subcommands (the command describe-key). The other subcommands of C-h
provide different kinds of help. Type C-h twice to get a description of all the help facilities.
See Chapter 8 [Help], page 67.
hF1i,
4.6 Blank Lines
Here are special commands and techniques for putting in and taking out blank lines.
C-o
Insert one or more blank lines after the cursor (open-line).
C-x C-o
Delete all but one of many consecutive blank lines (delete-blank-lines).
When you want to insert a new line of text before an existing line, you can do it by
typing the new line of text, followed by hRETi. However, it may be easier to see what you
are doing if you first make a blank line and then insert the desired text into it. This is easy
to do using the key C-o (open-line), which inserts a newline after point but leaves point
in front of the newline. After C-o, type the text for the new line. C-o F O O has the same
effect as F O O hRETi, except for the final location of point.
You can make several blank lines by typing C-o several times, or by giving it a numeric
argument to tell it how many blank lines to make. See Section 4.9 [Arguments], page 53,
for how. If you have a fill prefix, then C-o command inserts the fill prefix on the new line,
when you use it at the beginning of a line. See Section 21.6.3 [Fill Prefix], page 179.
The easy way to get rid of extra blank lines is with the command C-x C-o (deleteblank-lines). C-x C-o in a run of several blank lines deletes all but one of them. C-x C-o
on a solitary blank line deletes that blank line. When point is on a nonblank line, C-x C-o
deletes any blank lines following that nonblank line.
4.7 Continuation Lines
If you add too many characters to one line without breaking it with hRETi, the line will
grow to occupy two (or more) lines on the screen, with a curved arrow at the extreme right
margin of all but the last of them. The curved arrow says that the following screen line is
not really a distinct line in the text, but just the continuation of a line too long to fit the
screen. Continuation is also called line wrapping.
Sometimes it is nice to have Emacs insert newlines automatically when a line gets too
long. Continuation on the screen does not do that. Use Auto Fill mode (see Section 21.6
[Filling], page 177) if that’s what you want.
Instead of continuation, long lines can be displayed by truncation. This means that all
the characters that do not fit in the width of the frame or window do not appear at all.
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They remain in the buffer, temporarily invisible. Right arrow in the last column (instead
of the curved arrow) inform you that truncation is in effect.
Truncation instead of continuation happens whenever horizontal scrolling is in use, and
optionally in all side-by-side windows (see Chapter 17 [Windows], page 145). You can enable
truncation for a particular buffer by setting the variable truncate-lines to non-nil in
that buffer. (See Section 29.2 [Variables], page 291.) Altering the value of truncate-lines
makes it local to the current buffer; until that time, the default value is in effect. The
default is initially nil. See Section 29.2.4 [Locals], page 298.
See Section 12.4 [Display Vars], page 95, for additional variables that affect how text is
displayed.
4.8 Cursor Position Information
If you are accustomed to other display editors, you may be surprised that Emacs does
not always display the page number or line number of point in the mode line. In Emacs,
this information is only rarely needed, and a number of commands are available to compute
and print it. Since text is stored in a way that makes it difficult to compute the information,
it is not displayed all the time.
M-x what-page
Print page number of point, and line number within page.
M-x what-line
Print line number of point in the buffer.
M-x line-number-mode
Toggle automatic display of current line number.
M-=
Print number of lines and characters in the current region (count-linesregion). See Chapter 9 [Mark], page 73, for information about the region.
C-x =
Print character code of character after point, character position of point, and
column of point (what-cursor-position).
There are several commands for printing line numbers:
• M-x what-line counts lines from the beginning of the file and prints the line number
point is on. The first line of the file is line number 1. You can use these numbers as
arguments to M-x goto-line.
• M-x what-page counts pages from the beginning of the file, and counts lines within the
page, printing both of them. See Section 21.5 [Pages], page 177, for the command C-x
l, which counts the lines in the current page.
• M-= (count-lines-region) prints the number of lines in the region (see Chapter 9
[Mark], page 73). See Section 21.5 [Pages], page 177, for the command C-x l which
counts the lines in the
The command C-x = (what-cursor-position) can be used to find out the column that
the cursor is in, and other miscellaneous information about point. It prints a line in the
echo area that looks like this:
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Char: c (0143, 99, 0x63) point=18862 of 24800(76%) column 53
(In fact, this is the output produced when point is before ‘column 53’ in the example.)
The four values after ‘Char:’ describe the character that follows point, first by showing
it and then by giving its character code in octal, decimal and hex.
‘point=’ is followed by the position of point expressed as a character count. The front
of the buffer counts as position 1, one character later as 2, and so on. The next, larger
number is the total number of characters in the buffer. Afterward in parentheses comes the
position expressed as a percentage of the total size.
‘column’ is followed by the horizontal position of point, in columns from the left edge of
the window.
If the buffer has been narrowed, making some of the text at the beginning and the end
temporarily invisible, C-x = prints additional text describing the current visible range. For
example, it might say:
Char: c (0143, 99, 0x63) point=19674 of 24575(80%) <19591 - 19703> column 69
where the two extra numbers give the smallest and largest character position that point is
allowed to assume. The characters between those two positions are the visible ones. See
Section 28.3 [Narrowing], page 284.
If point is at the end of the buffer (or the end of the visible part), C-x = omits any
description of the character after point. The output looks like
point=563026 of 563025(100%) column 0
4.9 Numeric Arguments
In mathematics and computer usage, the word argument means “data provided to a
function or operation.” Any Emacs command can be given a numeric argument (also called
a prefix argument). Some commands interpret the argument as a repetition count. For
example, giving an argument of ten to the key C-f (the command forward-char, move
forward one character) moves forward ten characters. With these commands, no argument
is equivalent to an argument of one. Negative arguments are allowed. Often they tell a
command to move or act in the opposite direction.
If your keyboard has a hMETAi key (labelled with a diamond on Sun-type keyboards and
labelled ‘Alt’ on some other keyboards), the easiest way to specify a numeric argument is
to type digits and/or a minus sign while holding down the hMETAi key. For example,
M-5 C-n
would move down five lines. The characters Meta-1, Meta-2, and so on, as well as Meta--, do
this because they are keys bound to commands (digit-argument and negative-argument)
that are defined to contribute to an argument for the next command. Digits and - modified
with Control, or Control and Meta, also specify numeric arguments.
Another way of specifying an argument is to use the C-u (universal-argument) command followed by the digits of the argument. With C-u, you can type the argument digits
without holding down modifier keys; C-u works on all terminals. To type a negative argument, type a minus sign after C-u. Just a minus sign without digits normally means
−1.
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C-u followed by a character which is neither a digit nor a minus sign has the special
meaning of “multiply by four”. It multiplies the argument for the next command by four.
C-u twice multiplies it by sixteen. Thus, C-u C-u C-f moves forward sixteen characters.
This is a good way to move forward “fast”, since it moves about 1/5 of a line in the usual
size frame. Other useful combinations are C-u C-n, C-u C-u C-n (move down a good fraction
of a frame), C-u C-u C-o (make “a lot” of blank lines), and C-u C-k (kill four lines).
Some commands care only about whether there is an argument and not about its value.
For example, the command M-q (fill-paragraph) with no argument fills text; with an
argument, it justifies the text as well. (See Section 21.6 [Filling], page 177, for more information on M-q.) Just C-u is a handy way of providing an argument for such commands.
Some commands use the value of the argument as a repeat count, but do something
peculiar when there is no argument. For example, the command C-k (kill-line) with
argument n kills n lines, including their terminating newlines. But C-k with no argument
is special: it kills the text up to the next newline, or, if point is right at the end of the line,
it kills the newline itself. Thus, two C-k commands with no arguments can kill a non-blank
line, just like C-k with an argument of one. (See Section 10.1 [Killing], page 79, for more
information on C-k.)
A few commands treat a plain C-u differently from an ordinary argument. A few others
may treat an argument of just a minus sign differently from an argument of −1. These
unusual cases are described when they come up; they are always for reasons of convenience
of use of the individual command.
You can use a numeric argument to insert multiple copies of a character. This is straightforward unless the character is a digit; for example, C-u 6 4 a inserts 64 copies of the character ‘a’. But this does not work for inserting digits; C-u 6 4 1 specifies an argument of
641, rather than inserting anything. To separate the digit to insert from the argument, type
another C-u; for example, C-u 6 4 C-u 1 does insert 64 copies of the character ‘1’.
We use the term “prefix argument” as well as “numeric argument” to emphasize that you
type the argument before the command, and to distinguish these arguments from minibuffer
arguments that come after the command.
Chapter 5: Undoing Changes
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5 Undoing Changes
Emacs allows you to undo all changes you make to the text of a buffer, up to a certain
amount of change (8000 characters). Each buffer records changes individually, and the
undo command always applies to the current buffer. Usually each editing command makes
a separate entry in the undo records, but some commands such as query-replace make
many entries, and very simple commands such as self-inserting characters are often grouped
to make undoing less tedious.
C-x u
Undo one batch of changes (usually, one command’s worth) (undo).
C-_
The same.
The command C-x u or C-_ allows you to undo changes. The first time you give this
command, it undoes the last change. Point moves to the text affected by the undo, so you
can see what was undone.
Consecutive repetitions of the C-_ or C-x u commands undo earlier and earlier changes,
back to the limit of what has been recorded. If all recorded changes have already been
undone, the undo command prints an error message and does nothing.
Any command other than an undo command breaks the sequence of undo commands.
Starting at this moment, the previous undo commands are considered ordinary changes that
can themselves be undone. Thus, you can redo changes you have undone by typing C-f or
any other command that have no important effect, and then using more undo commands.
If you notice that a buffer has been modified accidentally, the easiest way to recover is
to type C-_ repeatedly until the stars disappear from the front of the mode line. When
that happens, all the modifications you made have been canceled. If you do not remember
whether you changed the buffer deliberately, type C-_ once. When you see Emacs undo
the last change you made, you probably remember why you made it. If the change was an
accident, leave it undone. If it was deliberate, redo the change as described in the preceding
paragraph.
Whenever an undo command makes the stars disappear from the mode line, the buffer
contents is the same as it was when the file was last read in or saved.
Not all buffers record undo information. Buffers whose names start with spaces don’t;
these buffers are used internally by Emacs and its extensions to hold text that users don’t
normally look at or edit. Minibuffers, help buffers, and documentation buffers also don’t
record undo information.
Emacs can remember at most 8000 or so characters of deleted or modified text in any
one buffer for reinsertion by the undo command. There is also a limit on the number of
individual insert, delete, or change actions that Emacs can remember.
There are two keys to run the undo command, C-x u and C-_, because on some keyboards, it is not obvious how to type C-_. C-x u is an alternative you can type in the same
fashion on any terminal.
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Chapter 6: The Minibuffer
57
6 The Minibuffer
The minibuffer is the facility used by XEmacs commands to read arguments more complicated than a single number. Minibuffer arguments can be file names, buffer names, Lisp
function names, XEmacs command names, Lisp expressions, and many other things, depending on the command reading the argument. You can use the usual XEmacs editing
commands in the minibuffer to edit the argument text.
When the minibuffer is in use, it appears in the echo area, and the cursor moves there.
The beginning of the minibuffer line displays a prompt which says what kind of input you
should supply and how it will be used. Often this prompt is derived from the name of the
command that the argument is for. The prompt normally ends with a colon.
Sometimes a default argument appears in parentheses after the colon; it, too, is part of
the prompt. The default is used as the argument value if you enter an empty argument
(e.g., by just typing hRETi). For example, commands that read buffer names always show a
default, which is the name of the buffer that will be used if you type just hRETi.
The simplest way to enter a minibuffer argument is to type the text you want, terminated
by hRETi which exits the minibuffer. You can cancel the command that wants the argument,
and get out of the minibuffer, by typing C-g.
Since the minibuffer uses the screen space of the echo area, it can conflict with other
ways XEmacs customarily uses the echo area. Here is how XEmacs handles such conflicts:
• If a command gets an error while you are in the minibuffer, this does not cancel the
minibuffer. However, the echo area is needed for the error message and therefore the
minibuffer itself is hidden for a while. It comes back after a few seconds, or as soon as
you type anything.
• If in the minibuffer you use a command whose purpose is to print a message in the
echo area, such as C-x =, the message is printed normally, and the minibuffer is hidden
for a while. It comes back after a few seconds, or as soon as you type anything.
• Echoing of keystrokes does not take place while the minibuffer is in use.
6.1 Minibuffers for File Names
Sometimes the minibuffer starts out with text in it. For example, when you are supposed
to give a file name, the minibuffer starts out containing the default directory, which ends
with a slash. This is to inform you which directory the file will be found in if you do not
specify a directory.
For example, the minibuffer might start out with these contents:
Find File: /u2/emacs/src/
where ‘Find File: ’ is the prompt. Typing buffer.c specifies the file ‘/u2/emacs/src/buffer.c’.
To find files in nearby directories, use ..; thus, if you type ../lisp/simple.el, you will
get the file named ‘/u2/emacs/lisp/simple.el’. Alternatively, you can kill with M-hDELi
the directory names you don’t want (see Section 21.2 [Words], page 174).
If you don’t want any of the default, you can kill it with C-a C-k. But you don’t need to
kill the default; you can simply ignore it. Insert an absolute file name, one starting with a
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slash or a tilde, after the default directory. For example, to specify the file ‘/etc/termcap’,
just insert that name, giving these minibuffer contents:
Find File: /u2/emacs/src//etc/termcap
XEmacs gives a special meaning to a double slash (which is not normally a useful thing
to write): it means, “ignore everything before the second slash in the pair.” Thus,
‘/u2/emacs/src/’ is ignored in the example above, and you get the file ‘/etc/termcap’.
If you set insert-default-directory to nil, the default directory is not inserted in the
minibuffer. This way, the minibuffer starts out empty. But the name you type, if relative,
is still interpreted with respect to the same default directory.
6.2 Editing in the Minibuffer
The minibuffer is an XEmacs buffer (albeit a peculiar one), and the usual XEmacs
commands are available for editing the text of an argument you are entering.
Since hRETi in the minibuffer is defined to exit the minibuffer, you can’t use it to insert a
newline in the minibuffer. To do that, type C-o or C-q C-j. (Recall that a newline is really
the character control-J.)
The minibuffer has its own window which always has space on the screen but acts as if it
were not there when the minibuffer is not in use. When the minibuffer is in use, its window
is just like the others; you can switch to another window with C-x o, edit text in other
windows and perhaps even visit more files, before returning to the minibuffer to submit the
argument. You can kill text in another window, return to the minibuffer window, and then
yank the text to use it in the argument. See Chapter 17 [Windows], page 145.
There are some restrictions on the use of the minibuffer window, however. You cannot
switch buffers in it—the minibuffer and its window are permanently attached. Also, you
cannot split or kill the minibuffer window. But you can make it taller in the normal fashion
with C-x ^. If you enable Resize-Minibuffer mode, then the minibuffer window expands
vertically as necessary to hold the text that you put in the minibuffer. Use M-x resizeminibuffer-mode to enable or disable this minor mode (see Section 29.1 [Minor Modes],
page 291).
If while in the minibuffer you issue a command that displays help text of any sort in
another window, you can use the C-M-v command while in the minibuffer to scroll the
help text. This lasts until you exit the minibuffer. This feature is especially useful if a
completing minibuffer gives you a list of possible completions. See Section 17.3 [Other
Window], page 146.
If the variable minibuffer-confirm-incomplete is t, you are asked for confirmation
if there is no known completion for the text you typed. For example, if you attempted to
visit a non-existent file, the minibuffer might read:
Find File: chocolate_bar.c [no completions, confirm]
If you press Return again, that confirms the filename. Otherwise, you can continue
editing it.
XEmacs supports recursive use of the minibuffer. However, it is easy to do this by
accident (because of autorepeating keyboards, for example) and get confused. Therefore,
Chapter 6: The Minibuffer
59
most XEmacs commands that use the minibuffer refuse to operate if the minibuffer window
is selected. If the minibuffer is active but you have switched to a different window, recursive
use of the minibuffer is allowed—if you know enough to try to do this, you probably will
not get confused.
If you set the variable enable-recursive-minibuffers to a non-nil, recursive use of
the minibuffer is always allowed.
6.3 Completion
For certain kinds of arguments, you can use completion to enter the argument value.
Completion means that you type part of the argument, then XEmacs visibly fills in the
rest, or as much as can be determined from the part you have typed.
When completion is available, certain keys—hTABi, hRETi, and hSPCi—are rebound to
complete the text present in the minibuffer into a longer string that it stands for, by
matching it against a set of completion alternatives provided by the command reading the
argument. ? is defined to display a list of possible completions of what you have inserted.
For example, when M-x uses the minibuffer to read the name of a command, it provides
a list of all available XEmacs command names to complete against. The completion keys
match the text in the minibuffer against all the command names, find any additional name
characters implied by the ones already present in the minibuffer, and add those characters
to the ones you have given. This is what makes it possible to type M-x inse hSPCi b hRETi
instead of M-x insert-buffer hRETi (for example).
Case is normally significant in completion because it is significant in most of the names
that you can complete (buffer names, file names and command names). Thus, ‘fo’ does not
complete to ‘Foo’. When you are completing a name in which case does not matter, case
may be ignored for completion’s sake if specified by program.
When a completion list is displayed, the completions will highlight as you move the
mouse over them. Clicking the middle mouse button on any highlighted completion will
“select” it just as if you had typed it in and hit hRETi.
6.3.1 Completion Example
A concrete example may help here. If you type M-x au hTABi, the hTABi looks for alternatives (in this case, command names) that start with ‘au’. There are several, including
auto-fill-mode and auto-save-mode—but they are all the same as far as auto, so the
‘au’ in the minibuffer changes to ‘auto’.
If you type hTABi again immediately, there are multiple possibilities for the very next
character—it could be any of ‘c-’—so no more characters are added; instead, hTABi displays
a list of all possible completions in another window.
If you go on to type -f hTABi, this hTABi sees ‘auto-f’. The only command name starting this way is auto-fill-mode, so completion fills in the rest of that. You now have
‘auto-fill-mode’ in the minibuffer after typing just au hTABi f hTABi. Note that hTABi has
this effect because in the minibuffer it is bound to the command minibuffer-complete
when completion is available.
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6.3.2 Completion Commands
Here is a list of the completion commands defined in the minibuffer when completion is
available.
hTABi
Complete the text in the minibuffer as much as possible (minibuffercomplete).
hSPCi
Complete the minibuffer text, but don’t go beyond one word (minibuffercomplete-word).
hRETi
Submit the text in the minibuffer as the argument, possibly completing first as
described below (minibuffer-complete-and-exit).
?
Print a list of all possible completions of the text in the minibuffer (minibufferlist-completions).
hbutton2i
Select the highlighted text under the mouse as a minibuffer response. When
the minibuffer is being used to prompt the user for a completion, any valid
completions which are visible on the screen will be highlighted when the mouse
moves over them. Clicking hbutton2i will select the highlighted completion and
exit the minibuffer. (minibuf-select-highlighted-completion).
completes much like hTABi, but never goes beyond the next hyphen or space.
If you have ‘auto-f’ in the minibuffer and type hSPCi, it finds that the completion is
‘auto-fill-mode’, but it stops completing after ‘fill-’. This gives ‘auto-fill-’. Another hSPCi at this point completes all the way to ‘auto-fill-mode’. hSPCi in the minibuffer
when completion is available runs the command minibuffer-complete-word.
Here are some commands you can use to choose a completion from a window that displays
a list of completions:
hSPCi
button2up
Clicking mouse button 2 on a completion in the list of possible completions
chooses that completion (mouse-choose-completion). You normally use this
command while point is in the minibuffer; but you must click in the list of
completions, not in the minibuffer itself.
hPRIORi
M-v
Typing hPRIORi or M-v, while in the minibuffer, selects the window showing the
completion list buffer (switch-to-completions). This paves the way for using
the commands below. (Selecting that window in the usual ways has the same
effect, but this way is more convenient.)
hRETi
Typing hRETi in the completion list buffer chooses the completion that point
is in or next to (choose-completion). To use this command, you must first
switch windows to the window that shows the list of completions.
hRIGHTi
hTABi
C-f
Typing the right-arrow key hRIGHTi, hTABi or C-f in the completion list buffer
moves point to the following completion (next-list-mode-item).
Chapter 6: The Minibuffer
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hLEFTi
C-b
Typing the left-arrow key hLEFTi or C-b in the completion list buffer moves point
toward the beginning of the buffer, to the previous completion (previouslist-mode-item).
6.3.3 Strict Completion
There are three different ways that hRETi can work in completing minibuffers, depending
on how the argument will be used.
• Strict completion is used when it is meaningless to give any argument except one of the
known alternatives. For example, when C-x k reads the name of a buffer to kill, it is
meaningless to give anything but the name of an existing buffer. In strict completion,
hRETi refuses to exit if the text in the minibuffer does not complete to an exact match.
• Cautious completion is similar to strict completion, except that hRETi exits only if the
text was an exact match already, not needing completion. If the text is not an exact
match, hRETi does not exit, but it does complete the text. If it completes to an exact
match, a second hRETi will exit.
Cautious completion is used for reading file names for files that must already exist.
• Permissive completion is used when any string whatever is meaningful, and the list of
completion alternatives is just a guide. For example, when C-x C-f reads the name of
a file to visit, any file name is allowed, in case you want to create a file. In permissive
completion, hRETi takes the text in the minibuffer exactly as given, without completing
it.
The completion commands display a list of all possible completions in a window whenever
there is more than one possibility for the very next character. Also, typing ? explicitly
requests such a list. If the list of completions is long, you can scroll it with C-M-v (see
Section 17.3 [Other Window], page 146).
6.3.4 Completion Options
When completion is done on file names, certain file names are usually ignored. The
variable completion-ignored-extensions contains a list of strings; a file whose name
ends in any of those strings is ignored as a possible completion. The standard value of
this variable has several elements including ".o", ".elc", ".dvi" and "~". The effect
is that, for example, ‘foo’ can complete to ‘foo.c’ even though ‘foo.o’ exists as well.
However, if all the possible completions end in “ignored” strings, then they are not ignored.
Ignored extensions do not apply to lists of completions—those always mention all possible
completions.
If a completion command finds the next character is undetermined, it automatically
displays a list of all possible completions. If the variable completion-auto-help is set to
nil, this does not happen, and you must type ? to display the possible completions.
If the variable minibuffer-confirm-incomplete is set to t, then in contexts where
completing-read allows answers that are not valid completions, an extra hRETi must be
typed to confirm the response. This is helpful for catching typos.
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Icomplete mode presents a constantly-updated display that tells you what completions
are available for the text you’ve entered so far. The command to enable or disable this
minor mode is M-x icomplete-mode.
6.4 Minibuffer History
Every argument that you enter with the minibuffer is saved on a minibuffer history list
so that you can use it again later in another argument. Special commands load the text of
an earlier argument in the minibuffer. They discard the old minibuffer contents, so you can
think of them as moving through the history of previous arguments.
hUPi
M-p
Move to the next earlier argument string saved in the minibuffer history
(previous-history-element).
hDOWNi
M-n
Move to the next later argument string saved in the minibuffer history (nexthistory-element).
M-r regexp hRETi
Move to an earlier saved argument in the minibuffer history that has a match
for regexp (previous-matching-history-element).
M-s regexp hRETi
Move to a later saved argument in the minibuffer history that has a match for
regexp (next-matching-history-element).
The simplest way to reuse the saved arguments in the history list is to move through the
history list one element at a time. While in the minibuffer, use M-p or up-arrow (previoushistory-element) to “move to” the next earlier minibuffer input, and use M-n or downarrow (next-history-element) to “move to” the next later input.
The previous input that you fetch from the history entirely replaces the contents of the
minibuffer. To use it as the argument, exit the minibuffer as usual with hRETi. You can
also edit the text before you reuse it; this does not change the history element that you
“moved” to, but your new argument does go at the end of the history list in its own right.
For many minibuffer arguments there is a “default” value. In some cases, the minibuffer
history commands know the default value. Then you can insert the default value into the
minibuffer as text by using M-n to move “into the future” in the history.
There are also commands to search forward or backward through the history; they search
for history elements that match a regular expression that you specify with the minibuffer.
M-r (previous-matching-history-element) searches older elements in the history, while
M-s (next-matching-history-element) searches newer elements. By special dispensation,
these commands can use the minibuffer to read their arguments even though you are already
in the minibuffer when you issue them. As with incremental searching, an uppercase letter
in the regular expression makes the search case-sensitive (see Section 13.6 [Search Case],
page 106).
Chapter 6: The Minibuffer
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All uses of the minibuffer record your input on a history list, but there are separate
history lists for different kinds of arguments. For example, there is a list for file names,
used by all the commands that read file names.
There are several other very specific history lists, including one for command names read
by M-x, one for buffer names, one for arguments of commands like query-replace, and one
for compilation commands read by compile. Finally, there is one “miscellaneous” history
list that most minibuffer arguments use.
6.5 Repeating Minibuffer Commands
Every command that uses the minibuffer at least once is recorded on a special history
list, together with the values of its arguments, so that you can repeat the entire command.
In particular, every use of M-x is recorded there, since M-x uses the minibuffer to read the
command name.
C-x hESCi hESCi
Re-execute a recent minibuffer command (repeat-complex-command).
M-p
Within C-x hESCi hESCi, move to previous recorded command (previoushistory-element).
M-n
Within C-x hESCi hESCi, move to the next (more recent) recorded command
(next-history-element).
M-x list-command-history
Display the entire command history, showing all the commands C-x hESCi hESCi
can repeat, most recent first.
C-x hESCi hESCi is used to re-execute a recent minibuffer-using command. With no argument, it repeats the last such command. A numeric argument specifies which command to
repeat; one means the last one, and larger numbers specify earlier ones.
C-x hESCi hESCi works by turning the previous command into a Lisp expression and then
entering a minibuffer initialized with the text for that expression. If you type just hRETi,
the command is repeated as before. You can also change the command by editing the Lisp
expression. Whatever expression you finally submit is what will be executed. The repeated
command is added to the front of the command history unless it is identical to the most
recently executed command already there.
Even if you don’t understand Lisp syntax, it will probably be obvious which command
is displayed for repetition. If you do not change the text, you can be sure the command
will repeat exactly as before.
If you are in the minibuffer for C-x hESCi hESCi and the command shown to you is not
the one you want to repeat, you can move around the list of previous commands using
M-n and M-p. M-p replaces the contents of the minibuffer with the next earlier recorded
command, and M-n replaces it with the next later command. After finding the desired
previous command, you can edit its expression and then resubmit it by typing hRETi. Any
editing you have done on the command to be repeated is lost if you use M-n or M-p.
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M-n and M-p are specially defined within C-x hESCi hESCi to run the commands previoushistory-element and next-history-element.
The list of previous commands using the minibuffer is stored as a Lisp list in the variable command-history. Each element of the list is a Lisp expression which describes one
command and its arguments. Lisp programs can reexecute a command by feeding the
corresponding command-history element to eval.
Chapter 7: Running Commands by Name
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7 Running Commands by Name
The Emacs commands that are used often or that must be quick to type are bound to
keys—short sequences of characters—for convenient use. Other Emacs commands that are
used more rarely are not bound to keys; to run them, you must refer to them by name.
A command name consists, by convention, of one or more words, separated by hyphens:
for example, auto-fill-mode or manual-entry. The use of English words makes the
command name easier to remember than a key made up of obscure characters, even though
it results in more characters to type. You can run any command by name, even if it can be
run by keys as well.
To run a command by name, start with M-x, then type the command name, and finish
with hRETi. M-x uses the minibuffer to read the command name. hRETi exits the minibuffer
and runs the command.
Emacs uses the minibuffer for reading input for many different purposes; on this occasion,
the string ‘M-x’ is displayed at the beginning of the minibuffer as a prompt to remind you
that your input should be the name of a command to be run. See Chapter 6 [Minibuffer],
page 57, for full information on the features of the minibuffer.
You can use completion to enter a command name. For example, to invoke the command
forward-char, type:
M-x forward-char hRETi
or
M-x fo hTABi c hRETi
After you type in M-x fo TAB emacs will give you a possible list of completions from which
you can choose. Note that forward-char is the same command that you invoke with the
key C-f. You can call any command (interactively callable function) defined in Emacs by
its name using M-x regardless of whether or not any keys are bound to it.
If you type C-g while Emacs reads the command name, you cancel the M-x command
and get out of the minibuffer, ending up at top level.
To pass a numeric argument to a command you are invoking with M-x, specify the
numeric argument before the M-x. M-x passes the argument along to the function that it
calls. The argument value appears in the prompt while the command name is being read.
You can use the command M-x interactive to specify a way of parsing arguments for
interactive use of a function. For example, write:
(defun foo (arg) "Doc string" (interactive "p") ...use arg...)
to make arg be the prefix argument when foo is called as a command. The call to
interactive is actually a declaration rather than a function; it tells call-interactively
how to read arguments to pass to the function. When actually called, interactive returns
nil.
The argument of interactive is usually a string containing a code letter followed by a
prompt. Some code letters do not use I/O to get the argument and do not need prompts. To
prompt for multiple arguments, you must provide a code letter, its prompt, a newline, and
another code letter, and so forth. If the argument is not a string, it is evaluated to get a list
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of arguments to pass to the function. If you do not provide an argument to interactive,
no arguments are passed when calling interactively.
Available code letters are:
a
Function name: symbol with a function definition
b
Name of existing buffer
B
Name of buffer, possibly nonexistent
c
Character
C
Command name: symbol with interactive function definition
d
Value of point as number (does not do I/O)
D
Directory name
e
Last mouse event
f
Existing file name
F
Possibly nonexistent file name
k
Key sequence (string)
m
Value of mark as number (does not do I/O)
n
Number read using minibuffer
N
Prefix arg converted to number, or if none, do like code n
p
Prefix arg converted to number (does not do I/O)
P
Prefix arg in raw form (does not do I/O)
r
Region: point and mark as two numeric arguments, smallest first (does not do
I/O)
s
Any string
S
Any symbol
v
Variable name: symbol that is user-variable-p
x
Lisp expression read but not evaluated
X
Lisp expression read and evaluated
In addition, if the string begins with ‘*’, an error is signaled if the buffer is read-only.
This happens before reading any arguments. If the string begins with ‘@’, the window the
mouse is over is selected before anything else is done. You may use both ‘@’ and ‘*’; they
are processed in the order that they appear.
Normally, when describing a command that is run by name, we omit the hRETi that is
needed to terminate the name. Thus we may refer to M-x auto-fill-mode rather than M-x
auto-fill-mode hRETi. We mention the hRETi only when it is necessary to emphasize its
presence, for example, when describing a sequence of input that contains a command name
and arguments that follow it.
M-x is defined to run the command execute-extended-command, which is responsible
for reading the name of another command and invoking it.
Chapter 8: Help
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8 Help
XEmacs provides extensive help features accessible through a single character, C-h. C-h
is a prefix key that is used only for documentation-printing commands. The characters that
you can type after C-h are called help options. One help option is C-h; that is how you ask
for help about using C-h. To cancel, type C-g. The function key hF1i is equivalent to C-h.
C-h C-h (help-for-help) displays a list of the possible help options, and then asks you
to type the desired option. It prompts with the string:
A B C F I K L M N P S T V W C-c C-d C-f C-i C-k C-n C-w; ? for more help:
You should type one of those characters.
Typing a third C-h displays a description of what the options mean; Emacs still waits
for you to type an option. To cancel, type C-g.
Most help buffers use a special major mode, Help mode, which lets you scroll conveniently
with hSPCi and hDELi or hBSi.
Here is a summary of the defined help commands.
C-h a regexp hRETi
Display a list of functions and variables whose names match regexp (hyperapropos).
C-h A regexp
Show all commands whose names contain matches for regexp (commandapropos).
C-h b
Display a table of all key bindings currently in effect, with local bindings of the
current major mode first, followed by all global bindings (describe-bindings).
C-h c key
Print the name of the command that key runs (describe-key-briefly). Here
c stands for ‘character’. For more extensive information on key, use C-h k.
C-h d function hRETi
C-h f function hRETi
Display documentation on the Lisp function named function (describefunction). Since commands are Lisp functions, a command name may be
used.
C-h i
Run Info, the program for browsing documentation files (info). The complete
XEmacs manual is available online in Info.
C-h k key
Display the name and documentation of the command that key runs (describekey).
C-h l
Display a description of the last 100 characters you typed (view-lossage).
C-h m
Display documentation of the current major mode (describe-mode).
C-h n
C-h C-n
Display documentation of XEmacs changes, most recent first (view-emacsnews).
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C-h p
Find packages by topic keyword (finder-by-keyword).
C-h C-p
Display a table of all mouse bindings currently in effect now, with local bindings
of the current major mode first, followed by all global bindings (describepointer).
C-h s
Display current contents of the syntax table, plus an explanation of what they
mean (describe-syntax). See Section 29.5 [Syntax], page 308.
C-h t
Enter the XEmacs interactive tutorial (help-with-tutorial).
C-h v var hRETi
Display the documentation of the Lisp variable var (describe-variable).
C-h w command hRETi
Print which keys run the command named command (where-is).
C-h B hRETi
Display info on how to deal with Beta versions of XEmacs (describe-beta).
C-h C group hRETi
Select customization buffer for group (customize).
C-h F hRETi
View the local copy of the XEmacs FAQ (xemacs-local-faq).
C-h C-i file hRETi
Read Info file file with Info browser (Info-query).
C-h C-c command hRETi
Look up an Emacs command command in the Emacs manual in the Info system
(Info-goto-emacs-command-node).
C-h C-f function hRETi
Look up an Emacs Lisp function function in the Elisp manual in the Info system
(Info-elisp-ref).
8.1 Documentation for a Key
The most basic C-h options are C-h c (describe-key-briefly) and C-h k (describekey). C-h c key prints in the echo area the name of the command that key is bound to. For
example, C-h c C-f prints ‘forward-char’. Since command names are chosen to describe
what the commands do, this is a good way to get a very brief description of what key does.
C-h k key is similar to C-h c but gives more information. It displays the documentation
string of the function key is bound to as well as its name. key is a string or vector of events.
When called interactively, key may also be a menu selection. This information does not
usually fit into the echo area, so a window is used for the display.
C-h c and C-h k work for any sort of key sequences, including function keys and mouse
events.
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8.2 Help by Command or Variable Name
C-h f (describe-function) reads the name of a Lisp function using the minibuffer,
then displays that function’s documentation string in a window. Since commands are Lisp
functions, you can use the argument function to get the documentation of a command that
you know by name. For example,
C-h f auto-fill-mode hRETi
displays the documentation for auto-fill-mode. Using C-h f is the only way to see the
documentation of a command that is not bound to any key, that is, a command you would
normally call using M-x. If the variable describe-function-show-arglist is t, describefunction shows its arglist if the function is not an autoload function.
C-h f is also useful for Lisp functions that you are planning to use in a Lisp program.
For example, if you have just written the expression (make-vector len) and want to make
sure you are using make-vector properly, type C-h f make-vector hRETi. Because C-h f
allows all function names, not just command names, you may find that some of your favorite
abbreviations that work in M-x don’t work in C-h f. An abbreviation may be unique among
command names, yet fail to be unique when other function names are allowed.
The function name for C-h f to describe has a default which is used if you type hRETi
leaving the minibuffer empty. The default is the function called by the innermost Lisp
expression in the buffer around point, provided that is a valid, defined Lisp function name.
For example, if point is located following the text ‘(make-vector (car x)’, the innermost
list containing point is the one that starts with ‘(make-vector’, so the default is to describe
the function make-vector.
C-h f is often useful just to verify that you have the right spelling for the function name.
If C-h f mentions a name from the buffer as the default, that name must be defined as a
Lisp function. If that is all you want to know, just type C-g to cancel the C-h f command,
then go on editing.
C-h w command hRETi (where-is) tells you what keys are bound to command. It prints
a list of the keys in the echo area. Alternatively, it informs you that a command is not
bound to any keys, which implies that you must use M-x to call the command.
C-h v (describe-variable) is like C-h f but describes Lisp variables instead of Lisp
functions. Its default is the Lisp symbol around or before point, if that is the name of a
known Lisp variable. See Section 29.2 [Variables], page 291.
8.3 Apropos
C-h A
Show only symbols that are names of commands (command-apropos).
M-x apropos regexp
Show all symbols whose names contain matches for regexp.
A more sophisticated sort of question to ask is, “What are the commands for working
with files?” To ask this question, type C-h a file hRETi, which displays a list of all command names that contain ‘file’, including copy-file, find-file, and so on. With each
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command name appears a brief description of how to use the command, and what keys you
can currently invoke it with. For example, it would say that you can invoke find-file by
typing C-x C-f. The A in C-h A stands for ‘Apropos’; C-h A runs the command commandapropos. This command normally checks only commands (interactive functions); if you
specify a prefix argument, it checks noninteractive functions as well.
Because C-h A looks only for functions whose names contain the string you specify, you
must use ingenuity in choosing the string. If you are looking for commands for killing
backwards and C-h a kill-backwards hRETi doesn’t reveal any, don’t give up. Try just
kill, or just backwards, or just back. Be persistent. Pretend you are playing Adventure.
Also note that you can use a regular expression as the argument, for more flexibility (see
Section 13.5 [Regexps], page 101).
Here is a set of arguments to give to C-h a that covers many classes of XEmacs commands, since there are strong conventions for naming the standard XEmacs commands.
By giving you a feel for the naming conventions, this set should also serve to aid you in
developing a technique for picking apropos strings.
char, line, word, sentence, paragraph, region, page, sexp, list, defun, rect, buffer,
frame, window, face, file, dir, register, mode, beginning, end, forward, backward, next, previous, up, down, search, goto, kill, delete, mark, insert, yank,
fill, indent, case, change, set, what, list, find, view, describe, default.
To list all Lisp symbols that contain a match for a regexp, not just the ones that are
defined as commands, use the command M-x apropos instead of C-h A. This command does
not check key bindings by default; specify a numeric argument if you want it to check them.
The apropos-documentation command is like apropos except that it searches documentation strings for matches for the specified regular expression.
The apropos-value command is like apropos except that it searches symbols’ values
for matches for the specified regular expression. This command does not check function
definitions or property lists by default; specify a numeric argument if you want it to check
them.
If the variable apropos-do-all is non-nil, the commands above all behave as if they
had been given a prefix argument.
If you want more information about a function definition, variable or symbol property
listed in the Apropos buffer, you can click on it with Mouse-2 or move there and type hRETi.
8.4 Keyword Search for Lisp Libraries
The C-h p command lets you search the standard Emacs Lisp libraries by topic keywords.
Here is a partial list of keywords you can use:
abbrev
abbreviation handling, typing shortcuts, macros
bib
code related to the ‘bib’ bibliography processor
c
C, C++, and Objective-C language support
calendar
calendar and time management support
comm
communications, networking, remote access to files
data
support for editing files of data
docs
support for Emacs documentation
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dumped
files preloaded into Emacs
emulations emulations of other editors
extensions Emacs Lisp language extensions
faces
support for multiple fonts
frames
support for Emacs frames and window systems
games
games, jokes and amusements
hardware
support for interfacing with exotic hardware
help
support for on-line help systems
hypermedia support for links between text or other media types
i18n
internationalization and alternate character-set support
internal
code for Emacs internals, build process, defaults
languages
specialized modes for editing programming languages
lisp
Lisp support, including Emacs Lisp
local
code local to your site
maint
maintenance aids for the Emacs development group
mail
modes for electronic-mail handling
matching
various sorts of searching and matching
mouse
mouse support
mule
multi-language extensions
news
support for netnews reading and posting
oop
support for object-oriented programming
outlines
support for hierarchical outlining
processes
process, subshell, compilation, and job control support
terminals
support for terminal types
tex
code related to the TeX formatter
tools
programming tools
unix
front-ends/assistants for, or emulators of, UNIX features
vms
support code for vms
wp
word processing
8.5 Help Mode Commands
Help buffers provide the commands of View mode (see Section 15.10 [Misc File Ops],
page 137), plus a few special commands of their own.
hSPCi
Scroll forward.
hDELi
hBSi
Scroll backward.
When a command name (see Chapter 7 [Running Commands by Name], page 65) or
variable name (see Section 29.2 [Variables], page 291) appears in the documentation, it
normally appears inside paired single-quotes.
8.6 Other Help Commands
C-h i (info) runs the Info program, which is used for browsing through structured
documentation files. The entire XEmacs manual is available within Info. Eventually all the
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documentation of the GNU system will be available. Type h after entering Info to run a
tutorial on using Info.
If you specify a numeric argument, C-h i prompts for the name of a documentation file.
This way, you can browse a file which doesn’t have an entry in the top-level Info menu. It
is also handy when you need to get to the documentation quickly, and you know the exact
name of the file.
There are two special help commands for accessing XEmacs documentation through Info.
C-h C-f function hRETi enters Info and goes straight to the documentation of the XEmacs
function function. C-h C-k key enters Info and goes straight to the documentation of the
key key. These two keys run the commands Info-elisp-ref and Info-goto-emacs-keycommand-node.
If something surprising happens, and you are not sure what commands you typed, use
C-h l (view-lossage). C-h l prints the last 100 command characters you typed in. If you
see commands that you don’t know, you can use C-h c to find out what they do.
XEmacs has several major modes. Each mode redefines a few keys and makes a few
other changes in how editing works. C-h m (describe-mode) prints documentation on the
current major mode, which normally describes all the commands that are changed in this
mode.
C-h b (describe-bindings) and C-h s (describe-syntax) present information about
the current XEmacs mode that is not covered by C-h m. C-h b displays a list of all the key
bindings currently in effect, with the local bindings of the current major mode first, followed
by the global bindings (see Section 29.4 [Key Bindings], page 303). C-h s displays the
contents of the syntax table with explanations of each character’s syntax (see Section 29.5
[Syntax], page 308).
You can get a similar list for a particular prefix key by typing C-h after the prefix key.
(There are a few prefix keys for which this does not work—those that provide their own
bindings for C-h. One of these is hESCi, because hESCi C-h is actually C-M-h, which marks a
defun.)
The other C-h options display various files of useful information. C-h C-w (describeno-warranty) displays the full details on the complete absence of warranty for XEmacs. C-h
n (view-emacs-news) displays the file ‘xemacs/etc/NEWS’, which contains documentation
on XEmacs changes arranged chronologically. C-h F (xemacs-local-faq) displays local
version of the XEmacs frequently-answered-questions-list. C-h t (help-with-tutorial)
displays the learn-by-doing XEmacs tutorial. C-h C-c (describe-copying) displays the
file ‘xemacs/etc/COPYING’, which tells you the conditions you must obey in distributing copies of XEmacs. C-h C-d (describe-distribution) displays another file named
‘xemacs/etc/DISTRIB’, which tells you how you can order a copy of the latest version of
XEmacs.
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9 Selecting Text
Many Emacs commands operate on an arbitrary contiguous part of the current buffer.
You can select text in two ways:
• You use special keys to select text by defining a region between point and the mark.
• If you are running XEmacs under X, you can also select text with the mouse.
9.1 The Mark and the Region
To specify the text for a command to operate on, set the mark at one end of it, and
move point to the other end. The text between point and the mark is called the region.
You can move point or the mark to adjust the boundaries of the region. It doesn’t matter
which one is set first chronologically, or which one comes earlier in the text.
Once the mark has been set, it remains until it is set again at another place. The mark
remains fixed with respect to the preceding character if text is inserted or deleted in a
buffer. Each Emacs buffer has its own mark; when you return to a buffer that had been
selected previously, it has the same mark it had before.
Many commands that insert text, such as C-y (yank) and M-x insert-buffer, position
the mark at one end of the inserted text—the opposite end from where point is positioned,
so that the region contains the text just inserted.
Aside from delimiting the region, the mark is useful for marking a spot that you may
want to go back to. To make this feature more useful, Emacs remembers 16 previous
locations of the mark in the mark ring.
9.1.1 Setting the Mark
Here are some commands for setting the mark:
C-hSPCi
Set the mark where point is (set-mark-command).
C-@
The same.
C-x C-x
Interchange mark and point (exchange-point-and-mark).
C-<
Pushes a mark at the beginning of the buffer.
C->
Pushes a mark at the end of the buffer.
For example, to convert part of the buffer to all upper-case, you can use the C-x Cu (upcase-region) command, which operates on the text in the region. First go to the
beginning of the text you want to capitalize and type C-hSPCi to put the mark there, then
move to the end, and then type C-x C-u to capitalize the selected region. You can also
set the mark at the end of the text, move to the beginning, and then type C-x C-u. Most
commands that operate on the text in the region have the word region in their names.
The most common way to set the mark is with the C-hSPCi command (set-markcommand). This command sets the mark where point is. You can then move point away,
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leaving the mark behind. It is actually incorrect to speak of the character C-hSPCi; there is
no such character. When you type hSPCi while holding down hCTRLi, you get the character
C-@ on most terminals. This character is actually bound to set-mark-command. But unless
you are unlucky enough to have a terminal where typing C-hSPCi does not produce C-@, you
should think of this character as C-hSPCi.
Since terminals have only one cursor, Emacs cannot show you where the mark is located.
Most people use the mark soon after they set it, before they forget where it is. But you
can see where the mark is with the command C-x C-x (exchange-point-and-mark) which
puts the mark where point was and point where the mark was. The extent of the region is
unchanged, but the cursor and point are now at the previous location of the mark.
Another way to set the mark is to push the mark to the beginning of a buffer while
leaving point at its original location. If you supply an argument to C-< (mark-beginningof-buffer), the mark is pushed n/10 of the way from the true beginning of the buffer. You
can also set the mark at the end of a buffer with C-> (mark-end-of-buffer). It pushes the
mark to the end of the buffer, leaving point alone. Supplying an argument to the command
pushes the mark n/10 of the way from the true end of the buffer.
If you are using XEmacs under the X window system, you can set the variable zmacsregions to t. This makes the current region (defined by point and mark) highlight and
makes it available as the X clipboard selection, which means you can use the menu bar
items on it. See Section 10.3.4 [Active Regions], page 85, for more information.
C-x C-x is also useful when you are satisfied with the location of point but want to move
the mark; do C-x C-x to put point there and then you can move it. A second use of C-x
C-x, if necessary, puts the mark at the new location with point back at its original location.
9.1.2 Operating on the Region
Once you have created an active region, you can do many things to the text in it:
• Kill it with C-w (see Section 10.1 [Killing], page 79).
• Save it in a register with C-x r s (see Chapter 11 [Registers], page 89).
• Save it in a buffer or a file (see Section 10.4 [Accumulating Text], page 86).
• Convert case with C-x C-l or C-x C-u
(see Section 21.7 [Case], page 180).
• Evaluate it as Lisp code with M-x eval-region (see Section 23.4 [Lisp Eval], page 214).
• Fill it as text with M-q (see Section 21.6 [Filling], page 177).
• Print hardcopy with M-x print-region (see Section 28.4 [Hardcopy], page 285).
• Indent it with C-x hTABi or C-M-\ (see Chapter 20 [Indentation], page 163).
9.1.3 Commands to Mark Textual Objects
There are commands for placing point and the mark around a textual object such as a
word, list, paragraph or page.
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M-@
Set mark after end of next word (mark-word). This command and the following
one do not move point.
C-M-@
Set mark after end of next Lisp expression (mark-sexp).
M-h
Put region around current paragraph (mark-paragraph).
C-M-h
Put region around current Lisp defun (mark-defun).
C-x h
Put region around entire buffer (mark-whole-buffer).
C-x C-p
Put region around current page (mark-page).
M-@ (mark-word) puts the mark at the end of the next word, while C-M-@ (mark-sexp)
puts it at the end of the next Lisp expression. These characters sometimes save you some
typing.
A number of commands are available that set both point and mark and thus delimit an
object in the buffer. M-h (mark-paragraph) moves point to the beginning of the paragraph
that surrounds or follows point, and puts the mark at the end of that paragraph (see
Section 21.4 [Paragraphs], page 176). You can then indent, case-convert, or kill the whole
paragraph. In the same fashion, C-M-h (mark-defun) puts point before and the mark after
the current or following defun (see Section 22.3 [Defuns], page 184). C-x C-p (mark-page)
puts point before the current page (or the next or previous, depending on the argument), and
mark at the end (see Section 21.5 [Pages], page 177). The mark goes after the terminating
page delimiter (to include it), while point goes after the preceding page delimiter (to exclude
it). Finally, C-x h (mark-whole-buffer) sets up the entire buffer as the region by putting
point at the beginning and the mark at the end.
9.1.4 The Mark Ring
Aside from delimiting the region, the mark is also useful for marking a spot that you
may want to go back to. To make this feature more useful, Emacs remembers 16 previous
locations of the mark in the mark ring. Most commands that set the mark push the old
mark onto this ring. To return to a marked location, use C-u C-hSPCi (or C-u C-@); this is
the command set-mark-command given a numeric argument. The command moves point
to where the mark was, and restores the mark from the ring of former marks. Repeated use
of this command moves point to all the old marks on the ring, one by one. The marks you
have seen go to the end of the ring, so no marks are lost.
Each buffer has its own mark ring. All editing commands use the current buffer’s mark
ring. In particular, C-u C-hSPCi always stays in the same buffer.
Many commands that can move long distances, such as M-< (beginning-of-buffer),
start by setting the mark and saving the old mark on the mark ring. This makes it easier
for you to move back later. Searches set the mark, unless they do not actually move point.
When a command sets the mark, ‘Mark Set’ is printed in the echo area.
The variable mark-ring-max is the maximum number of entries to keep in the mark
ring. If that many entries exist and another entry is added, the last entry in the list is
discarded. Repeating C-u C-hSPCi circulates through the entries that are currently in the
ring.
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The variable mark-ring holds the mark ring itself, as a list of marker objects in the
order most recent first. This variable is local in every buffer.
9.2 Selecting Text with the Mouse
If you are using XEmacs under X, you can use the mouse pointer to select text. (The
normal mouse pointer is an I-beam, the same pointer that xterm uses.)
The glyph variable text-pointer-glyph controls the shape of the mouse pointer when
over text. You can also control the shape of the mouse pointer when over nontext using
nontext-pointer-glyph, and the shape of the mouse pointer when over the modeline using
modeline-pointer-glyph. (Remember, you should use set-glyph-image, not setq, to set
one of these variables.)
If you want to get fancy, you can set the foreground and background colors of the mouse
pointer by setting the pointer face.
There are two ways to select a region of text with the mouse:
To select a word in text, double-click with the left mouse button while the mouse cursor is
over the word. The word is highlighted when selected. On monochrome monitors, a stippled
background indicates that a region of text has been highlighted. On color monitors, a color
background indicates highlighted text. You can triple-click to select whole lines.
To select an arbitrary region of text:
1. Move the mouse cursor over the character at the beginning of the region of text you
want to select.
2. Press and hold the left mouse button.
3. While holding the left mouse button down, drag the cursor to the character at the end
of the region of text you want to select.
4. Release the left mouse button.
The selected region of text is highlighted.
Once a region of text is selected, it becomes the primary X selection (see Section 10.3
[Using X Selections], page 83) as well as the Emacs selected region. You can paste it into
other X applications and use the options from the Edit pull-down menu on it. Since it is
also the Emacs region, you can use Emacs region commands on it.
9.3 Additional Mouse Operations
XEmacs also provides the following mouse functions. Most of these are not bound to
mouse gestures by default, but they are provided for your customization pleasure. For
example, if you wanted shift-left (that is, holding down the hShifti key and clicking the
left mouse button) to delete the character at which you are pointing, then you could do
this:
(global-set-key ’(shift button1) ’mouse-del-char)
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mouse-del-char
Delete the character pointed to by the mouse.
mouse-delete-window
Delete the Emacs window that the mouse is on.
mouse-keep-one-window
Select the Emacs window that the mouse is on, then delete all other windows
on this frame.
mouse-kill-line
Kill the line pointed to by the mouse.
mouse-line-length
Print the length of the line indicated by the pointer.
mouse-scroll
Scroll point to the mouse position.
mouse-select
Select the Emacs window the mouse is on.
mouse-select-and-split
Select the Emacs window mouse is on, then split it vertically in half.
mouse-set-mark
Select the Emacs window the mouse is on and set the mark at the mouse
position. Display the cursor at that position for a second.
mouse-set-point
Select the Emacs window that the mouse is on and move point to the mouse
position.
mouse-track
Make a selection with the mouse. This is the default binding of the left mouse
button (hbutton1i).
mouse-track-adjust
Extend the existing selection. This is the default binding of hShift-button1i.
mouse-track-and-copy-to-cutbuffer
Make a selection like mouse-track, but also copy it to the cut buffer.
mouse-track-delete-and-insert
Make a selection with the mouse and insert it at point. This is the default
binding of hcontrol-shift-button1i.
mouse-track-insert
Make a selection with the mouse and insert it at point. This is the default
binding of hcontrol-button1i.
mouse-window-to-region
Narrow a window to the region between the cursor and the mouse pointer.
The M-x mouse-track command should be bound to a mouse button. If you click-anddrag, the selection is set to the region between the point of the initial click and the point
at which you release the button. These positions do not need to be ordered.
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If you click-and-release without moving the mouse, the point is moved, and the selection
is disowned (there will be no selection owner.) The mark will be set to the previous position
of point.
If you double-click, the selection will extend by symbols instead of by characters. If you
triple-click, the selection will extend by lines.
If you drag the mouse off the top or bottom of the window, you can select pieces of text
that are larger than the visible part of the buffer; the buffer will scroll as necessary.
The selected text becomes the current X selection, and is also copied to the top of the
kill ring. Point will be left at the position at which you released the button and the mark
will be left at the initial click position. Bind a mouse click to mouse-track-and-copyto-cutbuffer to copy selections to the cut buffer. (See also the mouse-track-adjust
command, on Shift-button1.)
The M-x mouse-track-adjust command should be bound to a mouse button. The
selection will be enlarged or shrunk so that the point of the mouse click is one of its
endpoints. This is only meaningful after the mouse-track command (hbutton1i) has been
executed.
The M-x mouse-track-delete-and-insert command is exactly the same as the mousetrack command on hbutton1i, except that point is not moved; the selected text is immediately
inserted after being selected; and the text of the selection is deleted.
The M-x mouse-track-insert command is exactly the same as the mouse-track command on hbutton1i, except that point is not moved; the selected text is immediately inserted
after being selected; and the selection is immediately disowned afterwards.
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10 Killing and Moving Text
Killing means erasing text and copying it into the kill ring, from which it can be retrieved by yanking it. Some other systems that have recently become popular use the terms
“cutting” and “pasting” for these operations.
The most common way of moving or copying text with Emacs is to kill it and later yank
it in one or more places. This is safe because all the text killed recently is stored in the kill
ring, and it is versatile, because you can use the same commands for killing syntactic units
and for moving those units. There are other ways of copying text for special purposes.
Emacs has only one kill ring, so you can kill text in one buffer and yank it in another
buffer. If you are using XEmacs under X, you can also use the X selection mechanism to
copy text from one buffer to another, or between applications. See Section 10.3 [Using X
Selections], page 83.
10.1 Deletion and Killing
Most commands that erase text from the buffer save it. You can get the text back if you
change your mind, or you can move or copy it to other parts of the buffer. Commands which
erase text and save it in the kill ring are known as kill commands. Some other commands
erase text but do not save it; they are known as delete commands. (This distinction is
made only for erasing text in the buffer.)
The commands’ names and individual descriptions use the words ‘kill’ and ‘delete’ to
indicate what they do. If you perform a kill or delete command by mistake, use the C-x u
(undo) command to undo it (see Chapter 5 [Undo], page 55). The delete commands include
C-d (delete-char) and hDELi (delete-backward-char), which delete only one character
at a time, and those commands that delete only spaces or newlines. Commands that can
destroy significant amounts of nontrivial data usually kill.
10.1.1 Deletion
C-d
Delete next character (delete-char).
hDELi
Delete previous character (delete-backward-char).
M-\
Delete spaces and tabs around point (delete-horizontal-space).
M-hSPCi
Delete spaces and tabs around point, leaving one space (just-one-space).
C-x C-o
Delete blank lines around the current line (delete-blank-lines).
M-^
Join two lines by deleting the intervening newline, and any indentation following
it (delete-indentation).
The most basic delete commands are C-d (delete-char) and hDELi (delete-backwardchar). C-d deletes the character after point, the one the cursor is “on top of”. Point
doesn’t move. hDELi deletes the character before the cursor, and moves point back. You can
delete newlines like any other characters in the buffer; deleting a newline joins two lines.
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Actually, C-d and hDELi aren’t always delete commands; if you give them an argument, they
kill instead, since they can erase more than one character this way.
The other delete commands delete only formatting characters: spaces, tabs and newlines.
M-\ (delete-horizontal-space) deletes all spaces and tab characters before and after
point. M-hSPCi (just-one-space) does the same but leaves a single space after point,
regardless of the number of spaces that existed previously (even zero).
C-x C-o (delete-blank-lines) deletes all blank lines after the current line. If the
current line is blank, it deletes all blank lines preceding the current line as well as leaving
one blank line, the current line. M-^ (delete-indentation) joins the current line and the
previous line, or, if given an argument, joins the current line and the next line by deleting
a newline and all surrounding spaces, possibly leaving a single space. See Chapter 20
[Indentation], page 163.
10.1.2 Killing by Lines
C-k
Kill rest of line or one or more lines (kill-line).
The simplest kill command is C-k. If given at the beginning of a line, it kills all the text
on the line, leaving the line blank. If given on a blank line, the blank line disappears. As
a consequence, a line disappears completely if you go to the front of a non-blank line and
type C-k twice.
More generally, C-k kills from point up to the end of the line, unless it is at the end of a
line. In that case, it kills the newline following the line, thus merging the next line into the
current one. Emacs ignores invisible spaces and tabs at the end of the line when deciding
which case applies: if point appears to be at the end of the line, you can be sure the newline
will be killed.
If you give C-k a positive argument, it kills that many lines and the newlines that
follow them (however, text on the current line before point is not killed). With a negative
argument, C-k kills back to a number of line beginnings. An argument of −2 means kill
back to the second line beginning. If point is at the beginning of a line, that line beginning
doesn’t count, so C-u - 2 C-k with point at the front of a line kills the two previous lines.
C-k with an argument of zero kills all the text before point on the current line.
10.1.3 Other Kill Commands
C-w
Kill region (from point to the mark) (kill-region). See Section 21.2 [Words],
page 174.
M-d
Kill word (kill-word).
M-hDELi
Kill word backwards (backward-kill-word).
C-x hDELi
Kill back to beginning of sentence (backward-kill-sentence).
tion 21.3 [Sentences], page 175.
M-k
Kill to end of sentence (kill-sentence).
C-M-k
Kill sexp (kill-sexp). See Section 22.2 [Lists], page 182.
M-z char
Kill up to next occurrence of char (zap-to-char).
See Sec-
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C-w (kill-region) is a very general kill command; it kills everything between point and
the mark. You can use this command to kill any contiguous sequence of characters by first
setting the mark at one end of a sequence of characters, then going to the other end and
typing C-w.
A convenient way of killing is combined with searching: M-z (zap-to-char) reads a
character and kills from point up to (but not including) the next occurrence of that character
in the buffer. If there is no next occurrence, killing goes to the end of the buffer. A numeric
argument acts as a repeat count. A negative argument means to search backward and kill
text before point.
Other syntactic units can be killed: words, with M-hDELi and M-d (see Section 21.2
[Words], page 174); sexps, with C-M-k (see Section 22.2 [Lists], page 182); and sentences,
with C-x hDELi and M-k (see Section 21.3 [Sentences], page 175).
10.2 Yanking
Yanking means getting back text which was killed. Some systems call this “pasting”.
The usual way to move or copy text is to kill it and then yank it one or more times.
C-y
Yank last killed text (yank).
M-y
Replace re-inserted killed text with the previously killed text (yank-pop).
M-w
Save region as last killed text without actually killing it (copy-region-askill).
C-M-w
Append next kill to last batch of killed text (append-next-kill).
10.2.1 The Kill Ring
All killed text is recorded in the kill ring, a list of blocks of text that have been killed.
There is only one kill ring, used in all buffers, so you can kill text in one buffer and yank
it in another buffer. This is the usual way to move text from one file to another. (See
Section 10.4 [Accumulating Text], page 86, for some other ways.)
If you have two separate Emacs processes, you cannot use the kill ring to move text. If
you are using XEmacs under X, however, you can use the X selection mechanism to move
text from one to another.
If you are using XEmacs under X and have one Emacs process with multiple frames,
they do share the same kill ring. You can kill or copy text in one Emacs frame, then yank
it in the other frame belonging to the same process.
The command C-y (yank) reinserts the text of the most recent kill. It leaves the cursor
at the end of the text and sets the mark at the beginning of the text. See Chapter 9 [Mark],
page 73.
C-u C-y yanks the text, leaves the cursor in front of the text, and sets the mark after
it, if the argument is with just a C-u. Any other argument, including C-u and digits, has
different results, described below, under “Yanking Earlier Kills”.
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To copy a block of text, you can also use M-w (copy-region-as-kill), which copies the
region into the kill ring without removing it from the buffer. M-w is similar to C-w followed
by C-y but does not mark the buffer as “modified” and does not actually cut anything.
10.2.2 Appending Kills
Normally, each kill command pushes a new block onto the kill ring. However, two or
more kill commands in a row combine their text into a single entry, so that a single C-y
yanks it all back. This means you don’t have to kill all the text you want to yank in one
command; you can kill line after line, or word after word, until you have killed what you
want, then get it all back at once using C-y. (Thus we join television in leading people to
kill thoughtlessly.)
Commands that kill forward from point add onto the end of the previous killed text.
Commands that kill backward from point add onto the beginning. This way, any sequence of
mixed forward and backward kill commands puts all the killed text into one entry without
rearrangement. Numeric arguments do not break the sequence of appending kills. For
example, suppose the buffer contains:
This is the first
line of sample text
and here is the third.
with point at the beginning of the second line. If you type C-k C-u 2 M-hDELi C-k, the first
C-k kills the text ‘line of sample text’, C-u 2 M-hDELi kills ‘the first’ with the newline
that followed it, and the second C-k kills the newline after the second line. The result is
that the buffer contains ‘This is and here is the third.’ and a single kill entry contains
‘the firsthRETiline of sample texthRETi’—all the killed text, in its original order.
If a kill command is separated from the last kill command by other commands (not
just numeric arguments), it starts a new entry on the kill ring. To force a kill command
to append, first type the command C-M-w (append-next-kill). C-M-w tells the following
command, if it is a kill command, to append the text it kills to the last killed text, instead
of starting a new entry. With C-M-w, you can kill several separated pieces of text and
accumulate them to be yanked back in one place.
10.2.3 Yanking Earlier Kills
To recover killed text that is no longer the most recent kill, you need the Meta-y (yankpop) command. You can use M-y only after a C-y or another M-y. It takes the text previously
yanked and replaces it with the text from an earlier kill. To recover the text of the next-tothe-last kill, first use C-y to recover the last kill, then M-y to replace it with the previous
kill.
You can think in terms of a “last yank” pointer which points at an item in the kill
ring. Each time you kill, the “last yank” pointer moves to the new item at the front of
the ring. C-y yanks the item which the “last yank” pointer points to. M-y moves the “last
yank” pointer to a different item, and the text in the buffer changes to match. Enough M-y
commands can move the pointer to any item in the ring, so you can get any item into the
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buffer. Eventually the pointer reaches the end of the ring; the next M-y moves it to the first
item again.
Yanking moves the “last yank” pointer around the ring, but does not change the order
of the entries in the ring, which always runs from the most recent kill at the front to the
oldest one still remembered.
Use M-y with a numeric argument to advance the “last yank” pointer by the specified
number of items. A negative argument moves the pointer toward the front of the ring; from
the front of the ring, it moves to the last entry and starts moving forward from there.
Once the text you are looking for is brought into the buffer, you can stop doing M-y
commands and the text will stay there. Since the text is just a copy of the kill ring item,
editing it in the buffer does not change what’s in the ring. As long you don’t kill additional
text, the “last yank” pointer remains at the same place in the kill ring: repeating C-y will
yank another copy of the same old kill.
If you know how many M-y commands it would take to find the text you want, you
can yank that text in one step using C-y with a numeric argument. C-y with an argument
greater than one restores the text the specified number of entries back in the kill ring. Thus,
C-u 2 C-y gets the next to the last block of killed text. It is equivalent to C-y M-y. C-y
with a numeric argument starts counting from the “last yank” pointer, and sets the “last
yank” pointer to the entry that it yanks.
The variable kill-ring-max controls the length of the kill ring; no more than that many
blocks of killed text are saved.
10.3 Using X Selections
In the X window system, mouse selections provide a simple mechanism for text transfer
between different applications. In a typical X application, you can select text by pressing
the left mouse button and dragging the cursor over the text you want to copy. The text
becomes the primary X selection and is highlighted. The highlighted region is also the
Emacs selected region.
• Since the region is the primary X selection, you can go to a different X application and
click the middle mouse button: the text that you selected in the previous application
is pasted into the current application.
• Since the region is the Emacs selected region, you can use all region commands (C-w,
M-w etc.) as well as the options of the Edit menu to manipulate the selected text.
10.3.1 The Clipboard Selection
There are other kinds of X selections besides the Primary selection; one common one
is the Clipboard selection. Some applications prefer to transfer data using this selection
in preference to the Primary. One can transfer text from the Primary selection to the
Clipboard selection with the Copy command under the Edit menu in the menubar.
Usually, the clipboard selection is not visible. However, if you run the ‘xclipboard’
application, the text most recently copied to the clipboard (with the Copy command) is
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displayed in a window. Any time new text is thus copied, the ‘xclipboard’ application
makes a copy of it and displays it in its window. The value of the clipboard can survive the
lifetime of the running Emacs process. The xclipboard man page provides more details.
Warning: If you use the ‘xclipboard’ application, remember that it maintains a list of
all things that have been pasted to the clipboard (that is, copied with the Copy command).
If you don’t manually delete elements from this list by clicking on the Delete button in the
xclipboard window, the clipboard will eventually consume a lot of memory.
In summary, some X applications (such as ‘xterm’) allow one to paste text in them from
XEmacs in the following way:
• Drag out a region of text in Emacs with the left mouse button, making that text be
the Primary selection.
• Click the middle button in the other application, pasting the Primary selection.
With some other applications (notably, the OpenWindows and Motif tools) you must
use this method instead:
• Drag out a region of text in Emacs with the left mouse button, making that text be
the Primary selection.
• Copy the selected text to the Clipboard selection by selecting the Copy menu item
from the Edit menu, or by hitting the Copy key on your keyboard.
• Paste the text in the other application by selecting Paste from its menu, or by hitting
the Paste key on your keyboard.
10.3.2 Miscellaneous X Selection Commands
M-x x-copy-primary-selection
Copy the primary selection to both the kill ring and the Clipboard.
M-x x-insert-selection
Insert the current selection into the buffer at point.
M-x x-delete-primary-selection
Deletes the text in the primary selection without copying it to the kill ring or
the Clipboard.
M-x x-kill-primary-selection
Deletes the text in the primary selection and copies it to both the kill ring and
the Clipboard.
M-x x-mouse-kill
Kill the text between point and the mouse and copy it to the clipboard and to
the cut buffer.
M-x x-own-secondary-selection
Make a secondary X selection of the given argument.
M-x x-own-selection
Make a primary X selection of the given argument.
M-x x-set-point-and-insert-selection
Set point where clicked and insert the primary selection or the cut buffer.
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10.3.3 X Cut Buffers
X cut buffers are a different, older way of transferring text between applications. XEmacs
supports cut buffers for compatibility with older programs, even though selections are now
the preferred way of transferring text.
X has a concept of applications "owning" selections. When you select text by clicking
and dragging inside an application, the application tells the X server that it owns the
selection. When another application asks the X server for the value of the selection, the X
server requests the information from the owner. When you use selections, the selection data
is not actually transferred unless someone wants it; the act of making a selection doesn’t
transfer data. Cut buffers are different: when you "own" a cut buffer, the data is actually
transferred to the X server immediately, and survives the lifetime of the application.
Any time a region of text becomes the primary selection in Emacs, Emacs also copies
that text to the cut buffer. This makes it possible to copy text from an XEmacs buffer and
paste it into an older, non-selection-based application (such as Emacs 18).
Note: Older versions of Emacs could not access the X selections, only the X cut buffers.
10.3.4 Active Regions
By default, both the text you select in an Emacs buffer using the click-and-drag mechanism and text you select by setting point and the mark is highlighted. You can use Emacs
region commands as well as the Cut and Copy commands on the highlighted region you
selected with the mouse.
If you prefer, you can make a distinction between text selected with the mouse and text
selected with point and the mark by setting the variable zmacs-regions to nil. In that
case:
• The text selected with the mouse becomes both the X selection and the Emacs selected
region. You can use menu-bar commands as well as Emacs region commands on it.
• The text selected with point and the mark is not highlighted. You can only use Emacs
region commands on it, not the menu-bar items.
Active regions originally come from Zmacs, the Lisp Machine editor. The idea behind
them is that commands can only operate on a region when the region is in an "active"
state. Put simply, you can only operate on a region that is highlighted.
The variable zmacs-regions checks whether LISPM-style active regions should be used.
This means that commands that operate on the region (the area between point and the
mark) only work while the region is in the active state, which is indicated by highlighting.
Most commands causes the region to not be in the active state; for example, C-w only works
immediately after activating the region.
More specifically:
• Commands that operate on the region only work if the region is active.
• Only a very small set of commands causes the region to become active— those commands whose semantics are to mark an area, such as mark-defun.
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• The region is deactivated after each command that is executed, except that motion
commands do not change whether the region is active or not.
set-mark-command (C-SPC) pushes a mark and activates the region. Moving the cursor
with normal motion commands (C-n, C-p, etc.) will cause the region between point and the
recently-pushed mark to be highlighted. It will remain highlighted until some non-motion
command is executed.
exchange-point-and-mark (C-x C-x) activates the region. So if you mark a region and
execute a command that operates on it, you can reactivate the same region with C-x C-x
(or perhaps C-x C-x C-x C-x) to operate on it again.
Generally, commands that push marks as a means of navigation, such as beginning-ofbuffer (M-<) and end-of-buffer (M->), do not activate the region. However, commands
that push marks as a means of marking an area of text, such as mark-defun (M-C-h),
mark-word (M-@), and mark-whole-buffer (C-x h), do activate the region.
When zmacs-regions is t, there is no distinction between the primary X selection and
the active region selected by point and the mark. To see this, set the mark (hC-SPCi) and
move the cursor with any cursor-motion command: the region between point and mark is
highlighted, and you can watch it grow and shrink as you move the cursor.
Any other commands besides cursor-motion commands (such as inserting or deleting
text) will cause the region to no longer be active; it will no longer be highlighted, and will
no longer be the primary selection. Region can be explicitly deactivated with C-g.
Commands that require a region (such as C-w) signal an error if the region is not active.
Certain commands cause the region to be in its active state. The most common ones are
push-mark (hC-SPCi) and exchange-point-and-mark (C-x C-x).
When zmacs-regions is t, programs can be non-intrusive on the state of the region
by setting the variable zmacs-region-stays to a non-nil value. If you are writing a new
Emacs command that is conceptually a “motion” command and should not interfere with
the current highlightedness of the region, then you may set this variable. It is reset to nil
after each user command is executed.
When zmacs-regions is t, programs can make the region between point and mark go
into the active (highlighted) state by using the function zmacs-activate-region. Only a
small number of commands should ever do this.
When zmacs-regions is t, programs can deactivate the region between point and the
mark by using zmacs-deactivate-region. Note: you should not have to call this function;
the command loop calls it when appropriate.
10.4 Accumulating Text
Usually you copy or move text by killing it and yanking it, but there are other ways
that are useful for copying one block of text in many places, or for copying many scattered
blocks of text into one place.
If you like, you can accumulate blocks of text from scattered locations either into a buffer
or into a file. The relevant commands are described here. You can also use Emacs registers
for storing and accumulating text. See Chapter 11 [Registers], page 89.
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M-x append-to-buffer
Append region to contents of specified buffer (append-to-buffer).
M-x prepend-to-buffer
Prepend region to contents of specified buffer.
M-x copy-to-buffer
Copy region into specified buffer, deleting that buffer’s old contents.
M-x insert-buffer
Insert contents of specified buffer into current buffer at point.
M-x append-to-file
Append region to the end of the contents of specified file.
To accumulate text into a buffer, use the command M-x append-to-buffer, which inserts a copy of the region into the buffer buffername, at the location of point in that buffer.
If there is no buffer with the given name, one is created.
If you append text to a buffer that has been used for editing, the copied text goes to the
place where point is. Point in that buffer is left at the end of the copied text, so successive
uses of append-to-buffer accumulate the text in the specified buffer in the same order
as they were copied. Strictly speaking, this command does not always append to the text
already in the buffer; but if this command is the only command used to alter a buffer, it
does always append to the existing text because point is always at the end.
M-x prepend-to-buffer is similar to append-to-buffer, but point in the other buffer
is left before the copied text, so successive prependings add text in reverse order. M-x
copy-to-buffer is similar, except that any existing text in the other buffer is deleted, so
the buffer is left containing just the text newly copied into it.
You can retrieve the accumulated text from that buffer with M-x insert-buffer, which
takes buffername as an argument. It inserts a copy of the text in buffer buffername into the
selected buffer. You could alternatively select the other buffer for editing, perhaps moving
text from it by killing or with append-to-buffer. See Chapter 16 [Buffers], page 139, for
background information on buffers.
Instead of accumulating text within Emacs in a buffer, you can append text directly into
a file with M-x append-to-file, which takes file-name as an argument. It adds the text
of the region to the end of the specified file. The file is changed immediately on disk. This
command is normally used with files that are not being visited in Emacs. Using it on a file
that Emacs is visiting can produce confusing results, because the file’s text inside Emacs
does not change while the file itself changes.
10.5 Rectangles
The rectangle commands affect rectangular areas of text: all characters between a certain
pair of columns, in a certain range of lines. Commands are provided to kill rectangles, yank
killed rectangles, clear them out, or delete them. Rectangle commands are useful with text
in multicolumnar formats, like code with comments at the right, or for changing text into
or out of such formats.
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To specify the rectangle a command should work on, put the mark at one corner and point
at the opposite corner. The specified rectangle is called the region-rectangle because it is
controlled about the same way the region is controlled. Remember that a given combination
of point and mark values can be interpreted either as specifying a region or as specifying a
rectangle; it is up to the command that uses them to choose the interpretation.
M-x delete-rectangle
Delete the text of the region-rectangle, moving any following text on each line
leftward to the left edge of the region-rectangle.
M-x kill-rectangle
Similar, but also save the contents of the region-rectangle as the “last killed
rectangle”.
M-x yank-rectangle
Yank the last killed rectangle with its upper left corner at point.
M-x open-rectangle
Insert blank space to fill the space of the region-rectangle. The previous contents
of the region-rectangle are pushed rightward.
M-x clear-rectangle
Clear the region-rectangle by replacing its contents with spaces.
The rectangle operations fall into two classes: commands deleting and moving rectangles,
and commands for blank rectangles.
There are two ways to get rid of the text in a rectangle: you can discard the text (delete
it) or save it as the “last killed” rectangle. The commands for these two ways are M-x
delete-rectangle and M-x kill-rectangle. In either case, the portion of each line that
falls inside the rectangle’s boundaries is deleted, causing following text (if any) on the line
to move left.
Note that “killing” a rectangle is not killing in the usual sense; the rectangle is not stored
in the kill ring, but in a special place that only records the most recently killed rectangle
(that is, does not append to a killed rectangle). Different yank commands have to be used
and only one rectangle is stored, because yanking a rectangle is quite different from yanking
linear text and yank-popping commands are difficult to make sense of.
Inserting a rectangle is the opposite of deleting one. You specify where to put the
upper left corner by putting point there. The rectangle’s first line is inserted at point,
the rectangle’s second line is inserted at a point one line vertically down, and so on. The
number of lines affected is determined by the height of the saved rectangle.
To insert the last killed rectangle, type M-x yank-rectangle. This can be used to convert
single-column lists into double-column lists; kill the second half of the list as a rectangle
and then yank it beside the first line of the list.
There are two commands for working with blank rectangles: M-x clear-rectangle
erases existing text, and M-x open-rectangle inserts a blank rectangle. Clearing a rectangle
is equivalent to deleting it and then inserting a blank rectangle of the same size.
Rectangles can also be copied into and out of registers. See Section 11.3 [Rectangle
Registers], page 90.
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11 Registers
XEmacs registers are places in which you can save text or positions for later use. Once
you save text or a rectangle in a register, you can copy it into the buffer once or many
times; a position saved in a register is used by moving point to that position. Rectangles
can also be copied into and out of registers (see Section 10.5 [Rectangles], page 87).
Each register has a name which is a single character. A register can store a piece of text,
a rectangle, a position, a window configuration, or a file name, but only one thing at any
given time. Whatever you store in a register remains there until you store something else
in that register. To see what a register r contains, use M-x view-register.
M-x view-register hRETi r
Display a description of what register r contains.
M-x view-register reads a register name as an argument and then displays the contents
of the specified register.
11.1 Saving Positions in Registers
Saving a position records a place in a buffer so that you can move back there later.
Moving to a saved position switches to that buffer and moves point to that place in it.
C-x r hSPCi r
Save position of point in register r (point-to-register).
C-x r j r
Jump to the position saved in register r (jump-to-register).
To save the current position of point in a register, choose a name r and type C-x r hSPCi
r. The register r retains the position thus saved until you store something else in that
register.
The command C-x r j r moves point to the position recorded in register r. The register
is not affected; it continues to record the same location. You can jump to the same position
using the same register as often as you want.
If you use C-x r j to go to a saved position, but the buffer it was saved from has been
killed, C-x r j tries to create the buffer again by visiting the same file. Of course, this works
only for buffers that were visiting files.
11.2 Saving Text in Registers
When you want to insert a copy of the same piece of text many times, it can be impractical to use the kill ring, since each subsequent kill moves the piece of text further down on
the ring. It becomes hard to keep track of the argument needed to retrieve the same text
with C-y. An alternative is to store the text in a register with C-x r s (copy-to-register)
and then retrieve it with C-x r i (insert-register).
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C-x r s r
Copy region into register r (copy-to-register).
C-x r g r
C-x r i r
Insert text contents of register r (insert-register).
C-x r s r stores a copy of the text of the region into the register named r. Given a
numeric argument, C-x r s r deletes the text from the buffer as well.
C-x r i r inserts the text from register r in the buffer. By default it leaves point before
the text and places the mark after it. With a numeric argument (C-u), it puts point after
the text and the mark before it.
11.3 Saving Rectangles in Registers
A register can contain a rectangle instead of lines of text. The rectangle is represented as
a list of strings. See Section 10.5 [Rectangles], page 87, for basic information on rectangles
and how to specify rectangles in a buffer.
C-x r r r
C-x r g r
C-x r i r
Copy the region-rectangle into register r (copy-rectangle-to-register).
With a numeric argument, delete it as well.
Insert the rectangle stored in register r (if it contains a rectangle) (insertregister).
The C-x r i r command inserts linear text if the register contains that, or inserts a
rectangle if the register contains one.
See also the command sort-columns, which you can think of as sorting a rectangle. See
Section 28.1 [Sorting], page 279.
11.4 Saving Window Configurations in Registers
You can save the window configuration of the selected frame in a register, or even the
configuration of all windows in all frames, and restore the configuration later.
C-x r w r
Save the state of the selected frame’s windows in register r (window-configurationto-register).
M-x frame-configuration-to-register hRETi r
Save the state of all frames, including all their windows, in register r (frameconfiguration-to-register).
Use C-x r j r to restore a window or frame configuration. This is the same command
used to restore a cursor position. When you restore a frame configuration, any existing
frames not included in the configuration become invisible. If you wish to delete these
frames instead, use C-u C-x r j r.
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11.5 Keeping Numbers in Registers
There are commands to store a number in a register, to insert the number in the buffer
in decimal, and to increment it. These commands can be useful in keyboard macros (see
Section 29.3 [Keyboard Macros], page 301).
C-u number C-x r n reg
Store number into register reg (number-to-register).
C-u number C-x r + reg
Increment the number in register reg by number (increment-register).
C-x r g reg
Insert the number from register reg into the buffer.
C-x r g is the same command used to insert any other sort of register contents into the
buffer.
11.6 Keeping File Names in Registers
If you visit certain file names frequently, you can visit them more conveniently if you
put their names in registers. Here’s the Lisp code used to put a file name in a register:
(set-register ?r ’(file . name))
For example,
(set-register ?z ’(file . "/usr/src/xemacs/src/ChangeLog"))
puts the file name shown in register ‘z’.
To visit the file whose name is in register r, type C-x r j r. (This is the same command
used to jump to a position or restore a frame configuration.)
11.7 Bookmarks
Bookmarks are somewhat like registers in that they record positions you can jump to.
Unlike registers, they have long names, and they persist automatically from one Emacs
session to the next. The prototypical use of bookmarks is to record “where you were
reading” in various files.
Note: bookmark.el is distributed in edit-utils package. You need to install that to use
bookmark facility (see Section 23.8 [Packages], page 217).
C-x r m hRETi
Set the bookmark for the visited file, at point.
C-x r m bookmark hRETi
Set the bookmark named bookmark at point (bookmark-set).
C-x r b bookmark hRETi
Jump to the bookmark named bookmark (bookmark-jump).
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List all bookmarks (list-bookmarks).
M-x bookmark-save
Save all the current bookmark values in the default bookmark file.
The prototypical use for bookmarks is to record one current position in each of several
files. So the command C-x r m, which sets a bookmark, uses the visited file name as the
default for the bookmark name. If you name each bookmark after the file it points to, then
you can conveniently revisit any of those files with C-x r b, and move to the position of the
bookmark at the same time.
To display a list of all your bookmarks in a separate buffer, type C-x r l (listbookmarks). If you switch to that buffer, you can use it to edit your bookmark definitions or
annotate the bookmarks. Type C-h m in that buffer for more information about its special
editing commands.
When you kill XEmacs, XEmacs offers to save your bookmark values in your default
bookmark file, ‘~/.emacs.bmk’, if you have changed any bookmark values. You can also
save the bookmarks at any time with the M-x bookmark-save command. The bookmark
commands load your default bookmark file automatically. This saving and loading is how
bookmarks persist from one XEmacs session to the next.
If you set the variable bookmark-save-flag to 1, then each command that sets a bookmark will also save your bookmarks; this way, you don’t lose any bookmark values even if
XEmacs crashes. (The value, if a number, says how many bookmark modifications should
go by between saving.)
Bookmark position values are saved with surrounding context, so that bookmark-jump
can find the proper position even if the file is modified slightly. The variable bookmarksearch-size says how many characters of context to record, on each side of the bookmark’s
position.
Here are some additional commands for working with bookmarks:
M-x bookmark-load hRETi filename hRETi
Load a file named filename that contains a list of bookmark values. You can use
this command, as well as bookmark-write, to work with other files of bookmark
values in addition to your default bookmark file.
M-x bookmark-write hRETi filename hRETi
Save all the current bookmark values in the file filename.
M-x bookmark-delete hRETi bookmark hRETi
Delete the bookmark named bookmark.
M-x bookmark-insert-location hRETi bookmark hRETi
Insert in the buffer the name of the file that bookmark bookmark points to.
M-x bookmark-insert hRETi bookmark hRETi
Insert in the buffer the contents of the file that bookmark bookmark points to.
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12 Controlling the Display
Since only part of a large buffer fits in the window, XEmacs tries to show the part that
is likely to be interesting. The display control commands allow you to specify which part
of the text you want to see.
C-l
C-v
pgdn
next
M-v
pgup
prior
Clear frame and redisplay, scrolling the selected window to center point vertically within it (recenter).
Scroll forward (a windowful or a specified number of lines) (scroll-up). On
most X keyboards, you can get this functionality using the key labelled ‘Page
Down’, which generates either next or pgdn.
Scroll backward (scroll-down). On most X keyboards, you can get this functionality using the key labelled ‘Page Up’, which generates either prior or pgup.
arg C-l
Scroll so point is on line arg (recenter).
C-x <
C-pgdn
C-next
Scroll text in current window to the left (scroll-left).
C-x >
C-pgup
C-prior
Scroll to the right (scroll-right).
C-x $
Make deeply indented lines invisible (set-selective-display).
12.1 Scrolling
If a buffer contains text that is too large to fit entirely within the window that is displaying the buffer, XEmacs shows a contiguous section of the text. The section shown always
contains point.
Scrolling means moving text up or down in the window so that different parts of the
text are visible. Scrolling forward means that text moves up, and new text appears at the
bottom. Scrolling backward moves text down and new text appears at the top.
Scrolling happens automatically if you move point past the bottom or top of the window.
You can also explicitly request scrolling with the commands in this section.
The most basic scrolling command is C-l (recenter) with no argument. It clears the
entire frame and redisplays all windows. In addition, it scrolls the selected window so that
point is halfway down from the top of the window.
The scrolling commands C-v and M-v let you move all the text in the window up or
down a few lines. C-v (scroll-up) with an argument shows you that many more lines at
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the bottom of the window, moving the text and point up together as C-l might. C-v with a
negative argument shows you more lines at the top of the window. Meta-v (scroll-down)
is like C-v, but moves in the opposite direction.
To read the buffer a windowful at a time, use C-v with no argument. C-v takes the last
two lines at the bottom of the window and puts them at the top, followed by nearly a whole
windowful of lines not previously visible. Point moves to the new top of the window if it
was in the text scrolled off the top. M-v with no argument moves backward with similar
overlap. The number of lines of overlap across a C-v or M-v is controlled by the variable
next-screen-context-lines; by default, it is two.
Another way to scroll is using C-l with a numeric argument. C-l does not clear the frame
when given an argument; it only scrolls the selected window. With a positive argument
n, C-l repositions text to put point n lines down from the top. An argument of zero puts
point on the very top line. Point does not move with respect to the text; rather, the text
and point move rigidly on the frame. C-l with a negative argument puts point that many
lines from the bottom of the window. For example, C-u - 1 C-l puts point on the bottom
line, and C-u - 5 C-l puts it five lines from the bottom. Just C-u as argument, as in C-u
C-l, scrolls point to the center of the frame.
Scrolling happens automatically if point has moved out of the visible portion of the text
when it is time to display. Usually scrolling is done to put point vertically centered within
the window. However, if the variable scroll-step has a non-zero value, an attempt is
made to scroll the buffer by that many lines; if that is enough to bring point back into
visibility, that is what happens.
Scrolling happens automatically if point has moved out of the visible portion of the text
when it is time to display. Usually scrolling is done to put point vertically centered within
the window. However, if the variable scroll-step has a non-zero value, an attempt is
made to scroll the buffer by that many lines; if that is enough to bring point back into
visibility, that is what happens.
If you set scroll-step to a small value because you want to use arrow keys to scroll
the screen without recentering, the redisplay preemption will likely make XEmacs keep
recentering the screen when scrolling fast, regardless of scroll-step. To prevent this,
set scroll-conservatively to a small value, which will have the result of overriding the
redisplay preemption.
12.2 Horizontal Scrolling
The text in a window can also be scrolled horizontally. This means that each line of text
is shifted sideways in the window, and one or more characters at the beginning of each line
are not displayed at all. When a window has been scrolled horizontally in this way, text
lines are truncated rather than continued (see Section 4.7 [Continuation Lines], page 51),
with a ‘$’ appearing in the first column when there is text truncated to the left, and in the
last column when there is text truncated to the right.
The command C-x < (scroll-left) scrolls the selected window to the left by n columns
with argument n. With no argument, it scrolls by almost the full width of the window
(two columns less, to be precise). C-x > (scroll-right) scrolls similarly to the right. The
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window cannot be scrolled any farther to the right once it is displaying normally (with each
line starting at the window’s left margin); attempting to do so has no effect.
12.3 Selective Display
XEmacs can hide lines indented more than a certain number of columns (you specify
how many columns). This allows you to get an overview of a part of a program.
To hide lines, type C-x $ (set-selective-display) with a numeric argument n. (See
Section 4.9 [Arguments], page 53, for information on giving the argument.) Lines with
at least n columns of indentation disappear from the screen. The only indication of their
presence are three dots (‘...’), which appear at the end of each visible line that is followed
by one or more invisible ones.
The invisible lines are still present in the buffer, and most editing commands see them
as usual, so it is very easy to put point in the middle of invisible text. When this happens,
the cursor appears at the end of the previous line, after the three dots. If point is at the
end of the visible line, before the newline that ends it, the cursor appears before the three
dots.
The commands C-n and C-p move across the invisible lines as if they were not there.
To make everything visible again, type C-x $ with no argument.
12.4 Variables Controlling Display
This section contains information for customization only. Beginning users should skip
it.
When you reenter XEmacs after suspending, XEmacs normally clears the screen and
redraws the entire display. On some terminals with more than one page of memory, it
is possible to arrange the termcap entry so that the ‘ti’ and ‘te’ strings (output to the
terminal when XEmacs is entered and exited, respectively) switch between pages of memory
so as to use one page for XEmacs and another page for other output. In that case, you
might want to set the variable no-redraw-on-reenter to non-nil so that XEmacs will
assume, when resumed, that the screen page it is using still contains what XEmacs last
wrote there.
The variable echo-keystrokes controls the echoing of multi-character keys; its value is
the number of seconds of pause required to cause echoing to start, or zero, meaning don’t
echo at all. See Section 1.2 [Echo Area], page 14.
If the variable ctl-arrow is nil, control characters in the buffer are displayed with octal
escape sequences, all except newline and tab. If its value is t, then control characters will
be printed with an up-arrow, for example ^A.
If its value is not t and not nil, then characters whose code is greater than 160 (that
is, the space character (32) with its high bit set) will be assumed to be printable, and will
be displayed without alteration. This is the default when running under X Windows, since
XEmacs assumes an ISO/8859-1 character set (also known as “Latin1”). The ctl-arrow
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variable may also be set to an integer, in which case all characters whose codes are greater
than or equal to that value will be assumed to be printable.
Altering the value of ctl-arrow makes it local to the current buffer; until that time, the
default value is in effect. See Section 29.2.4 [Locals], page 298.
Normally, a tab character in the buffer is displayed as whitespace which extends to
the next display tab stop position, and display tab stops come at intervals equal to eight
spaces. The number of spaces per tab is controlled by the variable tab-width, which is
made local by changing it, just like ctl-arrow. Note that how the tab character in the
buffer is displayed has nothing to do with the definition of hTABi as a command.
If you set the variable selective-display-ellipses to nil, the three dots at the end
of a line that precedes invisible lines do not appear. There is no visible indication of the
invisible lines. This variable becomes local automatically when set.
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13 Searching and Replacement
Like other editors, Emacs has commands for searching for occurrences of a string. The
principal search command is unusual in that it is incremental: it begins to search before you
have finished typing the search string. There are also non-incremental search commands
more like those of other editors.
Besides the usual replace-string command that finds all occurrences of one string
and replaces them with another, Emacs has a fancy replacement command called queryreplace which asks interactively which occurrences to replace.
13.1 Incremental Search
An incremental search begins searching as soon as you type the first character of the
search string. As you type in the search string, Emacs shows you where the string (as you
have typed it so far) is found. When you have typed enough characters to identify the place
you want, you can stop. Depending on what you do next, you may or may not need to
terminate the search explicitly with a hRETi.
C-s
Incremental search forward (isearch-forward).
C-r
Incremental search backward (isearch-backward).
C-s starts an incremental search. C-s reads characters from the keyboard and positions
the cursor at the first occurrence of the characters that you have typed. If you type C-s
and then F, the cursor moves right after the first ‘F’. Type an O, and see the cursor move to
after the first ‘FO’. After another O, the cursor is after the first ‘FOO’ after the place where
you started the search. Meanwhile, the search string ‘FOO’ has been echoed in the echo area.
The echo area display ends with three dots when actual searching is going on. When
search is waiting for more input, the three dots are removed. (On slow terminals, the three
dots are not displayed.)
If you make a mistake in typing the search string, you can erase characters with hDELi.
Each hDELi cancels the last character of the search string. This does not happen until
Emacs is ready to read another input character; first it must either find, or fail to find,
the character you want to erase. If you do not want to wait for this to happen, use C-g as
described below.
When you are satisfied with the place you have reached, you can type hRETi (or hC-mi),
which stops searching, leaving the cursor where the search brought it. Any command not
specially meaningful in searches also stops the search and is then executed. Thus, typing
C-a exits the search and then moves to the beginning of the line. hRETi is necessary only if
the next command you want to type is a printing character, hDELi, hESCi, or another control
character that is special within searches (C-q, C-w, C-r, C-s, or C-y).
Sometimes you search for ‘FOO’ and find it, but were actually looking for a different
occurrence of it. To move to the next occurrence of the search string, type another C-s. Do
this as often as necessary. If you overshoot, you can cancel some C-s characters with hDELi.
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After you exit a search, you can search for the same string again by typing just C-s C-s:
the first C-s is the key that invokes incremental search, and the second C-s means “search
again”.
If the specified string is not found at all, the echo area displays the text ‘Failing
I-Search’. The cursor is after the place where Emacs found as much of your string as it
could. Thus, if you search for ‘FOOT’, and there is no ‘FOOT’, the cursor may be after the
‘FOO’ in ‘FOOL’. At this point there are several things you can do. If you mistyped the
search string, correct it. If you like the place you have found, you can type hRETi or some
other Emacs command to “accept what the search offered”. Or you can type C-g, which
removes from the search string the characters that could not be found (the ‘T’ in ‘FOOT’),
leaving those that were found (the ‘FOO’ in ‘FOOT’). A second C-g at that point cancels the
search entirely, returning point to where it was when the search started.
If a search is failing and you ask to repeat it by typing another C-s, it starts again from
the beginning of the buffer. Repeating a failing backward search with C-r starts again from
the end. This is called wrapping around. ‘Wrapped’ appears in the search prompt once this
has happened.
The C-g “quit” character does special things during searches; just what it does depends
on the status of the search. If the search has found what you specified and is waiting for
input, C-g cancels the entire search. The cursor moves back to where you started the search.
If C-g is typed when there are characters in the search string that have not been found—
because Emacs is still searching for them, or because it has failed to find them—then the
search string characters which have not been found are discarded from the search string.
The search is now successful and waiting for more input, so a second C-g cancels the entire
search.
To search for a control character such as C-s or hDELi or hESCi, you must quote it by
typing C-q first. This function of C-q is analogous to its meaning as an Emacs command:
it causes the following character to be treated the way a graphic character would normally
be treated in the same context.
To search backwards, you can use C-r instead of C-s to start the search; C-r is the key
that runs the command (isearch-backward) to search backward. You can also use C-r
to change from searching forward to searching backwards. Do this if a search fails because
the place you started was too far down in the file. Repeated C-r keeps looking for more
occurrences backwards. C-s starts going forward again. You can cancel C-r in a search
with hDELi.
The characters C-y and C-w can be used in incremental search to grab text from the
buffer into the search string. This makes it convenient to search for another occurrence of
text at point. C-w copies the word after point as part of the search string, advancing point
over that word. Another C-s to repeat the search will then search for a string including
that word. C-y is similar to C-w but copies the rest of the current line into the search string.
The characters M-p and M-n can be used in an incremental search to recall things which
you have searched for in the past. A list of the last 16 things you have searched for is
retained, and M-p and M-n let you cycle through that ring.
The character M-hTABi does completion on the elements in the search history ring. For
example, if you know that you have recently searched for the string POTATOE, you could
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type C-s P O M-hTABi. If you had searched for other strings beginning with PO then you
would be shown a list of them, and would need to type more to select one.
You can change any of the special characters in incremental search via the normal keybinding mechanism: simply add a binding to the isearch-mode-map. For example, to make
the character C-b mean “search backwards” while in isearch-mode, do this:
(define-key isearch-mode-map "\C-b" ’isearch-repeat-backward)
These are the default bindings of isearch-mode:
DEL
Delete a character from the incremental search string (isearch-delete-char).
RET
Exit incremental search (isearch-exit).
C-q
Quote special characters for incremental search (isearch-quote-char).
C-s
Repeat incremental search forward (isearch-repeat-forward).
C-r
Repeat incremental search backward (isearch-repeat-backward).
C-y
Pull rest of line from buffer into search string (isearch-yank-line).
C-w
Pull next word from buffer into search string (isearch-yank-word).
C-g
Cancels input back to what has been found successfully, or aborts the isearch
(isearch-abort).
M-p
Recall the previous element in the isearch history ring (isearch-ringretreat).
M-n
Recall the next element in the isearch history ring (isearch-ring-advance).
M-hTABi
Do completion on the elements in the isearch history ring (isearch-complete).
Any other character which is normally inserted into a buffer when typed is automatically
added to the search string in isearch-mode.
13.1.1 Slow Terminal Incremental Search
Incremental search on a slow terminal uses a modified style of display that is designed
to take less time. Instead of redisplaying the buffer at each place the search gets to, it
creates a new single-line window and uses that to display the line the search has found.
The single-line window appears as soon as point gets outside of the text that is already on
the screen.
When the search is terminated, the single-line window is removed. Only at this time the
window in which the search was done is redisplayed to show its new value of point.
The three dots at the end of the search string, normally used to indicate that searching
is going on, are not displayed in slow style display.
The slow terminal style of display is used when the terminal baud rate is less than or
equal to the value of the variable search-slow-speed, initially 1200.
The number of lines to use in slow terminal search display is controlled by the variable
search-slow-window-lines. Its normal value is 1.
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13.2 Non-Incremental Search
Emacs also has conventional non-incremental search commands, which require you type
the entire search string before searching begins.
C-s hRETi string hRETi
Search for string.
C-r hRETi string hRETi
Search backward for string.
To do a non-incremental search, first type C-s hRETi (or C-s C-m). This enters the
minibuffer to read the search string. Terminate the string with hRETi to start the search. If
the string is not found, the search command gets an error.
By default, C-s invokes incremental search, but if you give it an empty argument, which
would otherwise be useless, it invokes non-incremental search. Therefore, C-s hRETi invokes
non-incremental search. C-r hRETi also works this way.
Forward and backward non-incremental searches are implemented by the commands
search-forward and search-backward. You can bind these commands to keys. The
reason that incremental search is programmed to invoke them as well is that C-s hRETi is
the traditional sequence of characters used in Emacs to invoke non-incremental search.
Non-incremental searches performed using C-s hRETi do not call search-forward right
away. They first check if the next character is C-w, which requests a word search.
13.3 Word Search
Word search looks for a sequence of words without regard to how the words are separated.
More precisely, you type a string of many words, using single spaces to separate them, and
the string is found even if there are multiple spaces, newlines or other punctuation between
the words.
Word search is useful in editing documents formatted by text formatters. If you edit
while looking at the printed, formatted version, you can’t tell where the line breaks are in
the source file. Word search, allows you to search without having to know the line breaks.
C-s hRETi C-w words hRETi
Search for words, ignoring differences in punctuation.
C-r hRETi C-w words hRETi
Search backward for words, ignoring differences in punctuation.
Word search is a special case of non-incremental search. It is invoked with C-s hRETi C-w
followed by the search string, which must always be terminated with another hRETi. Being
non-incremental, this search does not start until the argument is terminated. It works by
constructing a regular expression and searching for that. See Section 13.4 [Regexp Search],
page 101.
You can do a backward word search with C-r hRETi C-w.
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Forward and backward word searches are implemented by the commands word-searchforward and word-search-backward. You can bind these commands to keys. The reason
that incremental search is programmed to invoke them as well is that C-s hRETi C-w is the
traditional Emacs sequence of keys for word search.
13.4 Regular Expression Search
A regular expression (regexp, for short) is a pattern that denotes a (possibly infinite) set
of strings. Searching for matches for a regexp is a powerful operation that editors on Unix
systems have traditionally offered.
To gain a thorough understanding of regular expressions and how to use them to
best advantage, we recommend that you study Mastering Regular Expressions, by Jeffrey E.F. Friedl, O’Reilly and Associates, 1997. (It’s known as the "Hip Owls" book,
because of the picture on its cover.) You might also read the manuals to hundefinedi
[(gawk)Top], page hundefinedi, hundefinedi [(ed)Top], page hundefinedi, sed, grep, hundefinedi [(perl)Top], page hundefinedi, hundefinedi [(regex)Top], page hundefinedi, hundefinedi
[(rx)Top], page hundefinedi, pcre, and hundefinedi [(flex)Top], page hundefinedi, which also
make good use of regular expressions.
The XEmacs regular expression syntax most closely resembles that of ed, or grep, the
GNU versions of which all utilize the GNU regex library. XEmacs’ version of regex has
recently been extended with some Perl–like capabilities, described in the next section.
In XEmacs, you can search for the next match for a regexp either incrementally or not.
Incremental search for a regexp is done by typing M-C-s (isearch-forward-regexp).
This command reads a search string incrementally just like C-s, but it treats the search
string as a regexp rather than looking for an exact match against the text in the buffer.
Each time you add text to the search string, you make the regexp longer, and the new
regexp is searched for. A reverse regexp search command isearch-backward-regexp also
exists, bound to M-C-r.
All of the control characters that do special things within an ordinary incremental search
have the same functionality in incremental regexp search. Typing C-s or C-r immediately
after starting a search retrieves the last incremental search regexp used: incremental regexp
and non-regexp searches have independent defaults.
Non-incremental search for a regexp is done by the functions re-search-forward and
re-search-backward. You can invoke them with M-x or bind them to keys. You can also
call re-search-forward by way of incremental regexp search with M-C-s hRETi; similarly
for re-search-backward with M-C-r hRETi.
13.5 Syntax of Regular Expressions
Regular expressions have a syntax in which a few characters are special constructs and
the rest are ordinary. An ordinary character is a simple regular expression that matches
that character and nothing else. The special characters are ‘.’, ‘*’, ‘+’, ‘?’, ‘[’, ‘]’, ‘^’,
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‘$’, and ‘\’; no new special characters will be defined in the future. Any other character
appearing in a regular expression is ordinary, unless a ‘\’ precedes it.
For example, ‘f’ is not a special character, so it is ordinary, and therefore ‘f’ is a regular
expression that matches the string ‘f’ and no other string. (It does not match the string
‘ff’.) Likewise, ‘o’ is a regular expression that matches only ‘o’.
Any two regular expressions a and b can be concatenated. The result is a regular
expression that matches a string if a matches some amount of the beginning of that string
and b matches the rest of the string.
As a simple example, we can concatenate the regular expressions ‘f’ and ‘o’ to get the
regular expression ‘fo’, which matches only the string ‘fo’. Still trivial. To do something
more powerful, you need to use one of the special characters. Here is a list of them:
. (Period) is a special character that matches any single character except a newline. Using
concatenation, we can make regular expressions like ‘a.b’, which matches any
three-character string that begins with ‘a’ and ends with ‘b’.
*
is not a construct by itself; it is a quantifying suffix operator that means to
repeat the preceding regular expression as many times as possible. In ‘fo*’, the
‘*’ applies to the ‘o’, so ‘fo*’ matches one ‘f’ followed by any number of ‘o’s.
The case of zero ‘o’s is allowed: ‘fo*’ does match ‘f’.
‘*’ always applies to the smallest possible preceding expression. Thus, ‘fo*’
has a repeating ‘o’, not a repeating ‘fo’.
The matcher processes a ‘*’ construct by matching, immediately, as many repetitions as can be found; it is "greedy". Then it continues with the rest of the
pattern. If that fails, backtracking occurs, discarding some of the matches of
the ‘*’-modified construct in case that makes it possible to match the rest of the
pattern. For example, in matching ‘ca*ar’ against the string ‘caaar’, the ‘a*’
first tries to match all three ‘a’s; but the rest of the pattern is ‘ar’ and there is
only ‘r’ left to match, so this try fails. The next alternative is for ‘a*’ to match
only two ‘a’s. With this choice, the rest of the regexp matches successfully.
Nested repetition operators can be extremely slow if they specify backtracking
loops. For example, it could take hours for the regular expression ‘\(x+y*\)*a’
to match the sequence ‘xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxz’. The slowness is because Emacs must try each imaginable way of grouping the 35 ‘x’’s
before concluding that none of them can work. To make sure your regular
expressions run fast, check nested repetitions carefully.
+
is a quantifying suffix operator similar to ‘*’ except that the preceding expression must match at least once. It is also "greedy". So, for example, ‘ca+r’
matches the strings ‘car’ and ‘caaaar’ but not the string ‘cr’, whereas ‘ca*r’
matches all three strings.
?
is a quantifying suffix operator similar to ‘*’, except that the preceding expression can match either once or not at all. For example, ‘ca?r’ matches ‘car’ or
‘cr’, but does not match anything else.
*?
works just like ‘*’, except that rather than matching the longest match, it
matches the shortest match. ‘*?’ is known as a non-greedy quantifier, a regexp
construct borrowed from Perl.
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This construct is very useful for when you want to match the text inside a pair
of delimiters. For instance, ‘/\*.*?\*/’ will match C comments in a string.
This could not easily be achieved without the use of a non-greedy quantifier.
This construct has not been available prior to XEmacs 20.4. It is not available
in FSF Emacs.
+?
is the non-greedy version of ‘+’.
??
is the non-greedy version of ‘?’.
\{n,m\}
serves as an interval quantifier, analogous to ‘*’ or ‘+’, but specifies that the
expression must match at least n times, but no more than m times. This syntax
is supported by most Unix regexp utilities, and has been introduced to XEmacs
for the version 20.3.
Unfortunately, the non-greedy version of this quantifier does not exist currently,
although it does in Perl.
[ ... ]
‘[’ begins a character set, which is terminated by a ‘]’. In the simplest case, the
characters between the two brackets form the set. Thus, ‘[ad]’ matches either
one ‘a’ or one ‘d’, and ‘[ad]*’ matches any string composed of just ‘a’s and
‘d’s (including the empty string), from which it follows that ‘c[ad]*r’ matches
‘cr’, ‘car’, ‘cdr’, ‘caddaar’, etc.
The usual regular expression special characters are not special inside a character
set. A completely different set of special characters exists inside character sets:
‘]’, ‘-’ and ‘^’.
‘-’ is used for ranges of characters. To write a range, write two characters with a
‘-’ between them. Thus, ‘[a-z]’ matches any lower case letter. Ranges may be
intermixed freely with individual characters, as in ‘[a-z$%.]’, which matches
any lower case letter or ‘$’, ‘%’, or a period.
To include a ‘]’ in a character set, make it the first character. For example,
‘[]a]’ matches ‘]’ or ‘a’. To include a ‘-’, write ‘-’ as the first character in
the set, or put it immediately after a range. (You can replace one individual
character c with the range ‘c-c’ to make a place to put the ‘-’.) There is no
way to write a set containing just ‘-’ and ‘]’.
To include ‘^’ in a set, put it anywhere but at the beginning of the set.
[^ ... ]
‘[^’ begins a complement character set, which matches any character except
the ones specified. Thus, ‘[^a-z0-9A-Z]’ matches all characters except letters
and digits.
‘^’ is not special in a character set unless it is the first character. The character
following the ‘^’ is treated as if it were first (thus, ‘-’ and ‘]’ are not special
there).
Note that a complement character set can match a newline, unless newline is
mentioned as one of the characters not to match.
^
is a special character that matches the empty string, but only at the beginning
of a line in the text being matched. Otherwise it fails to match anything. Thus,
‘^foo’ matches a ‘foo’ that occurs at the beginning of a line.
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When matching a string instead of a buffer, ‘^’ matches at the beginning of the
string or after a newline character ‘\n’.
$
is similar to ‘^’ but matches only at the end of a line. Thus, ‘x+$’ matches a
string of one ‘x’ or more at the end of a line.
When matching a string instead of a buffer, ‘$’ matches at the end of the string
or before a newline character ‘\n’.
\
has two functions: it quotes the special characters (including ‘\’), and it introduces additional special constructs.
Because ‘\’ quotes special characters, ‘\$’ is a regular expression that matches
only ‘$’, and ‘\[’ is a regular expression that matches only ‘[’, and so on.
Please note: For historical compatibility, special characters are treated as ordinary ones
if they are in contexts where their special meanings make no sense. For example, ‘*foo’
treats ‘*’ as ordinary since there is no preceding expression on which the ‘*’ can act. It is
poor practice to depend on this behavior; quote the special character anyway, regardless of
where it appears.
For the most part, ‘\’ followed by any character matches only that character. However,
there are several exceptions: characters that, when preceded by ‘\’, are special constructs.
Such characters are always ordinary when encountered on their own. Here is a table of ‘\’
constructs:
\|
specifies an alternative. Two regular expressions a and b with ‘\|’ in between
form an expression that matches anything that either a or b matches.
Thus, ‘foo\|bar’ matches either ‘foo’ or ‘bar’ but no other string.
‘\|’ applies to the largest possible surrounding expressions. Only a surrounding
‘\( ... \)’ grouping can limit the grouping power of ‘\|’.
Full backtracking capability exists to handle multiple uses of ‘\|’.
\( ... \) is a grouping construct that serves three purposes:
1. To enclose a set of ‘\|’ alternatives for other operations. Thus, ‘\(foo\|bar\)x’
matches either ‘foox’ or ‘barx’.
2. To enclose an expression for a suffix operator such as ‘*’ to act on. Thus,
‘ba\(na\)*’ matches ‘bananana’, etc., with any (zero or more) number of
‘na’ strings.
3. To record a matched substring for future reference.
This last application is not a consequence of the idea of a parenthetical grouping;
it is a separate feature that happens to be assigned as a second meaning to the
same ‘\( ... \)’ construct because there is no conflict in practice between the
two meanings. Here is an explanation of this feature:
\digit
matches the same text that matched the digitth occurrence of a ‘\( ... \)’
construct.
In other words, after the end of a ‘\( ... \)’ construct. the matcher remembers
the beginning and end of the text matched by that construct. Then, later on
in the regular expression, you can use ‘\’ followed by digit to match that same
text, whatever it may have been.
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The strings matching the first nine ‘\( ... \)’ constructs appearing in a regular expression are assigned numbers 1 through 9 in the order that the open
parentheses appear in the regular expression. So you can use ‘\1’ through ‘\9’
to refer to the text matched by the corresponding ‘\( ... \)’ constructs.
For example, ‘\(.*\)\1’ matches any newline-free string that is composed of
two identical halves. The ‘\(.*\)’ matches the first half, which may be anything, but the ‘\1’ that follows must match the same exact text.
\(?: ... \)
is called a shy grouping operator, and it is used just like ‘\( ... \)’, except
that it does not cause the matched substring to be recorded for future reference.
This is useful when you need a lot of grouping ‘\( ... \)’ constructs, but only
want to remember one or two – or if you have more than nine groupings and
need to use backreferences to refer to the groupings at the end.
Using ‘\(?: ... \)’ rather than ‘\( ... \)’ when you don’t need the captured
substrings ought to speed up your programs some, since it shortens the code
path followed by the regular expression engine, as well as the amount of memory
allocation and string copying it must do. The actual performance gain to be
observed has not been measured or quantified as of this writing.
The shy grouping operator has been borrowed from Perl, and has not been
available prior to XEmacs 20.3, nor is it available in FSF Emacs.
\w
matches any word-constituent character. The editor syntax table determines
which characters these are. See Section 29.5 [Syntax], page 308.
\W
matches any character that is not a word constituent.
\scode
matches any character whose syntax is code. Here code is a character that
represents a syntax code: thus, ‘w’ for word constituent, ‘-’ for whitespace,
‘(’ for open parenthesis, etc. See Section 29.5 [Syntax], page 308, for a list of
syntax codes and the characters that stand for them.
\Scode
matches any character whose syntax is not code.
The following regular expression constructs match the empty string—that is, they don’t
use up any characters—but whether they match depends on the context.
\‘
matches the empty string, but only at the beginning of the buffer or string
being matched against.
\’
matches the empty string, but only at the end of the buffer or string being
matched against.
\=
matches the empty string, but only at point. (This construct is not defined
when matching against a string.)
\b
matches the empty string, but only at the beginning or end of a word. Thus,
‘\bfoo\b’ matches any occurrence of ‘foo’ as a separate word. ‘\bballs?\b’
matches ‘ball’ or ‘balls’ as a separate word.
\B
matches the empty string, but not at the beginning or end of a word.
\<
matches the empty string, but only at the beginning of a word.
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matches the empty string, but only at the end of a word.
Here is a complicated regexp used by Emacs to recognize the end of a sentence together
with any whitespace that follows. It is given in Lisp syntax to enable you to distinguish the
spaces from the tab characters. In Lisp syntax, the string constant begins and ends with a
double-quote. ‘\"’ stands for a double-quote as part of the regexp, ‘\\’ for a backslash as
part of the regexp, ‘\t’ for a tab and ‘\n’ for a newline.
"[.?!][]\"’)]*\\($\\|\t\\| \\)[ \t\n]*"
This regexp contains four parts: a character set matching period, ‘?’ or ‘!’; a character set
matching close-brackets, quotes or parentheses, repeated any number of times; an alternative in backslash-parentheses that matches end-of-line, a tab or two spaces; and a character
set matching whitespace characters, repeated any number of times.
13.6 Searching and Case
All searches in Emacs normally ignore the case of the text they are searching through; if
you specify searching for ‘FOO’, ‘Foo’ and ‘foo’ are also considered a match. Regexps, and
in particular character sets, are included: ‘[aB]’ matches ‘a’ or ‘A’ or ‘b’ or ‘B’.
If you want a case-sensitive search, set the variable case-fold-search to nil. Then
all letters must match exactly, including case. case-fold-search is a per-buffer variable;
altering it affects only the current buffer, but there is a default value which you can change
as well. See Section 29.2.4 [Locals], page 298. You can also use Case Sensitive Search from
the Options menu on your screen.
13.7 Replacement Commands
Global search-and-replace operations are not needed as often in Emacs as they are in
other editors, but they are available. In addition to the simple replace-string command
which is like that found in most editors, there is a query-replace command which asks
you, for each occurrence of a pattern, whether to replace it.
The replace commands all replace one string (or regexp) with one replacement string. It
is possible to perform several replacements in parallel using the command expand-regionabbrevs. See Section 24.2 [Expanding Abbrevs], page 234.
13.7.1 Unconditional Replacement
M-x replace-string hRETi string hRETi newstring hRETi
Replace every occurrence of string with newstring.
M-x replace-regexp hRETi regexp hRETi newstring hRETi
Replace every match for regexp with newstring.
To replace every instance of ‘foo’ after point with ‘bar’, use the command M-x replacestring with the two arguments ‘foo’ and ‘bar’. Replacement occurs only after point: if
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you want to cover the whole buffer you must go to the beginning first. By default, all
occurrences up to the end of the buffer are replaced. To limit replacement to part of the
buffer, narrow to that part of the buffer before doing the replacement (see Section 28.3
[Narrowing], page 284).
When replace-string exits, point is left at the last occurrence replaced. The value
of point when the replace-string command was issued is remembered on the mark ring;
C-u C-hSPCi moves back there.
A numeric argument restricts replacement to matches that are surrounded by word
boundaries.
13.7.2 Regexp Replacement
replace-string replaces exact matches for a single string. The similar command
replace-regexp replaces any match for a specified pattern.
In replace-regexp, the newstring need not be constant. It can refer to all or part of
what is matched by the regexp. ‘\&’ in newstring stands for the entire text being replaced.
‘\d’ in newstring, where d is a digit, stands for whatever matched the d’th parenthesized
grouping in regexp. For example,
M-x replace-regexp hRETi c[ad]+r hRETi \&-safe hRETi
would replace (for example) ‘cadr’ with ‘cadr-safe’ and ‘cddr’ with ‘cddr-safe’.
M-x replace-regexp hRETi \(c[ad]+r\)-safe hRETi \1 hRETi
would perform exactly the opposite replacements. To include a ‘\’ in the text to replace
with, you must give ‘\\’.
13.7.3 Replace Commands and Case
If the arguments to a replace command are in lower case, the command preserves case
when it makes a replacement. Thus, the following command:
M-x replace-string hRETi foo hRETi bar hRETi
replaces a lower-case ‘foo’ with a lower case ‘bar’, ‘FOO’ with ‘BAR’, and ‘Foo’ with ‘Bar’.
If upper-case letters are used in the second argument, they remain upper-case every time
that argument is inserted. If upper-case letters are used in the first argument, the second
argument is always substituted exactly as given, with no case conversion. Likewise, if the
variable case-replace is set to nil, replacement is done without case conversion. If casefold-search is set to nil, case is significant in matching occurrences of ‘foo’ to replace;
also, case conversion of the replacement string is not done.
13.7.4 Query Replace
M-% string hRETi newstring hRETi
M-x query-replace hRETi string hRETi newstring hRETi
Replace some occurrences of string with newstring.
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M-x query-replace-regexp hRETi regexp hRETi newstring hRETi
Replace some matches for regexp with newstring.
If you want to change only some of the occurrences of ‘foo’ to ‘bar’, not all of them,
you can use query-replace instead of M-%. This command finds occurrences of ‘foo’ one
by one, displays each occurrence, and asks you whether to replace it. A numeric argument
to query-replace tells it to consider only occurrences that are bounded by word-delimiter
characters.
Aside from querying, query-replace works just like replace-string, and queryreplace-regexp works just like replace-regexp.
The things you can type when you are shown an occurrence of string or a match for
regexp are:
hSPCi
to replace the occurrence with newstring. This preserves case, just like
replace-string, provided case-replace is non-nil, as it normally is.
hDELi
to skip to the next occurrence without replacing this one.
, (Comma)
to replace this occurrence and display the result. You are then prompted for
another input character. However, since the replacement has already been
made, hDELi and hSPCi are equivalent. At this point, you can type C-r (see
below) to alter the replaced text. To undo the replacement, you can type C-x
u. This exits the query-replace. If you want to do further replacement you
must use C-x hESCi hESCi to restart (see Section 6.5 [Repetition], page 63).
hESCi
to exit without doing any more replacements.
. (Period) to replace this occurrence and then exit.
!
to replace all remaining occurrences without asking again.
^
to go back to the location of the previous occurrence (or what used to be an
occurrence), in case you changed it by mistake. This works by popping the mark
ring. Only one ^ in a row is allowed, because only one previous replacement
location is kept during query-replace.
C-r
to enter a recursive editing level, in case the occurrence needs to be edited rather
than just replaced with newstring. When you are done, exit the recursive editing
level with C-M-c and the next occurrence will be displayed. See Section 28.5
[Recursive Edit], page 286.
C-w
to delete the occurrence, and then enter a recursive editing level as in C-r.
Use the recursive edit to insert text to replace the deleted occurrence of string.
When done, exit the recursive editing level with C-M-c and the next occurrence
will be displayed.
C-l
to redisplay the screen and then give another answer.
C-h
to display a message summarizing these options, then give another answer.
If you type any other character, Emacs exits the query-replace, and executes the
character as a command. To restart the query-replace, use C-x hESCi hESCi, which repeats
the query-replace because it used the minibuffer to read its arguments. See Section 6.5
[Repetition], page 63.
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13.8 Other Search-and-Loop Commands
Here are some other commands that find matches for a regular expression. They all
operate from point to the end of the buffer.
M-x occur Print each line that follows point and contains a match for the specified regexp.
A numeric argument specifies the number of context lines to print before and
after each matching line; the default is none.
The buffer ‘*Occur*’ containing the output serves as a menu for finding occurrences in their original context. Find an occurrence as listed in ‘*Occur*’,
position point there, and type C-c C-c; this switches to the buffer that was
searched and moves point to the original of the same occurrence.
M-x list-matching-lines
Synonym for M-x occur.
M-x count-matches
Print the number of matches following point for the specified regexp.
M-x delete-non-matching-lines
Delete each line that follows point and does not contain a match for the specified
regexp.
M-x delete-matching-lines
Delete each line that follows point and contains a match for the specified regexp.
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Chapter 14: Commands for Fixing Typos
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14 Commands for Fixing Typos
This chapter describes commands that are especially useful when you catch a mistake
in your text just after you have made it, or when you change your mind while composing
text on line.
14.1 Killing Your Mistakes
hDELi
Delete last character (delete-backward-char).
M-hDELi
Kill last word (backward-kill-word).
C-x hDELi
Kill to beginning of sentence (backward-kill-sentence).
The hDELi character (delete-backward-char) is the most important correction command. When used among graphic (self-inserting) characters, it can be thought of as canceling the last character typed.
When your mistake is longer than a couple of characters, it might be more convenient to
use M-hDELi or C-x hDELi. M-hDELi kills back to the start of the last word, and C-x hDELi kills
back to the start of the last sentence. C-x hDELi is particularly useful when you are thinking
of what to write as you type it, in case you change your mind about phrasing. M-hDELi
and C-x hDELi save the killed text for C-y and M-y to retrieve. See Section 10.2 [Yanking],
page 81.
M-hDELi is often useful even when you have typed only a few characters wrong, if you
know you are confused in your typing and aren’t sure exactly what you typed. At such a
time, you cannot correct with hDELi except by looking at the screen to see what you did. It
requires less thought to kill the whole word and start over.
14.2 Transposing Text
C-t
Transpose two characters (transpose-chars).
M-t
Transpose two words (transpose-words).
C-M-t
Transpose two balanced expressions (transpose-sexps).
C-x C-t
Transpose two lines (transpose-lines).
The common error of transposing two adjacent characters can be fixed with the C-t
command (transpose-chars). Normally, C-t transposes the two characters on either side
of point. When given at the end of a line, C-t transposes the last two characters on the
line, rather than transposing the last character of the line with the newline, which would
be useless. If you catch a transposition error right away, you can fix it with just C-t. If
you catch the error later, move the cursor back to between the two transposed characters.
If you transposed a space with the last character of the word before it, the word motion
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commands are a good way of getting there. Otherwise, a reverse search (C-r) is often the
best way. See Chapter 13 [Search], page 97.
Meta-t (transpose-words) transposes the word before point with the word after point.
It moves point forward over a word, dragging the word preceding or containing point forward as well. The punctuation characters between the words do not move. For example,
‘FOO, BAR’ transposes into ‘BAR, FOO’ rather than ‘BAR FOO,’.
C-M-t (transpose-sexps) is a similar command for transposing two expressions (see
Section 22.2 [Lists], page 182), and C-x C-t (transpose-lines) exchanges lines. It works
like M-t but in determines the division of the text into syntactic units differently.
A numeric argument to a transpose command serves as a repeat count: it tells the
transpose command to move the character (word, sexp, line) before or containing point
across several other characters (words, sexps, lines). For example, C-u 3 C-t moves the
character before point forward across three other characters. This is equivalent to repeating
C-t three times. C-u - 4 M-t moves the word before point backward across four words. C-u
- C-M-t would cancel the effect of plain C-M-t.
A numeric argument of zero transposes the character (word, sexp, line) ending after
point with the one ending after the mark (otherwise a command with a repeat count of zero
would do nothing).
14.3 Case Conversion
M-- M-l
Convert last word to lower case. Note that Meta-- is “Meta-minus.”
M-- M-u
Convert last word to all upper case.
M-- M-c
Convert last word to lower case with capital initial.
A common error is to type words in the wrong case. Because of this, the word caseconversion commands M-l, M-u, and M-c do not move the cursor when used with a negative
argument. As soon as you see you have mistyped the last word, you can simply case-convert
it and continue typing. See Section 21.7 [Case], page 180.
14.4 Checking and Correcting Spelling
M-$
Check and correct spelling of word (spell-word).
M-x spell-buffer
Check and correct spelling of each word in the buffer.
M-x spell-region
Check and correct spelling of each word in the region.
M-x spell-string
Check spelling of specified word.
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To check the spelling of the word before point, and optionally correct it, use the command
M-$ (spell-word). This command runs an inferior process containing the spell program
to see whether the word is correct English. If it is not, it asks you to edit the word (in the
minibuffer) into a corrected spelling, and then performs a query-replace to substitute the
corrected spelling for the old one throughout the buffer.
If you exit the minibuffer without altering the original spelling, it means you do not
want to do anything to that word. In that case, the query-replace is not done.
M-x spell-buffer checks each word in the buffer the same way that spell-word does,
doing a query-replace for every incorrect word if appropriate.
M-x spell-region is similar to spell-buffer but operates only on the region, not the
entire buffer.
M-x spell-string reads a string as an argument and checks whether that is a correctly
spelled English word. It prints a message giving the answer in the echo area.
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Chapter 15: File Handling
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15 File Handling
The basic unit of stored data in Unix is the file. To edit a file, you must tell Emacs
to examine the file and prepare a buffer containing a copy of the file’s text. This is called
visiting the file. Editing commands apply directly to text in the buffer; that is, to the copy
inside Emacs. Your changes appear in the file itself only when you save the buffer back into
the file.
Emacs is also able to handle “remote files” which are stored on other hosts. Not only
is Emacs somewhat aware of the special issues involved with network file systems, but it
can also use FTP and ssh (or rsh) to make local copies of the files, and refresh them on
the remote host automatically when you save the buffer. The FTP interface is provided
by the standard ‘efs’ package hundefinedi [Top], page hundefinedi. The ssh/rsh interface
is provided by the optional ‘tramp’ package hundefinedi [Top], page hundefinedi. These
packages attempt to implement all of the operations described below, making remote file
use transparent (except for unavoidable network delays).
In addition to visiting and saving files, Emacs can delete, copy, rename, and append to
files, and operate on file directories.
15.1 File Names
Most Emacs commands that operate on a file require you to specify the file name. (Saving
and reverting are exceptions; the buffer knows which file name to use for them.) File names
are specified in the minibuffer (see Chapter 6 [Minibuffer], page 57). Completion is available,
to make it easier to specify long file names. See Section 6.3 [Completion], page 59.
There is always a default file name which is used if you enter an empty argument by
typing just hRETi. Normally the default file name is the name of the file visited in the current
buffer; this makes it easy to operate on that file with any of the Emacs file commands.
The syntax for accessing remote files unfortunately varies depending on the method
used. The syntax for using FTP is ‘/user@remote-host:path-on-remote-host’. The syntax
for using ssh is ‘/[user@remote-host]path-on-remote-host’.
In both cases the ‘user@’ portion is optional (it defaults to your local user name). pathon-remote-host may use the ‘~’ notation to indicate user’s home directory on the remote
host. The default file name will reflect the remote host information.
Each buffer has a default directory, normally the same as the directory of the file visited
in that buffer. When Emacs reads a file name, the default directory is used if you do not
specify a directory. If you specify a directory in a relative fashion, with a name that does
not start with a slash, it is interpreted with respect to the default directory. The default
directory of the current buffer is kept in the variable default-directory, which has a
separate value in every buffer. The value of the variable should end with a slash.
For example, if the default file name is ‘/u/rms/gnu/gnu.tasks’ then the default directory is ‘/u/rms/gnu/’. If you type just ‘foo’, which does not specify a directory, it is short
for ‘/u/rms/gnu/foo’. ‘../.login’ would stand for ‘/u/rms/.login’. ‘new/foo’ would
stand for the filename ‘/u/rms/gnu/new/foo’.
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When visiting a remote file via EFS or TRAMP, the remote directory becomes the
default directory (see Section 15.2 [Visiting], page 116) for that buffer, just as a local
directory would.
The variable default-directory-alist takes an alist of major modes and their opinions
on default-directory as a Lisp expression to evaluate. A resulting value of nil is ignored
in favor of default-directory.
You can create a new directory with the function make-directory, which takes as an
argument a file name string. The current directory is displayed in the minibuffer when the
function is called; you can delete the old directory name and supply a new directory name.
For example, if the current directory is ‘/u/rms/gnu’, you can delete ‘gnu’ and type ‘oryx’
and hRETi to create ‘/u/rms/oryx’. Removing a directory is similar to creating one. To
remove a directory, use remove-directory; it takes one argument, a file name string.
The command M-x pwd prints the current buffer’s default directory, and the command
M-x cd sets it (to a value read using the minibuffer). A buffer’s default directory changes
only when the cd command is used. A file-visiting buffer’s default directory is initialized to
the directory of the file that is visited there. If a buffer is created with C-x b, its default
directory is copied from that of the buffer that was current at the time.
The default directory name actually appears in the minibuffer when the minibuffer becomes active to read a file name. This serves two purposes: it shows you what the default
is, so that you can type a relative file name and know with certainty what it will mean, and
it allows you to edit the default to specify a different directory. To inhibit the insertion of
the default directory, set the variable insert-default-directory to nil.
Note that it is legitimate to type an absolute file name after you enter the minibuffer,
ignoring the presence of the default directory name. The final minibuffer contents may look
invalid, but that is not so. See Section 6.1 [Minibuffer File], page 57.
‘$’ in a file name is used to substitute environment variables. For example, if you have
used the shell command ‘setenv FOO rms/hacks’ to set up an environment variable named
‘FOO’, then you can use ‘/u/$FOO/test.c’ or ‘/u/${FOO}/test.c’ as an abbreviation for
‘/u/rms/hacks/test.c’. The environment variable name consists of all the alphanumeric
characters after the ‘$’; alternatively, it may be enclosed in braces after the ‘$’. Note that
the ‘setenv’ command affects Emacs only if done before Emacs is started.
To access a file with ‘$’ in its name, type ‘$$’. This pair is converted to a single ‘$’ at the
same time variable substitution is performed for single ‘$’. The Lisp function that performs
the substitution is called substitute-in-file-name. The substitution is performed only
on filenames read as such using the minibuffer.
15.2 Visiting Files
C-x C-f
Visit a file (find-file).
C-x C-v
Visit a different file instead of the one visited last (find-alternate-file).
C-x 4 C-f Visit a file, in another window (find-file-other-window). Don’t change this
window.
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C-x 5 C-f Visit a file, in another frame (find-file-other-frame). Don’t change this
window or frame.
Visiting a file means copying its contents into an Emacs buffer so you can edit it. Emacs
creates a new buffer for each file you visit. We say that the buffer is visiting the file
that it was created to hold. Emacs constructs the buffer name from the file name by
throwing away the directory and keeping just the file name. For example, a file named
‘/usr/rms/emacs.tex’ is displayed in a buffer named ‘emacs.tex’. If a buffer with that
name exists, a unique name is constructed by appending ‘<2>’, ‘<3>’,and so on, using the
lowest number that makes a name that is not already in use.
Each window’s mode line shows the name of the buffer that is being displayed in that
window, so you can always tell what buffer you are editing.
The changes you make with Emacs are made in the Emacs buffer. They do not take
effect in the file that you visit, or any other permanent place, until you save the buffer.
Saving the buffer means that Emacs writes the current contents of the buffer into its visited
file. See Section 15.3 [Saving], page 118.
If a buffer contains changes that have not been saved, the buffer is said to be modified.
This is important because it implies that some changes will be lost if the buffer is not saved.
The mode line displays two stars near the left margin if the buffer is modified.
To visit a file, use the command C-x C-f (find-file). Follow the command with the
name of the file you wish to visit, terminated by a hRETi. If you are using XEmacs under
X, you can also use the Open... command from the File menu bar item.
The file name is read using the minibuffer (see Chapter 6 [Minibuffer], page 57), with
defaulting and completion in the standard manner (see Section 15.1 [File Names], page 115).
While in the minibuffer, you can abort C-x C-f by typing C-g.
C-x C-f has completed successfully when text appears on the screen and a new buffer
name appears in the mode line. If the specified file does not exist and could not be created
or cannot be read, an error results. The error message is printed in the echo area, and
includes the name of the file that Emacs was trying to visit.
If you visit a file that is already in Emacs, C-x C-f does not make another copy. It
selects the existing buffer containing that file. However, before doing so, it checks that the
file itself has not changed since you visited or saved it last. If the file has changed, Emacs
prints a warning message. See Section 15.3.2 [Simultaneous Editing], page 122.
You can switch to a specific file called out in the current buffer by calling the function
find-this-file. By providing a prefix argument, this function calls filename-at-point
and switches to a buffer visiting the file filename. It creates one if none already exists. You
can use this function to edit the file mentioned in the buffer you are working in or to test if
the file exists. You can do that by using the minibuffer completion after snatching the all
or part of the filename.
If the variable find-file-use-truenames’s value is non-nil, a buffer’s visited filename
will always be traced back to the real file. The filename will never be a symbolic link, and
there will never be a symbolic link anywhere in its directory path. In other words, the
buffer-file-name and buffer-file-truename will be equal.
If the variable find-file-compare-truenames value is non-nil, the find-file command will check the buffer-file-truename of all visited files when deciding whether a
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given file is already in a buffer, instead of just buffer-file-name. If you attempt to visit
another file which is a symbolic link to a file that is already in a buffer, the existing buffer
will be found instead of a newly created one. This works if any component of the pathname
(including a non-terminal component) is a symbolic link as well, but doesn’t work with hard
links (nothing does).
If you want to create a file, just visit it. Emacs prints ‘(New File)’ in the echo area,
but in other respects behaves as if you had visited an existing empty file. If you make any
changes and save them, the file is created.
If you visit a nonexistent file unintentionally (because you typed the wrong file name),
use the C-x C-v (find-alternate-file) command to visit the file you wanted. C-x C-v
is similar to C-x C-f, but it kills the current buffer (after first offering to save it if it is
modified). C-x C-v is allowed even if the current buffer is not visiting a file.
If the file you specify is actually a directory, Dired is called on that directory (see
Section 15.9 [Dired], page 135). To inhibit this, set the variable find-file-run-dired to
nil; then it is an error to try to visit a directory.
C-x 4 f (find-file-other-window) is like C-x C-f except that the buffer containing
the specified file is selected in another window. The window that was selected before C-x
4 f continues to show the same buffer it was already showing. If you use this command
when only one window is being displayed, that window is split in two, with one window
showing the same buffer as before, and the other one showing the newly requested file. See
Chapter 17 [Windows], page 145.
C-x 5 C-f (find-file-other-frame) is like C-x C-f except that it creates a new frame
in which the file is displayed.
Use the function find-this-file-other-window to edit a file mentioned in the buffer
you are editing or to test if that file exists. To do this, use the minibuffer completion after
snatching the part or all of the filename. By providing a prefix argument, the function
calls filename-at-point and switches you to a buffer visiting the file filename in another
window. The function creates a buffer if none already exists. This function is similar to
find-file-other-window.
There are two hook variables that allow extensions to modify the operation of visiting
files. Visiting a file that does not exist runs the functions in the list find-file-not-foundhooks; the value of this variable is expected to be a list of functions which are called one
by one until one of them returns non-nil. Any visiting of a file, whether extant or not,
expects find-file-hooks to contain list of functions and calls them all, one by one. In
both cases the functions receive no arguments. Visiting a nonexistent file runs the findfile-not-found-hooks first.
15.3 Saving Files
Saving a buffer in Emacs means writing its contents back into the file that was visited
in the buffer.
C-x C-s
Save the current buffer in its visited file (save-buffer).
C-x s
Save any or all buffers in their visited files (save-some-buffers).
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M-~
Forget that the current buffer has been changed (not-modified).
C-x C-w
Save the current buffer in a specified file, and record that file as the one visited
in the buffer (write-file).
M-x set-visited-file-name
Change file the name under which the current buffer will be saved.
To save a file and make your changes permanent, type C-x C-s (save-buffer). After
saving is finished, C-x C-s prints a message such as:
Wrote /u/rms/gnu/gnu.tasks
If the selected buffer is not modified (no changes have been made in it since the buffer was
created or last saved), Emacs does not save it because it would have no effect. Instead, C-x
C-s prints a message in the echo area saying:
(No changes need to be saved)
The command C-x s (save-some-buffers) can save any or all modified buffers. First it
asks, for each modified buffer, whether to save it. The questions should be answered with
y or n. C-x C-c, the key that kills Emacs, invokes save-some-buffers and therefore asks
the same questions.
If you have changed a buffer and do not want the changes to be saved, you should take
some action to prevent it. Otherwise, you are liable to save it by mistake each time you
use save-some-buffers or a related command. One thing you can do is type M-~ (notmodified), which removes the indication that the buffer is modified. If you do this, none
of the save commands will believe that the buffer needs to be saved. (‘~’ is often used
as a mathematical symbol for ‘not’; thus Meta-~ is ‘not’, metafied.) You could also use
set-visited-file-name (see below) to mark the buffer as visiting a different file name,
not in use for anything important.
You can also undo all the changes made since the file was visited or saved, by reading
the text from the file again. This is called reverting. See Section 15.4 [Reverting], page 123.
Alternatively, you can undo all the changes by repeating the undo command C-x u; but this
only works if you have not made more changes than the undo mechanism can remember.
M-x set-visited-file-name alters the name of the file that the current buffer is visiting. It prompts you for the new file name in the minibuffer. You can also use set-visitedfile-name on a buffer that is not visiting a file. The buffer’s name is changed to correspond
to the file it is now visiting unless the new name is already used by a different buffer; in that
case, the buffer name is not changed. set-visited-file-name does not save the buffer in
the newly visited file; it just alters the records inside Emacs so that it will save the buffer
in that file. It also marks the buffer as “modified” so that C-x C-s will save.
If you wish to mark a buffer as visiting a different file and save it right away, use C-x
C-w (write-file). It is precisely equivalent to set-visited-file-name followed by C-x
C-s. C-x C-s used on a buffer that is not visiting a file has the same effect as C-x C-w; that
is, it reads a file name, marks the buffer as visiting that file, and saves it there. The default
file name in a buffer that is not visiting a file is made by combining the buffer name with
the buffer’s default directory.
If Emacs is about to save a file and sees that the date of the latest version on disk
does not match what Emacs last read or wrote, Emacs notifies you of this fact, because it
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probably indicates a problem caused by simultaneous editing and requires your immediate
attention. See Section 15.3.2 [Simultaneous Editing], page 122.
If the variable require-final-newline is non-nil, Emacs puts a newline at the end of
any file that doesn’t already end in one, every time a file is saved or written.
Use the hook variable write-file-hooks to implement other ways to write files, and
specify things to be done before files are written. The value of this variable should be a
list of Lisp functions. When a file is to be written, the functions in the list are called, one
by one, with no arguments. If one of them returns a non-nil value, Emacs takes this to
mean that the file has been written in some suitable fashion; the rest of the functions are
not called, and normal writing is not done. Use the hook variable after-save-hook to list
all the functions to be called after writing out a buffer to a file.
15.3.1 Backup Files
Because Unix does not provide version numbers in file names, rewriting a file in Unix
automatically destroys all record of what the file used to contain. Thus, saving a file from
Emacs throws away the old contents of the file—or it would, except that Emacs carefully
copies the old contents to another file, called the backup file, before actually saving. (Make
sure that the variable make-backup-files is non-nil. Backup files are not written if this
variable is nil).
At your option, Emacs can keep either a single backup file or a series of numbered backup
files for each file you edit.
Emacs makes a backup for a file only the first time a file is saved from one buffer. No
matter how many times you save a file, its backup file continues to contain the contents from
before the file was visited. Normally this means that the backup file contains the contents
from before the current editing session; however, if you kill the buffer and then visit the file
again, a new backup file is made by the next save.
15.3.1.1 Single or Numbered Backups
If you choose to have a single backup file (the default), the backup file’s name is constructed by appending ‘~’ to the file name being edited; thus, the backup file for ‘eval.c’
is ‘eval.c~’.
If you choose to have a series of numbered backup files, backup file names are made by
appending ‘.~’, the number, and another ‘~’ to the original file name. Thus, the backup
files of ‘eval.c’ would be called ‘eval.c.~1~’, ‘eval.c.~2~’, and so on, through names like
‘eval.c.~259~’ and beyond.
If protection stops you from writing backup files under the usual names, the backup file
is written as ‘%backup%~’ in your home directory. Only one such file can exist, so only the
most recently made backup is available.
The choice of single backup or numbered backups is controlled by the variable versioncontrol. Its possible values are:
t
Make numbered backups.
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nil
Make numbered backups for files that have numbered backups already. Otherwise, make single backups.
never
Never make numbered backups; always make single backups.
version-control may be set locally in an individual buffer to control the making of backups
for that buffer’s file. For example, Rmail mode locally sets version-control to never to
make sure that there is only one backup for an Rmail file. See Section 29.2.4 [Locals],
page 298.
15.3.1.2 Automatic Deletion of Backups
To prevent unlimited consumption of disk space, Emacs can delete numbered backup
versions automatically. Generally Emacs keeps the first few backups and the latest few
backups, deleting any in between. This happens every time a new backup is made. The
two variables that control the deletion are kept-old-versions and kept-new-versions.
Their values are, respectively the number of oldest (lowest-numbered) backups to keep and
the number of newest (highest-numbered) ones to keep, each time a new backup is made.
The values are used just after a new backup version is made; that newly made backup is
included in the count in kept-new-versions. By default, both variables are 2.
If delete-old-versions is non-nil, excess middle versions are deleted without notification. If it is nil, the default, you are asked whether the excess middle versions should
really be deleted.
You can also use Dired’s . (Period) command to delete old versions. See Section 15.9
[Dired], page 135.
15.3.1.3 Copying vs. Renaming
You can make backup files by copying the old file or by renaming it. This makes a
difference when the old file has multiple names. If you rename the old file into the backup
file, the alternate names become names for the backup file. If you copy the old file instead,
the alternate names remain names for the file that you are editing, and the contents accessed
by those names will be the new contents.
How you make a backup file may also affect the file’s owner and group. If you use
copying, they do not change. If renaming is used, you become the file’s owner, and the
file’s group becomes the default (different operating systems have different defaults for the
group).
Having the owner change is usually a good idea, because then the owner is always
the person who last edited the file. Occasionally there is a file whose owner should not
change. Since most files should change owners, it is a good idea to use local variable lists to
set backup-by-copying-when-mismatch for the special cases where the owner should not
change (see Section 29.2.5 [File Variables], page 299).
Three variables control the choice of renaming or copying. Normally, renaming is done.
If the variable backup-by-copying is non-nil, copying is used. Otherwise, if the variable
backup-by-copying-when-linked is non-nil, copying is done for files that have multiple
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names, but renaming may still be done when the file being edited has only one name. If
the variable backup-by-copying-when-mismatch is non-nil, copying is done if renaming
would cause the file’s owner or group to change.
15.3.2 Protection Against Simultaneous Editing
Simultaneous editing occurs when two users visit the same file, both make changes, and
both save their changes. If no one was informed that this was happening, and you saved
first, you would later find that your changes were lost. On some systems, Emacs notices
immediately when the second user starts to change a file already being edited, and issues
a warning. When this is not possible, or if the second user has started to change the file
despite the warning, Emacs checks when the file is saved, and issues a second warning when
a user is about to overwrite a file containing another user’s changes. If you are the user
editing the file, you can take corrective action at this point and prevent actual loss of work.
When you make the first modification in an Emacs buffer that is visiting a file, Emacs
records that you have locked the file. (It does this by writing another file in a directory
reserved for this purpose.) The lock is removed when you save the changes. The idea is
that the file is locked whenever the buffer is modified. If you begin to modify the buffer
while the visited file is locked by someone else, this constitutes a collision, and Emacs asks
you what to do. It does this by calling the Lisp function ask-user-about-lock, which you
can redefine to customize what it does. The standard definition of this function asks you a
question and accepts three possible answers:
s
Steal the lock. Whoever was already changing the file loses the lock, and you
get the lock.
p
Proceed. Go ahead and edit the file despite its being locked by someone else.
q
Quit. This causes an error (file-locked) and the modification you were trying
to make in the buffer does not actually take place.
Note that locking works on the basis of a file name; if a file has multiple names, Emacs
does not realize that the two names are the same file and cannot prevent two users from
editing it simultaneously under different names. However, basing locking on names means
that Emacs can interlock the editing of new files that do not really exist until they are
saved.
Some systems are not configured to allow Emacs to make locks. On these systems,
Emacs cannot detect trouble in advance, but it can still detect it in time to prevent you
from overwriting someone else’s changes.
Every time Emacs saves a buffer, it first checks the last-modification date of the existing
file on disk to see that it has not changed since the file was last visited or saved. If the date
does not match, it implies that changes were made in the file in some other way, and these
changes are about to be lost if Emacs actually does save. To prevent this, Emacs prints
a warning message and asks for confirmation before saving. Occasionally you will know
why the file was changed and know that it does not matter; then you can answer yes and
proceed. Otherwise, you should cancel the save with C-g and investigate the situation.
The first thing you should do when notified that simultaneous editing has already
taken place is to list the directory with C-u C-x C-d (see Section 15.7 [Directory Listing],
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page 133). This will show the file’s current author. You should attempt to contact that
person and ask him not to continue editing. Often the next step is to save the contents of
your Emacs buffer under a different name, and use diff to compare the two files.
Simultaneous editing checks are also made when you visit a file that is already visited
with C-x C-f and when you start to modify a file. This is not strictly necessary, but it is
useful to find out about such a problem as early as possible, when corrective action takes
less work.
Another way to protect your file is to set the read, write, and executable permissions for
the file. Use the function set-default-file-modes to set the UNIX umask value to the
nmask argument. The umask value is the default protection mode for new files.
15.4 Reverting a Buffer
If you have made extensive changes to a file and then change your mind about them,
you can get rid of all changes by reading in the previous version of the file. To do this,
use M-x revert-buffer, which operates on the current buffer. Since reverting a buffer can
result in very extensive changes, you must confirm it with yes.
You may request that revert-buffer check for an auto-save file that is more recent than
the visited file by providing a prefix argument. If a recent auto-save file exists, revertbuffer offers to read the auto-save file instead of the visited file (see Section 15.5 [Auto
Save], page 123). Emacs asks you about the auto-save file before the request for confirmation
of the revert-buffer operation, and demands y or n as an answer. If you have started to
type yes to confirm the revert operation, the y will answer the question about using the
auto-save file, but the es will not be valid confirmation for the reversion. This gives you a
chance to cancel the operation with C-g and try again with the answers you really intend.
revert-buffer preserves the value of point (in characters from the beginning of the
file). If the file was edited only slightly, you will be at approximately the same piece of text
after reverting as before. If you have made more extensive changes, after reversion point
may be in a totally different context than your last edits before reversion.
A buffer reverted from its visited file is marked “not modified” until you make a change.
The buffer’s modes will also be recalculated, by normal-mode.
Some kinds of buffers whose contents reflect data bases other than files, such as Dired
buffers, can also be reverted. For them, reverting means refreshing their contents from the
appropriate data. Buffers created randomly with C-x b cannot be reverted; revert-buffer
reports an error when asked to do so.
15.5 Auto-Saving: Protection Against Disasters
Emacs saves all the visited files from time to time (based on counting your keystrokes)
without being asked. This is called auto-saving. It prevents you from losing more than a
limited amount of work if the system crashes.
When Emacs determines it is time for auto-saving, each buffer is considered and is
auto-saved if auto-saving is turned on for it and it has changed since the last time it was
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auto-saved. If any auto-saving is done, the message ‘Auto-saving...’ is displayed in the
echo area until auto-saving is finished. Errors occurring during auto-saving are caught so
that they do not interfere with the execution of commands you have been typing.
15.5.1 Auto-Save Files
Auto-saving does not normally write to the files you visited, because it can be undesirable
to save a program that is in an inconsistent state when you have made only half of a planned
change. Instead, auto-saving is done in a different file called the auto-save file, and the
visited file is changed only when you save explicitly, for example, with C-x C-s.
Normally, the name of the auto-save file is generated by appending ‘#’ to the front and
back of the visited file name. Thus, a buffer visiting file ‘foo.c’ would be auto-saved in
a file ‘#foo.c#’. Most buffers that are not visiting files are auto-saved only if you request
it explicitly; when they are auto-saved, the auto-save file name is generated by appending
‘#%’ to the front and ‘#’ to the back of buffer name. For example, the ‘*mail*’ buffer in
which you compose messages to be sent is auto-saved in a file named ‘#%*mail*#’. Names
of auto-save files are generated this way unless you customize the functions make-autosave-file-name and auto-save-file-name-p to do something different. The file name to
be used for auto-saving a buffer is calculated at the time auto-saving is turned on in that
buffer.
If you want auto-saving to be done in the visited file, set the variable auto-savevisited-file-name to be non-nil. In this mode, there is really no difference between
auto-saving and explicit saving.
Emacs deletes a buffer’s auto-save file when you explicitly save the buffer. To inhibit the
deletion, set the variable delete-auto-save-files to nil. Changing the visited file name
with C-x C-w or set-visited-file-name renames any auto-save file to correspond to the
new visited name.
15.5.2 Controlling Auto-Saving
Each time you visit a file, auto-saving is turned on for that file’s buffer if the variable
auto-save-default is non-nil (but not in batch mode; see Chapter 3 [Entering Emacs],
page 37). The default for this variable is t, so Emacs auto-saves buffers that visit files by
default. You can use the command M-x auto-save-mode to turn auto-saving for a buffer on
or off. Like other minor mode commands, M-x auto-save-mode turns auto-saving on with
a positive argument, off with a zero or negative argument; with no argument, it toggles.
Emacs performs auto-saving periodically based on counting how many characters you
have typed since the last time auto-saving happened. The variable auto-save-interval
specifies the number of characters between auto-saves. By default, it is 300. Emacs also
auto-saves whenever you call the function do-auto-save.
Emacs also does auto-saving whenever it gets a fatal error. This includes killing the
Emacs job with a shell command such as kill -emacs, or disconnecting a phone line or
network connection.
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You can set the number of seconds of idle time before an auto-save is done. Setting
the value of the variable auto-save-timeout to zero or nil will disable auto-saving due to
idleness.
The actual amount of idle time between auto-saves is logarithmically related to the size
of the current buffer. This variable is the number of seconds after which an auto-save will
happen when the current buffer is 50k or less; the timeout will be 2 1/4 times this in a 200k
buffer, 3 3/4 times this in a 1000k buffer, and 4 1/2 times this in a 2000k buffer.
For this variable to have any effect, you must do (require ’timer).
15.5.3 Recovering Data from Auto-Saves
If you want to use the contents of an auto-save file to recover from a loss of data, use
the command M-x recover-file hRETi file hRETi. Emacs visits file and then (after your
confirmation) restores the contents from the auto-save file ‘#file#’. You can then save the
file with C-x C-s to put the recovered text into file itself. For example, to recover file
‘foo.c’ from its auto-save file ‘#foo.c#’, do:
M-x recover-file hRETi foo.c hRETi
C-x C-s
Before asking for confirmation, M-x recover-file displays a directory listing describing
the specified file and the auto-save file, so you can compare their sizes and dates. If the
auto-save file is older, M-x recover-file does not offer to read it.
Auto-saving is disabled by M-x recover-file because using this command implies that
the auto-save file contains valuable data from a past session. If you save the data in the
visited file and then go on to make new changes, turn auto-saving back on with M-x autosave-mode.
15.6 Version Control
Version control systems are packages that can record multiple versions of a source file,
usually storing the unchanged parts of the file just once. Version control systems also
record history information such as the creation time of each version, who created it, and a
description of what was changed in that version.
The GNU project recommends the version control system known as RCS, which is free
software and available from the Free Software Foundation. Emacs supports use of either
RCS or SCCS (a proprietary, but widely used, version control system that is not quite
as powerful as RCS) through a facility called VC. The same Emacs commands work with
either RCS or SCCS, so you hardly have to know which one of them you are using.
15.6.1 Concepts of Version Control
When a file is under version control, we also say that it is registered in the version
control system. Each registered file has a corresponding master file which represents the
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file’s present state plus its change history, so that you can reconstruct from it either the
current version or any specified earlier version. Usually the master file also records a log
entry for each version describing what was changed in that version.
The file that is maintained under version control is sometimes called the work file corresponding to its master file.
To examine a file, you check it out. This extracts a version of the source file (typically,
the most recent) from the master file. If you want to edit the file, you must check it out
locked. Only one user can do this at a time for any given source file. (This kind of locking
is completely unrelated to the locking that Emacs uses to detect simultaneous editing of a
file.)
When you are done with your editing, you must check in the new version. This records
the new version in the master file, and unlocks the source file so that other people can lock
it and thus modify it.
Checkin and checkout are the basic operations of version control. You can do both of
them with a single Emacs command: C-x C-q (vc-toggle-read-only).
A snapshot is a coherent collection of versions of the various files that make up a program.
See Section 15.6.9 [Snapshots], page 131.
15.6.2 Editing with Version Control
When you visit a file that is maintained using version control, the mode line displays
‘RCS’ or ‘SCCS’ to inform you that version control is in use, and also (in case you care) which
low-level system the file is actually stored in. Normally, such a source file is read-only, and
the mode line indicates this with ‘%%’. With RCS, the mode line also indicates the number
of the head version, which is normally also the version you are looking at.
These are the commands for editing a file maintained with version control:
C-x C-q
Check the visited file in or out.
C-x v u
Revert the buffer and the file to the last checked in version.
C-x v c
Remove the last-entered change from the master for the visited file. This undoes
your last check-in.
C-x v i
Register the visited file in version control.
(C-x v is the prefix key for version control commands; all of these commands except for C-x
C-q start with C-x v.)
When you want to modify a file maintained with version control, type C-x C-q (vctoggle-read-only). This checks out the file, and tells RCS or SCCS to lock the file. This
means making the file writable for you (but not for anyone else).
When you are finished editing the file, type C-x C-q again. When used on a file that
is checked out, this command checks the file in. But check-in does not start immediately;
first, you must enter the log entry—a description of the changes in the new version. C-x
C-q pops up a buffer for you to enter this in. When you are finished typing in the log entry,
type C-c C-c to terminate it; this is when actual check-in takes place.
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Once you have checked in your changes, the file is unlocked, so that other users can lock
it and modify it.
Emacs does not save backup files for source files that are maintained with version control.
If you want to make backup files despite version control, set the variable vc-make-backupfiles to a non-nil value.
Normally the work file exists all the time, whether it is locked or not. If you set vckeep-workfiles to nil, then checking in a new version with C-x C-q deletes the work file;
but any attempt to visit the file with Emacs creates it again.
It is not impossible to lock a file that someone else has locked. If you try to check out a
file that is locked, C-x C-q asks you whether you want to “steal the lock.” If you say yes,
the file becomes locked by you, but a message is sent to the person who had formerly locked
the file, to inform him of what has happened. The mode line indicates that a file is locked
by someone else by displaying the login name of that person, before the version number.
If you want to discard your current set of changes and revert to the last version checked
in, use C-x v u (vc-revert-buffer). This cancels your last check-out, leaving the file
unlocked. If you want to make a different set of changes, you must first check the file out
again. C-x v u requires confirmation, unless it sees that you haven’t made any changes since
the last checked-in version.
C-x v u is also the command to use if you lock a file and then don’t actually change it.
You can cancel a change after checking it in, with C-x v c (vc-cancel-version). This
command discards all record of the most recent checked in version, so be careful about
using it. It requires confirmation with yes. By default, C-x v c reverts your workfile and
buffer to the previous version (the one that precedes the version that is deleted), but you
can prevent the reversion by giving the command a prefix argument. Then the buffer does
not change.
This command with a prefix argument is useful when you have checked in a change and
then discover a trivial error in it; you can cancel the erroneous check-in, fix the error, and
repeat the check-in.
Be careful when invoking C-x v c, as it is easy to throw away a lot of work with it. To
help you be careful, this command always requires confirmation with ‘yes’.
You can register the visited file for version control using C-x v i (vc-register). If the
variable vc-default-back-end is non-nil, it specifies which version control system to use;
otherwise, this uses RCS if it is installed on your system and SCCS if not. After C-x v i,
the file is unlocked and read-only. Type C-x C-q if you wish to edit it.
By default, the initial version number is 1.1. If you want to use a different number, give
C-x v i a prefix argument; then it reads the initial version number using the minibuffer.
If vc-initial-comment is non-nil, C-x v i reads an initial comment (much like a log
entry) to describe the purpose of this source file.
To specify the version number for a subsequent checkin, use the command C-u C-x v v.
C-x v v (vc-next-action) is the command that C-x C-q uses to do the “real work” when
the visited file uses version control. When used for checkin, and given a prefix argument, it
reads the version number with the minibuffer.
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15.6.3 Variables Affecting Check-in and Check-out
If vc-suppress-confirm is non-nil, then C-x C-q and C-x v i can save the current
buffer without asking, and C-x v u also operates without asking for confirmation. (This
variable does not affect C-x v c; that is so drastic that it should always ask for confirmation.)
VC mode does much of its work by running the shell commands for RCS and SCCS. If
vc-command-messages is non-nil, VC displays messages to indicate which shell commands
it runs, and additional messages when the commands finish.
Normally, VC assumes that it can deduce the locked/unlocked state of files by looking at
the file permissions of the work file; this is fast. However, if the ‘RCS’ or ‘SCCS’ subdirectory
is actually a symbolic link, then VC does not trust the file permissions to reflect this status.
You can specify the criterion for whether to trust the file permissions by setting the variable vc-mistrust-permissions. Its value may be t (always mistrust the file permissions
and check the master file), nil (always trust the file permissions), or a function of one argument which makes the decision. The argument is the directory name of the ‘RCS’ or ‘SCCS’
subdirectory. A non-nil value from the function says to mistrust the file permissions.
If you find that the file permissions of work files are changed erroneously, set vcmistrust-permissions to t. Then VC always checks the master file to determine the
file’s status.
You can specify additional directories to search for version control programs by setting
the variable vc-path. These directories are searched before the usual search path. The
proper result usually happens automatically.
15.6.4 Log Entries
When you’re editing an initial comment or log entry for inclusion in a master file, finish
your entry by typing C-c C-c.
C-c C-c
Finish the comment edit normally (vc-finish-logentry). This finishes checkin.
To abort check-in, just don’t type C-c C-c in that buffer. You can switch buffers and
do other editing. As long as you don’t try to check in another file, the entry you were
editing remains in its buffer, and you can go back to that buffer at any time to complete
the check-in.
If you change several source files for the same reason, it is often convenient to specify
the same log entry for many of the files. To do this, use the history of previous log entries.
The commands M-n, M-p, M-s and M-r for doing this work just like the minibuffer history
commands (except that these versions are used outside the minibuffer).
Each time you check in a file, the log entry buffer is put into VC Log mode, which
involves running two hooks: text-mode-hook and vc-log-mode-hook.
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15.6.5 Change Logs and VC
If you use RCS for a program and also maintain a change log file for it (see Section 22.10
[Change Log], page 193), you can generate change log entries automatically from the version
control log entries:
C-x v a
Visit the current directory’s change log file and create new entries for versions checked in since the most recent entry in the change log file (vc-updatechange-log).
This command works with RCS only; it does not work with SCCS.
For example, suppose the first line of ‘ChangeLog’ is dated 10 April 1992, and that the
only check-in since then was by Nathaniel Bowditch to ‘rcs2log’ on 8 May 1992 with log
text ‘Ignore log messages that start with ‘#’.’. Then C-x v a visits ‘ChangeLog’ and
inserts text like this:
Fri May 8 21:45:00 1992 Nathaniel Bowditch (nat@apn.org)
* rcs2log: Ignore log messages that start with ‘#’.
You can then edit the new change log entry further as you wish.
Normally, the log entry for file ‘foo’ is displayed as ‘* foo: text of log entry’. The
‘:’ after ‘foo’ is omitted if the text of the log entry starts with ‘(functionname): ’. For
example, if the log entry for ‘vc.el’ is ‘(vc-do-command): Check call-process status.’,
then the text in ‘ChangeLog’ looks like this:
Wed May 6 10:53:00 1992 Nathaniel Bowditch (nat@apn.org)
* vc.el (vc-do-command): Check call-process status.
When C-x v a adds several change log entries at once, it groups related log entries
together if they all are checked in by the same author at nearly the same time. If the log
entries for several such files all have the same text, it coalesces them into a single entry. For
example, suppose the most recent checkins have the following log entries:
For ‘vc.texinfo’:
Fix expansion typos.
For ‘vc.el’:
Don’t call expand-file-name.
For ‘vc-hooks.el’:
Don’t call expand-file-name.
They appear like this in ‘ChangeLog’:
Wed Apr 1 08:57:59 1992 Nathaniel Bowditch (nat@apn.org)
* vc.texinfo: Fix expansion typos.
* vc.el, vc-hooks.el: Don’t call expand-file-name.
Normally, C-x v a separates log entries by a blank line, but you can mark several related
log entries to be clumped together (without an intervening blank line) by starting the text
of each related log entry with a label of the form ‘{clumpname} ’. The label itself is not
copied to ‘ChangeLog’. For example, suppose the log entries are:
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For ‘vc.texinfo’:
{expand} Fix expansion typos.
For ‘vc.el’:
{expand} Don’t call expand-file-name.
For ‘vc-hooks.el’:
{expand} Don’t call expand-file-name.
Then the text in ‘ChangeLog’ looks like this:
Wed Apr 1 08:57:59 1992 Nathaniel Bowditch
(nat@apn.org)
* vc.texinfo: Fix expansion typos.
* vc.el, vc-hooks.el: Don’t call expand-file-name.
A log entry whose text begins with ‘#’ is not copied to ‘ChangeLog’. For example, if you
merely fix some misspellings in comments, you can log the change with an entry beginning
with ‘#’ to avoid putting such trivia into ‘ChangeLog’.
15.6.6 Examining And Comparing Old Versions
C-x v ~ version hRETi
Examine version version of the visited file, in a buffer of its own (vc-versionother-window).
C-x v =
Compare the current buffer contents with the latest checked-in version of the
file.
C-u C-x v = file hRETi oldvers hRETi newvers hRETi
Compare the specified two versions of file.
You can examine any version of a file by first visiting it, and then using C-x v ~ version
(vc-version-other-window). This puts the text of version version in a file named
‘filename.~version~’, then visits it in a separate window.
To compare two versions of a file, use the command C-x v = (vc-diff).
Plain C-x v = compares the current buffer contents (saving them in the file if necessary)
with the last checked-in version of the file. With a prefix argument, C-x v = reads a file
name and two version numbers, then compares those versions of the specified file.
If you supply a directory name instead of the name of a work file, this command compares
the two specified versions of all registered files in that directory and its subdirectories. You
can also specify a snapshot name (see Section 15.6.9 [Snapshots], page 131) instead of one
or both version numbers.
You can specify a checked-in version by its number; you can specify the most recent
checked-in version with an empty version number.
This command works by running the vcdiff utility, getting the options from the variable
diff-switches. It displays the output in a special buffer in another window. Unlike the Mx diff command, C-x v = does not try to find the changes in the old and new versions. This
is because one or both versions normally do not exist as files. They exist only in the records
of the master file. See Section 15.8 [Comparing Files], page 134, for more information about
M-x diff.
hRETi
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15.6.7 VC Status Commands
To view the detailed version control status and history of a file, type C-x v l (vc-printlog). It displays the history of changes to the current file, including the text of the log
entries. The output appears in a separate window.
When you are working on a large program, it’s often useful to find all the files that are
currently locked, or all the files maintained in version control at all. You can use C-x v
d (vc-directory) to show all the locked files in or beneath the current directory. This
includes all files that are locked by any user. C-u C-x v d lists all files in or beneath the
current directory that are maintained with version control.
The list of files is displayed as a buffer that uses an augmented Dired mode. The names
of the users locking various files are shown (in parentheses) in place of the owner and group.
All the normal Dired commands work in this buffer. Most interactive VC commands work
also, and apply to the file name on the current line.
The C-x v v command (vc-next-action), when used in the augmented Dired buffer,
operates on all the marked files (or the file on the current line). If it operates on more than
one file, it handles each file according to its current state; thus, it may check out one file
and check in another (because it is already checked out). If it has to check in any files, it
reads a single log entry, then uses that text for all the files being checked in. This can be
convenient for registering or checking in several files at once, as part of the same change.
15.6.8 Renaming VC Work Files and Master Files
When you rename a registered file, you must also rename its master file correspondingly
to get proper results. Use vc-rename-file to rename the source file as you specify, and
rename its master file accordingly. It also updates any snapshots (see Section 15.6.9 [Snapshots], page 131) that mention the file, so that they use the new name; despite this, the
snapshot thus modified may not completely work (see Section 15.6.9.2 [Snapshot Caveats],
page 132).
You cannot use vc-rename-file on a file that is locked by someone else.
15.6.9 Snapshots
A snapshot is a named set of file versions (one for each registered file) that you can treat
as a unit. One important kind of snapshot is a release, a (theoretically) stable version of
the system that is ready for distribution to users.
15.6.9.1 Making and Using Snapshots
There are two basic commands for snapshots; one makes a snapshot with a given name,
the other retrieves a named snapshot.
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C-x v s name hRETi
Define the last saved versions of every registered file in or under the current
directory as a snapshot named name (vc-create-snapshot).
C-x v r name hRETi
Check out all registered files at or below the current directory level using whatever versions correspond to the snapshot name (vc-retrieve-snapshot).
This command reports an error if any files are locked at or below the current directory, without changing anything; this is to avoid overwriting work in
progress.
A snapshot uses a very small amount of resources—just enough to record the list of file
names and which version belongs to the snapshot. Thus, you need not hesitate to create
snapshots whenever they are useful.
You can give a snapshot name as an argument to C-x v = or C-x v ~ (see Section 15.6.6
[Old Versions], page 130). Thus, you can use it to compare a snapshot against the current
files, or two snapshots against each other, or a snapshot against a named version.
15.6.9.2 Snapshot Caveats
VC’s snapshot facilities are modeled on RCS’s named-configuration support. They use
RCS’s native facilities for this, so under VC snapshots made using RCS are visible even
when you bypass VC.
For SCCS, VC implements snapshots itself. The files it uses contain name/file/versionnumber triples. These snapshots are visible only through VC.
A snapshot is a set of checked-in versions. So make sure that all the files are checked in
and not locked when you make a snapshot.
File renaming and deletion can create some difficulties with snapshots. This is not a
VC-specific problem, but a general design issue in version control systems that no one has
solved very well yet.
If you rename a registered file, you need to rename its master along with it (the command
vc-rename-file does this automatically). If you are using SCCS, you must also update the
records of the snapshot, to mention the file by its new name (vc-rename-file does this,
too). An old snapshot that refers to a master file that no longer exists under the recorded
name is invalid; VC can no longer retrieve it. It would be beyond the scope of this manual
to explain enough about RCS and SCCS to explain how to update the snapshots by hand.
Using vc-rename-file makes the snapshot remain valid for retrieval, but it does not
solve all problems. For example, some of the files in the program probably refer to others
by name. At the very least, the makefile probably mentions the file that you renamed. If
you retrieve an old snapshot, the renamed file is retrieved under its new name, which is not
the name that the makefile expects. So the program won’t really work as retrieved.
15.6.10 Inserting Version Control Headers
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Sometimes it is convenient to put version identification strings directly into working files.
Certain special strings called version headers are replaced in each successive version by the
number of that version.
You can use the C-x v h command (vc-insert-headers) to insert a suitable header
string.
C-x v h
Insert headers in a file for use with your version-control system.
The default header string is ‘\$Id\$’ for RCS and ‘\%W\%’ for SCCS. (The actual strings
inserted do not have the backslashes in them. They were placed in the Info source file so
that the strings don’t get interpreted as version-control headers when the Info source files
are maintained under version control.) You can specify other headers to insert by setting
the variable vc-header-alist. Its value is a list of elements of the form (program . string)
where program is RCS or SCCS and string is the string to use.
Instead of a single string, you can specify a list of strings; then each string in the list is
inserted as a separate header on a line of its own.
It is often necessary to use “superfluous” backslashes when writing the strings that you
put in this variable. This is to prevent the string in the constant from being interpreted as
a header itself if the Emacs Lisp file containing it is maintained with version control.
Each header is inserted surrounded by tabs, inside comment delimiters, on a new line at
the start of the buffer. Normally the ordinary comment start and comment end strings of
the current mode are used, but for certain modes, there are special comment delimiters for
this purpose; the variable vc-comment-alist specifies them. Each element of this list has
the form (mode starter ender).
The variable vc-static-header-alist specifies further strings to add based on the
name of the buffer. Its value should be a list of elements of the form (regexp . format).
Whenever regexp matches the buffer name, format is inserted as part of the header. A
header line is inserted for each element that matches the buffer name, and for each string
specified by vc-header-alist. The header line is made by processing the string from
vc-header-alist with the format taken from the element. The default value for vcstatic-header-alist is:
(("\\.c$" .
"\n#ifndef lint\nstatic char vcid[] = \"\%s\";\n\
#endif /* lint */\n"))
which specifies insertion of a string of this form:
#ifndef lint
static char vcid[] = "string";
#endif /* lint */
15.7 Listing a File Directory
Files are organized by Unix into directories. A directory listing is a list of all the files in
a directory. Emacs provides directory listings in brief format (file names only) and verbose
format (sizes, dates, and authors included).
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C-x C-d dir-or-pattern
Print a brief directory listing (list-directory).
C-u C-x C-d dir-or-pattern
Print a verbose directory listing.
To print a directory listing, use C-x C-d (list-directory). This command prompts in
the minibuffer for a file name which is either a directory to be listed or pattern containing
wildcards for the files to be listed. For example,
C-x C-d /u2/emacs/etc hRETi
lists all the files in directory ‘/u2/emacs/etc’. An example of specifying a file name pattern
is:
C-x C-d /u2/emacs/src/*.c hRETi
Normally, C-x C-d prints a brief directory listing containing just file names. A numeric
argument (regardless of value) tells it to print a verbose listing (like ls -l).
Emacs obtains the text of a directory listing by running ls in an inferior process. Two
Emacs variables control the switches passed to ls: list-directory-brief-switches is
a string giving the switches to use in brief listings ("-CF" by default). list-directoryverbose-switches is a string giving the switches to use in a verbose listing ("-l" by
default).
The variable directory-abbrev-alist is an alist of abbreviations for file directories.
The list consists of elements of the form (FROM . TO), each meaning to replace FROM with TO
when it appears in a directory name. This replacement is done when setting up the default
directory of a newly visited file. Every FROM string should start with “^’’.
Use this feature when you have directories which you normally refer to via absolute
symbolic links. Make TO the name of the link, and FROM the name it is linked to.
15.8 Comparing Files
The command M-x diff compares two files, displaying the differences in an Emacs buffer
named ‘*Diff*’. It works by running the diff program, using options taken from the
variable diff-switches, whose value should be a string.
The buffer ‘*Diff*’ has Compilation mode as its major mode, so you can use C-x ‘ to
visit successive changed locations in the two source files. You can also move to a particular
hunk of changes and type C-c C-c to find the corresponding source location. You can also
use the other special commands of Compilation mode: hSPCi and hDELi for scrolling, and M-p
and M-n for cursor motion. See Section 23.1 [Compilation], page 209.
The command M-x diff-backup compares a specified file with its most recent backup.
If you specify the name of a backup file, diff-backup compares it with the source file that
it is a backup of.
The command M-x compare-windows compares the text in the current window with that
in the next window. Comparison starts at point in each window. Point moves forward in
each window, a character at a time in each window, until the next characters in the two
windows are different. Then the command is finished. For more information about windows
in Emacs, Chapter 17 [Windows], page 145.
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With a numeric argument, compare-windows ignores changes in whitespace. If the
variable compare-ignore-case is non-nil, it ignores differences in case as well.
15.9 Dired, the Directory Editor
Dired makes it easy to delete or visit many of the files in a single directory at once. It
creates an Emacs buffer containing a listing of the directory. You can use the normal Emacs
commands to move around in this buffer and special Dired commands to operate on the
files.
15.9.1 Entering Dired
To invoke dired, type C-x d or M-x dired. The command reads a directory name or
wildcard file name pattern as a minibuffer argument just like the list-directory command, C-x C-d. Where dired differs from list-directory is in naming the buffer after
the directory name or the wildcard pattern used for the listing, and putting the buffer
into Dired mode so that the special commands of Dired are available in it. The variable
dired-listing-switches is a string used as an argument to ls in making the directory;
this string must contain ‘-l’.
To display the Dired buffer in another window rather than in the selected window, use
C-x 4 d (dired-other-window) instead of C-x d.
15.9.2 Editing in Dired
Once the Dired buffer exists, you can switch freely between it and other Emacs buffers.
Whenever the Dired buffer is selected, certain special commands are provided that operate
on files that are listed. The Dired buffer is “read-only”, and inserting text in it is not
useful, so ordinary printing characters such as d and x are used for Dired commands. Most
Dired commands operate on the file described by the line that point is on. Some commands
perform operations immediately; others “flag” a file to be operated on later.
Most Dired commands that operate on the current line’s file also treat a numeric argument as a repeat count, meaning to act on the files of the next few lines. A negative
argument means to operate on the files of the preceding lines, and leave point on the first
of those lines.
All the usual Emacs cursor motion commands are available in Dired buffers. Some
special purpose commands are also provided. The keys C-n and C-p are redefined so that
they try to position the cursor at the beginning of the filename on the line, rather than at
the beginning of the line.
For extra convenience, hSPCi and n in Dired are equivalent to C-n. p is equivalent to C-p.
Moving by lines is done so often in Dired that it deserves to be easy to type. hDELi (move
up and unflag) is often useful simply for moving up.
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The g command in Dired runs revert-buffer to reinitialize the buffer from the actual
disk directory and show any changes made in the directory by programs other than Dired.
All deletion flags in the Dired buffer are lost when this is done.
15.9.3 Deleting Files With Dired
The primary use of Dired is to flag files for deletion and then delete them.
d
Flag this file for deletion.
u
Remove deletion-flag on this line.
hDELi
Remove deletion-flag on previous line, moving point to that line.
x
Delete the files that are flagged for deletion.
#
Flag all auto-save files (files whose names start and end with ‘#’) for deletion
(see Section 15.5 [Auto Save], page 123).
~
Flag all backup files (files whose names end with ‘~’) for deletion (see Section 15.3.1 [Backup], page 120).
. (Period) Flag excess numeric backup files for deletion. The oldest and newest few backup
files of any one file are exempt; the middle ones are flagged.
You can flag a file for deletion by moving to the line describing the file and typing d or
C-d. The deletion flag is visible as a ‘D’ at the beginning of the line. Point is moved to the
beginning of the next line, so that repeated d commands flag successive files.
The files are flagged for deletion rather than deleted immediately to avoid the danger of
deleting a file accidentally. Until you direct Dired to delete the flagged files, you can remove
deletion flags using the commands u and hDELi. u works just like d, but removes flags rather
than making flags. hDELi moves upward, removing flags; it is like u with numeric argument
automatically negated.
To delete the flagged files, type x. This command first displays a list of all the file names
flagged for deletion, and requests confirmation with yes. Once you confirm, all the flagged
files are deleted, and their lines are deleted from the text of the Dired buffer. The shortened
Dired buffer remains selected. If you answer no or quit with C-g, you return immediately
to Dired, with the deletion flags still present and no files actually deleted.
The #, ~, and . commands flag many files for deletion, based on their names. These
commands are useful precisely because they do not actually delete any files; you can remove
the deletion flags from any flagged files that you really wish to keep.
# flags for deletion all files that appear to have been made by auto-saving (that is, files
whose names begin and end with ‘#’). ~ flags for deletion all files that appear to have been
made as backups for files that were edited (that is, files whose names end with ‘~’).
. (Period) flags just some of the backup files for deletion: only numeric backups that are
not among the oldest few nor the newest few backups of any one file. Normally dired-keptversions (not kept-new-versions; that applies only when saving) specifies the number of
newest versions of each file to keep, and kept-old-versions specifies the number of oldest
versions to keep. Period with a positive numeric argument, as in C-u 3 ., specifies the
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number of newest versions to keep, overriding dired-kept-versions. A negative numeric
argument overrides kept-old-versions, using minus the value of the argument to specify
the number of oldest versions of each file to keep.
15.9.4 Immediate File Operations in Dired
Some file operations in Dired take place immediately when they are requested.
C
Copies the file described on the current line. You must supply a file name to
copy to, using the minibuffer.
f
Visits the file described on the current line. It is just like typing C-x C-f and
supplying that file name. If the file on this line is a subdirectory, f actually
causes Dired to be invoked on that subdirectory. See Section 15.2 [Visiting],
page 116.
o
Like f, but uses another window to display the file’s buffer. The Dired buffer
remains visible in the first window. This is like using C-x 4 C-f to visit the file.
See Chapter 17 [Windows], page 145.
R
Renames the file described on the current line. You must supply a file name to
rename to, using the minibuffer.
v
Views the file described on this line using M-x view-file. Viewing a file is like
visiting it, but is slanted toward moving around in the file conveniently and
does not allow changing the file. See Section 15.10 [Misc File Ops], page 137.
Viewing a file that is a directory runs Dired on that directory.
15.10 Miscellaneous File Operations
Emacs has commands for performing many other operations on files. All operate on one
file; they do not accept wildcard file names.
You can use the command M-x add-name-to-file to add a name to an existing file
without removing the old name. The new name must belong on the file system that the file
is on.
M-x append-to-file adds the text of the region to the end of the specified file.
M-x copy-file reads the file old and writes a new file named new with the same contents.
Confirmation is required if a file named new already exists, because copying overwrites the
old contents of the file new.
M-x delete-file deletes a specified file, like the rm command in the shell. If you are
deleting many files in one directory, it may be more convenient to use Dired (see Section 15.9
[Dired], page 135).
M-x insert-file inserts a copy of the contents of a specified file into the current buffer at
point, leaving point unchanged before the contents and the mark after them. See Chapter 9
[Mark], page 73.
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M-x make-symbolic-link reads two file names old and linkname, and then creates a
symbolic link named linkname and pointing at old. Future attempts to open file linkname
will then refer to the file named old at the time the opening is done, or will result in an
error if the name old is not in use at that time. Confirmation is required if you create the
link while linkname is in use. Note that not all systems support symbolic links.
M-x rename-file reads two file names old and new using the minibuffer, then renames
file old as new. If a file named new already exists, you must confirm with yes or renaming
is not done; this is because renaming causes the previous meaning of the name new to be
lost. If old and new are on different file systems, the file old is copied and deleted.
M-x view-file allows you to scan or read a file by sequential screenfuls. It reads a file
name argument using the minibuffer. After reading the file into an Emacs buffer, view-file
reads and displays one windowful. You can then type hSPCi to scroll forward one window,
or hDELi to scroll backward. Various other commands are provided for moving around in
the file, but none for changing it; type C-h while viewing a file for a list of them. Most
commands are the default Emacs cursor motion commands. To exit from viewing, type
C-c.
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16 Using Multiple Buffers
Text you are editing in Emacs resides in an object called a buffer. Each time you visit
a file, Emacs creates a buffer to hold the file’s text. Each time you invoke Dired, Emacs
creates a buffer to hold the directory listing. If you send a message with C-x m, a buffer
named ‘*mail*’ is used to hold the text of the message. When you ask for a command’s
documentation, it appears in a buffer called ‘*Help*’.
At any time, one and only one buffer is selected. It is also called the current buffer.
Saying a command operates on “the buffer” really means that the command operates on
the selected buffer, as most commands do.
When Emacs creates multiple windows, each window has a chosen buffer which is displayed there, but at any time only one of the windows is selected and its chosen buffer is
the selected buffer. Each window’s mode line displays the name of the buffer the window
is displaying (see Chapter 17 [Windows], page 145).
Each buffer has a name which can be of any length but is case-sensitive. You can select a
buffer using its name. Most buffers are created when you visit files; their names are derived
from the files’ names. You can also create an empty buffer with any name you want. A
newly started Emacs has a buffer named ‘*scratch*’ which you can use for evaluating Lisp
expressions in Emacs.
Each buffer records what file it is visiting, whether it is modified, and what major mode
and minor modes are in effect in it (see Chapter 19 [Major Modes], page 161). Any Emacs
variable can be made local to a particular buffer, meaning its value in that buffer can be
different from the value in other buffers. See Section 29.2.4 [Locals], page 298.
16.1 Creating and Selecting Buffers
C-x b buffer hRETi
Select or create a buffer named buffer (switch-to-buffer).
C-x 4 b buffer hRETi
Similar, but select a buffer named buffer in another window (switch-tobuffer-other-window).
M-x switch-to-other-buffer n
Switch to the previous buffer.
To select a buffer named bufname, type C-x b bufname hRETi. This is the command
switch-to-buffer with argument bufname. You can use completion on an abbreviation
for the buffer name you want (see Section 6.3 [Completion], page 59). An empty argument
to C-x b specifies the most recently selected buffer that is not displayed in any window.
Most buffers are created when you visit files, or use Emacs commands that display text.
You can also create a buffer explicitly by typing C-x b bufname hRETi, which creates a new,
empty buffer that is not visiting any file, and selects it for editing. The new buffer’s major
mode is determined by the value of default-major-mode (see Chapter 19 [Major Modes],
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page 161). Buffers not visiting files are usually used for making notes to yourself. If you
try to save one, you are asked for the file name to use.
The function switch-to-buffer-other-frame is similar to switch-to-buffer except
that it creates a new frame in which to display the selected buffer.
Use M-x switch-to-other-buffer to visit the previous buffer. If you supply a positive
integer n, the nth most recent buffer is displayed. If you supply an argument of 0, the
current buffer is moved to the bottom of the buffer stack.
Note that you can also use C-x C-f and any other command for visiting a file to switch
buffers. See Section 15.2 [Visiting], page 116.
16.2 Listing Existing Buffers
C-x C-b
List the existing buffers (list-buffers).
To print a list of all existing buffers, type C-x C-b. Each line in the list shows one buffer’s
name, major mode, and visited file. A ‘*’ at the beginning of a line indicates the buffer has
been “modified”. If several buffers are modified, it may be time to save some with C-x s
(see Section 15.3 [Saving], page 118). A ‘%’ indicates a read-only buffer. A ‘.’ marks the
selected buffer. Here is an example of a buffer list:
MR Buffer
Size Mode
File
-- --------- ------.* emacs.tex
383402 Texinfo
/u2/emacs/man/emacs.tex
*Help*
1287 Fundamental
files.el
23076 Emacs-Lisp
/u2/emacs/lisp/files.el
% RMAIL
64042 RMAIL
/u/rms/RMAIL
*% man
747
Dired
/u2/emacs/man/
net.emacs
343885 Fundamental
/u/rms/net.emacs
fileio.c
27691 C
/u2/emacs/src/fileio.c
NEWS
67340 Text
/u2/emacs/etc/NEWS
*scratch*
0
Lisp Interaction
Note that the buffer ‘*Help*’ was made by a help request; it is not visiting any file. The
buffer man was made by Dired on the directory ‘/u2/emacs/man/’.
As you move the mouse over the ‘*Buffer List*’ buffer, the lines are highlighted. This
visual cue indicates that clicking the right mouse button (button3) will pop up a menu
of commands on the buffer represented by this line. This menu duplicates most of those
commands which are bound to keys in the ‘*Buffer List*’ buffer.
16.3 Miscellaneous Buffer Operations
C-x C-q
Toggle read-only status of buffer (toggle-read-only).
M-x rename-buffer
Change the name of the current buffer.
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M-x view-buffer
Scroll through a buffer.
A buffer can be read-only, which means that commands to change its text are not
allowed. Normally, read-only buffers are created by subsystems such as Dired and Rmail
that have special commands to operate on the text. Emacs also creates a read-only buffer if
you visit a file that is protected. To make changes in a read-only buffer, use the command
C-x C-q (toggle-read-only). It makes a read-only buffer writable, and makes a writable
buffer read-only. This works by setting the variable buffer-read-only, which has a local
value in each buffer and makes a buffer read-only if its value is non-nil.
M-x rename-buffer changes the name of the current buffer, prompting for the new name
in the minibuffer. There is no default. If you specify a name that is used by a different
buffer, an error is signalled and renaming is not done.
M-x view-buffer is similar to M-x view-file (see Section 15.10 [Misc File Ops],
page 137), but it examines an already existing Emacs buffer. View mode provides convenient commands for scrolling through the buffer but not for changing it. When you exit
View mode, the resulting value of point remains in effect.
To copy text from one buffer to another, use the commands M-x append-to-buffer and
M-x insert-buffer. See Section 10.4 [Accumulating Text], page 86.
16.4 Killing Buffers
After using Emacs for a while, you may accumulate a large number of buffers and may
want to eliminate the ones you no longer need. There are several commands for doing this.
C-x k
Kill a buffer, specified by name (kill-buffer).
M-x kill-some-buffers
Offer to kill each buffer, one by one.
C-x k (kill-buffer) kills one buffer, whose name you specify in the minibuffer. If you
type just hRETi in the minibuffer, the default, killing the current buffer, is used. If the
current buffer is killed, the buffer that has been selected recently but does not appear in
any window now is selected. If the buffer being killed contains unsaved changes, you are
asked to confirm with yes before the buffer is killed.
The command M-x kill-some-buffers asks about each buffer, one by one. An answer
of y means to kill the buffer. Killing the current buffer or a buffer containing unsaved
changes selects a new buffer or asks for confirmation just like kill-buffer.
16.5 Operating on Several Buffers
The buffer-menu facility is like a “Dired for buffers”; it allows you to request operations
on various Emacs buffers by editing a buffer containing a list of them. You can save buffers,
kill them (here called deleting them, for consistency with Dired), or display them.
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M-x buffer-menu
Begin editing a buffer listing all Emacs buffers.
The command buffer-menu writes a list of all Emacs buffers into the buffer ‘*Buffer
List*’, and selects that buffer in Buffer Menu mode. The buffer is read-only. You can only
change it using the special commands described in this section. Most of the commands are
graphic characters. You can use Emacs cursor motion commands in the ‘*Buffer List*’
buffer. If the cursor is on a line describing a buffer, the following special commands apply
to that buffer:
d
Request to delete (kill) the buffer, then move down. A ‘D’ before the buffer
name on a line indicates a deletion request. Requested deletions actually take
place when you use the x command.
k
Synonym for d.
C-d
Like d but move up afterwards instead of down.
s
Request to save the buffer. An ‘S’ before the buffer name on a line indicates
the request. Requested saves actually take place when you use the x command.
You can request both saving and deletion for the same buffer.
~
Mark buffer “unmodified”. The command ~ does this immediately when typed.
x
Perform previously requested deletions and saves.
u
Remove any request made for the current line, and move down.
hDELi
Move to previous line and remove any request made for that line.
All commands that add or remove flags to request later operations also move down a
line. They accept a numeric argument as a repeat count, unless otherwise specified.
There are also special commands to use the buffer list to select another buffer, and to
specify one or more other buffers for display in additional windows.
1
Select the buffer in a full-frame window. This command takes effect immediately.
2
Immediately set up two windows, with this buffer in one and the buffer selected
before ‘*Buffer List*’ in the other.
f
Immediately select the buffer in place of the ‘*Buffer List*’ buffer.
o
Immediately select the buffer in another window as if by C-x 4 b, leaving
‘*Buffer List*’ visible.
q
Immediately select this buffer, and display any buffers previously flagged with
the m command in other windows. If there are no buffers flagged with m, this
command is equivalent to 1.
m
Flag this buffer to be displayed in another window if the q command is used.
The request shows as a ‘>’ at the beginning of the line. The same buffer may
not have both a delete request and a display request.
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Going back between a buffer-menu buffer and other Emacs buffers is easy. You can, for
example, switch from the ‘*Buffer List*’ buffer to another Emacs buffer, and edit there.
You can then reselect the buffer-menu buffer and perform operations already requested,
or you can kill that buffer or pay no further attention to it. All that buffer-menu does
directly is create and select a suitable buffer, and turn on Buffer Menu mode. All the other
capabilities of the buffer menu are implemented by special commands provided in Buffer
Menu mode.
The only difference between buffer-menu and list-buffers is that buffer-menu selects the ‘*Buffer List*’ buffer and list-buffers does not. If you run list-buffers
(that is, type C-x C-b) and select the buffer list manually, you can use all the commands
described here.
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17 Multiple Windows
Emacs can split the frame into two or many windows, which can display parts of different
buffers or different parts of one buffer. If you are running XEmacs under X, that means
you can have the X window that contains the Emacs frame have multiple subwindows.
17.1 Concepts of Emacs Windows
When Emacs displays multiple windows, each window has one Emacs buffer designated
for display. The same buffer may appear in more than one window; if it does, any changes
in its text are displayed in all the windows that display it. Windows showing the same
buffer can show different parts of it, because each window has its own value of point.
At any time, one window is the selected window; the buffer displayed by that window
is the current buffer. The cursor shows the location of point in that window. Each other
window has a location of point as well, but since the terminal has only one cursor, it cannot
show the location of point in the other windows.
Commands to move point affect the value of point for the selected Emacs window only.
They do not change the value of point in any other Emacs window, including those showing
the same buffer. The same is true for commands such as C-x b to change the selected
buffer in the selected window; they do not affect other windows at all. However, there
are other commands such as C-x 4 b that select a different window and switch buffers in
it. Also, all commands that display information in a window, including (for example) Ch f (describe-function) and C-x C-b (list-buffers), work by switching buffers in a
non-selected window without affecting the selected window.
Each window has its own mode line, which displays the buffer name, modification status,
and major and minor modes of the buffer that is displayed in the window. See Section 1.3
[Mode Line], page 15, for details on the mode line.
17.2 Splitting Windows
C-x 2
Split the selected window into two windows, one above the other (splitwindow-vertically).
C-x 3
Split the selected window into two windows positioned side by side (splitwindow-horizontally).
C-x 6
Save the current window configuration in register reg (a letter).
C-x 7
Restore (make current) the window configuration in register reg (a letter). Use
with a register previously set with C-x 6.
The command C-x 2 (split-window-vertically) breaks the selected window into two
windows, one above the other. Both windows start out displaying the same buffer, with the
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same value of point. By default each of the two windows gets half the height of the window
that was split. A numeric argument specifies how many lines to give to the top window.
C-x 3 (split-window-horizontally) breaks the selected window into two side-by-side
windows. A numeric argument specifies how many columns to give the one on the left. A
line of vertical bars separates the two windows. Windows that are not the full width of
the frame have truncated mode lines which do not always appear in inverse video, because
Emacs display routines cannot display a region of inverse video that is only part of a line
on the screen.
When a window is less than the full width, many text lines are too long to fit. Continuing
all those lines might be confusing. Set the variable truncate-partial-width-windows to
non-nil to force truncation in all windows less than the full width of the frame, independent
of the buffer and its value for truncate-lines. See Section 4.7 [Continuation Lines],
page 51.
Horizontal scrolling is often used in side-by-side windows. See Chapter 12 [Display],
page 93.
You can resize a window and store that configuration in a register by supplying a register
argument to window-configuration-to-register (C-x 6). To return to the window configuration established with window-configuration-to-register, use jump-to-register
(C-x j).
17.3 Using Other Windows
C-x o
Select another window (other-window). That is the letter ‘o’, not zero.
M-C-v
Scroll the next window (scroll-other-window).
M-x compare-windows
Find the next place where the text in the selected window does not match the
text in the next window.
M-x other-window-any-frame n
Select the nth different window on any frame.
To select a different window, use C-x o (other-window). That is an ‘o’, for ‘other’,
not a zero. When there are more than two windows, the command moves through all the
windows in a cyclic order, generally top to bottom and left to right. From the rightmost and
bottommost window, it goes back to the one at the upper left corner. A numeric argument,
n, moves several steps in the cyclic order of windows. A negative numeric argument moves
around the cycle in the opposite order. If the optional second argument which-frames is nonnil, the function cycles through all frames. When the minibuffer is active, the minibuffer
is the last window in the cycle; you can switch from the minibuffer window to one of the
other windows, and later switch back and finish supplying the minibuffer argument that is
requested. See Section 6.2 [Minibuffer Edit], page 58.
The command M-x other-window-any-frame also selects the window n steps away in
the cyclic order. However, unlike other-window, this command selects a window on the
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next or previous frame instead of wrapping around to the top or bottom of the current
frame, when there are no more windows.
The usual scrolling commands (see Chapter 12 [Display], page 93) apply to the selected
window only. M-C-v (scroll-other-window) scrolls the window that C-x o would select.
Like C-v, it takes positive and negative arguments.
The command M-x compare-windows compares the text in the current window with the
text in the next window. Comparison starts at point in each window. Point moves forward
in each window, a character at a time, until the next set of characters in the two windows
are different. Then the command is finished.
A prefix argument ignore-whitespace means ignore changes in whitespace. The variable
compare-windows-whitespace controls how whitespace is skipped.
If compare-ignore-case is non-nil, changes in case are also ignored.
17.4 Displaying in Another Window
C-x 4 is a prefix key for commands that select another window (splitting the window
if there is only one) and select a buffer in that window. Different C-x 4 commands have
different ways of finding the buffer to select.
C-x 4 b bufname hRETi
Select buffer bufname in another window.
other-window.
This runs switch-to-buffer-
C-x 4 f filename hRETi
Visit file filename and select its buffer in another window. This runs findfile-other-window. See Section 15.2 [Visiting], page 116.
C-x 4 d directory hRETi
Select a Dired buffer for directory directory in another window. This runs
dired-other-window. See Section 15.9 [Dired], page 135.
C-x 4 m
Start composing a mail message in another window. This runs mail-otherwindow, and its same-window version is C-x m (see Chapter 26 [Sending Mail],
page 243).
C-x 4 .
Find a tag in the current tag table in another window. This runs find-tagother-window, the multiple-window variant of M-. (see Section 22.11 [Tags],
page 193).
If the variable display-buffer-function is non-nil, its value is the function to call to
handle display-buffer. It receives two arguments, the buffer and a flag that if non-nil
means that the currently selected window is not acceptable. Commands such as switchto-buffer-other-window and find-file-other-window work using this function.
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17.5 Deleting and Rearranging Windows
C-x 0
Get rid of the selected window (delete-window). That is a zero. If there is
more than one Emacs frame, deleting the sole remaining window on that frame
deletes the frame as well. If the current frame is the only frame, it is not deleted.
C-x 1
Get rid of all windows except the selected one (delete-other-windows).
C-x ^
Make the selected window taller, at the expense of the other(s)
(enlarge-window).
C-x }
Make the selected window wider (enlarge-window-horizontally).
To delete a window, type C-x 0 (delete-window). (That is a zero.) The space occupied
by the deleted window is distributed among the other active windows (but not the minibuffer
window, even if that is active at the time). Once a window is deleted, its attributes are
forgotten; there is no automatic way to make another window of the same shape or showing
the same buffer. The buffer continues to exist, and you can select it in any window with
C-x b.
C-x 1 (delete-other-windows) is more powerful than C-x 0; it deletes all the windows
except the selected one (and the minibuffer). The selected window expands to use the whole
frame except for the echo area.
To readjust the division of space among existing windows, use C-x ^ (enlarge-window).
It makes the currently selected window longer by one line or as many lines as a numeric
argument specifies. With a negative argument, it makes the selected window smaller. C-x }
(enlarge-window-horizontally) makes the selected window wider by the specified number
of columns. The extra screen space given to a window comes from one of its neighbors, if
that is possible; otherwise, all the competing windows are shrunk in the same proportion.
If this makes some windows too small, those windows are deleted and their space is divided
up. Minimum window size is specified by the variables window-min-height and windowmin-width.
You can also resize windows within a frame by clicking the left mouse button on a
modeline, and dragging.
Clicking the right button on a mode line pops up a menu of common window manager
operations. This menu contains the following options:
Delete Window
Remove the window above this modeline from the frame.
Delete Other Windows
Delete all windows on the frame except for the one above this modeline.
Split Window
Split the window above the mode line in half, creating another window.
Split Window Horizontally
Split the window above the mode line in half horizontally, so that there will be
two windows side-by-side.
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Balance Windows
Readjust the sizes of all windows on the frame until all windows have roughly
the same number of lines.
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Chapter 18: World Scripts Support
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18 World Scripts Support
If you compile XEmacs with Mule option, it supports a wide variety of world scripts,
including Latin script, as well as Arabic script, Simplified Chinese script (for mainland
of China), Traditional Chinese script (for Taiwan and Hong-Kong), Greek script, Hebrew
script, IPA symbols, Japanese scripts (Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji), Korean scripts
(Hangul and Hanja) and Cyrillic script (for Byelorussian, Bulgarian, Russian, Serbian and
Ukrainian). These features have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known
as MULE (for “MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs”).
18.1 What is Mule?
Mule is the MUltiLingual Extension to XEmacs. It provides facilities not only for handling text written in many different languages, but in fact multilingual texts containing
several languages in the same buffer. This goes beyond the simple facilities offered by
Unicode for representation of multilingual text. Mule also supports input methods, composing display using fonts in various different encodings, changing character syntax and
other editing facilities to correspond to local language usage, and more.
The most obvious problem is that of the different character coding systems used by
different languages. ASCII supplies all the characters needed for most computer programming languages and US English (it lacks the currency symbol for British English), but
other Western European languages (French, Spanish, German) require more than 96 code
positions for accented characters. In fact, even with 8 bits to represent 96 more character
(including accented characters and symbols such as currency symbols), some languages’
alphabets remain incomplete (Croatian, Polish). (The 64 "missing characters" are reserved
for control characters.) Furthermore, many European languages have their own alphabets,
which must conflict with the accented characters since the ASCII characters are needed for
computer interaction (error and log messages are typically in ASCII).
For economy of space, historical practice has been for each language to establish its own
encoding for the characters it needs. This allows most European languages to represented
with one octet (byte) per character. However, many Asian languages have thousands of
characters and require two or more octets per character. For multilingual purposes, the
ISO 2022 standard establishes escape codes that allow switching encodings in midstream.
(It’s also ISO 2022 that establishes the standard that code points 0-31 and 128-159 are
control codes.)
However, this is error-prone and complex for internal processing. For this reason XEmacs
uses an internal coding system which can encode all of the world’s scripts. Unfortunately,
for historical reasons, this code is not Unicode, although we are moving in that direction.
XEmacs translates between the internal character encoding and various other coding
systems when reading and writing files, when exchanging data with subprocesses, and (in
some cases) in the C-q command (see below). The internal encoding is never visible to the
user in a production XEmacs, but unfortunately the process cannot be completely transparent to the user. This is because the same ranges of octets may represent 1-octet ISO-8859-1
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(which is satisfactory for most Western European use prior to the introduction of the Euro
currency), 1-octet ISO-8859-15 (which substitutes the Euro for the rarely used "generic currency" symbol), 1-octet ISO-8859-5 (Cyrillic), or multioctet EUC-JP (Japanese). There’s
no way to tell without being able to read!
A number of heuristics are incorporated in Mule for automatic recognition, there are
facilities for the user to set defaults, and where necessary (rarely, we hope) to set coding
systems directly.
The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays the file ‘etc/HELLO’, which shows how
to say “hello” in many languages. This illustrates various scripts.
Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used, generally don’t
have keys for all the characters in them. So XEmacs supports various input methods,
typically one for each script or language, to make it convenient to type them.
The prefix key C-x hRETi is used for commands that pertain to world scripts, coding
systems, and input methods.
18.2 Language Environments
All supported character sets are supported in XEmacs buffers if it is compiled with
Mule; there is no need to select a particular language in order to display its characters in
an XEmacs buffer. However, it is important to select a language environment in order to
set various defaults. The language environment really represents a choice of preferred script
(more or less) rather that a choice of language.
The language environment controls which coding systems to recognize when reading
text (see Section 18.7 [Recognize Coding], page 157). This applies to files, incoming mail,
netnews, and any other text you read into XEmacs. It may also specify the default coding
system to use when you create a file. Each language environment also specifies a default
input method.
The command to select a language environment is M-x set-language-environment. It
makes no difference which buffer is current when you use this command, because the effects
apply globally to the XEmacs session. The supported language environments include:
ASCII, Chinese-BIG5, Chinese-GB, Croatian, Cyrillic-ALT, Cyrillic-ISO,
Cyrillic-KOI8, Cyrillic-Win, Czech, English, Ethiopic, French, German, Greek,
Hebrew, IPA, Japanese, Korean, Latin-1, Latin-2, Latin-3, Latin-4, Latin-5,
Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Slovenian, Thai-XTIS, Vietnamese.
Some operating systems let you specify the language you are using by setting locale
environment variables. XEmacs handles one common special case of this: if your locale
name for character types contains the string ‘8859-n’, XEmacs automatically selects the
corresponding language environment.
To display information about the effects of a certain language environment lang-env, use
the command C-h L lang-env hRETi (describe-language-environment). This tells you
which languages this language environment is useful for, and lists the character sets, coding
systems, and input methods that go with it. It also shows some sample text to illustrate
scripts used in this language environment. By default, this command describes the chosen
language environment.
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18.3 Input Methods
An input method is a kind of character conversion designed specifically for interactive
input. In XEmacs, typically each language has its own input method; sometimes several
languages which use the same characters can share one input method. A few languages
support several input methods.
The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into another alphabet. This is how the Greek and Russian input methods work.
A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of characters into one
letter. Many European input methods use composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter
from a sequence that consists of a letter followed by accent characters. For example, some
methods convert the sequence ’a into a single accented letter.
The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed by composition.
The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way. First, letters are mapped into
symbols for particular sounds or tone marks; then, sequences of these which make up a
whole syllable are mapped into one syllable sign.
Chinese and Japanese require more complex methods. In Chinese input methods, first
you enter the phonetic spelling of a Chinese word (in input method chinese-py, among
others), or a sequence of portions of the character (input methods chinese-4corner and
chinese-sw, and others). Since one phonetic spelling typically corresponds to many different Chinese characters, you must select one of the alternatives using special XEmacs
commands. Keys such as C-f, C-b, C-n, C-p, and digits have special definitions in this
situation, used for selecting among the alternatives. hTABi displays a buffer showing all the
possibilities.
In Japanese input methods, first you input a whole word using phonetic spelling; then,
after the word is in the buffer, XEmacs converts it into one or more characters using a large
dictionary. One phonetic spelling corresponds to many differently written Japanese words,
so you must select one of them; use C-n and C-p to cycle through the alternatives.
Sometimes it is useful to cut off input method processing so that the characters you have
just entered will not combine with subsequent characters. For example, in input method
latin-1-postfix, the sequence e ’ combines to form an ‘e’ with an accent. What if you
want to enter them as separate characters?
One way is to type the accent twice; that is a special feature for entering the separate
letter and accent. For example, e ’ ’ gives you the two characters ‘e’’. Another way is to
type another letter after the e—something that won’t combine with that—and immediately
delete it. For example, you could type e e hDELi ’ to get separate ‘e’ and ‘’’.
Another method, more general but not quite as easy to type, is to use C-\ C-\ between
two characters to stop them from combining. This is the command C-\ (toggle-inputmethod) used twice.
C-\ C-\ is especially useful inside an incremental search, because stops waiting for more
characters to combine, and starts searching for what you have already entered.
The variables input-method-highlight-flag and input-method-verbose-flag control how input methods explain what is happening. If input-method-highlight-flag is
non-nil, the partial sequence is highlighted in the buffer. If input-method-verbose-flag
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is non-nil, the list of possible characters to type next is displayed in the echo area (but not
when you are in the minibuffer).
18.4 Selecting an Input Method
C-\
Enable or disable use of the selected input method.
C-x hRETi C-\ method hRETi
Select a new input method for the current buffer.
C-h I method hRETi
C-h C-\ method hRETi
Describe the input method method (describe-input-method). By default, it
describes the current input method (if any).
M-x list-input-methods
Display a list of all the supported input methods.
To choose an input method for the current buffer, use C-x hRETi C-\ (select-inputmethod). This command reads the input method name with the minibuffer; the name
normally starts with the language environment that it is meant to be used with. The
variable current-input-method records which input method is selected.
Input methods use various sequences of ASCII characters to stand for non-ASCII characters. Sometimes it is useful to turn off the input method temporarily. To do this, type
C-\ (toggle-input-method). To reenable the input method, type C-\ again.
If you type C-\ and you have not yet selected an input method, it prompts for you to
specify one. This has the same effect as using C-x hRETi C-\ to specify an input method.
Selecting a language environment specifies a default input method for use in various
buffers. When you have a default input method, you can select it in the current buffer by
typing C-\. The variable default-input-method specifies the default input method (nil
means there is none).
Some input methods for alphabetic scripts work by (in effect) remapping the keyboard
to emulate various keyboard layouts commonly used for those scripts. How to do this
remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify which layout your
keyboard has, use the command M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
To display a list of all the supported input methods, type M-x list-input-methods.
The list gives information about each input method, including the string that stands for it
in the mode line.
18.5 Mule and Fonts
(This section is X11-specific.)
Text in XEmacs buffers is displayed using various faces. In addition to specifying properties of a face, such as font and color, there are some additional properties of Mule charsets
that are used in text.
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There is currently two properties of a charset that could be adjusted by user: font
registry and so called ccl-program.
Font registry is a regular expression matching the font registry field for this character set.
For example, both the ascii and latin-iso8859-1 charsets use the registry "ISO88591". This field is used to choose an appropriate font when the user gives a general font
specification such as ‘-*-courier-medium-r-*-140-*’, i.e. a 14-point upright mediumweight Courier font.
You can set font registry for a charset using ‘set-charset-registry’ function in one of
your startup files. This function takes two arguments: character set (as a symbol) and font
registry (as a string).
E. g., for Cyrillic texts Mule uses cyrillic-iso8859-5 charset with ‘"ISO8859-5"’ as
a default registry, and we want to use ‘"koi8-r"’ instead, because fonts in that encoding
are installed on our system. Use:
(set-charset-registry ’cyrillic-iso8859-5 "koi8-r")
(Please note that you probably also want to set font registry for ‘ascii’ charset so that
mixed English/Cyrillic texts be displayed using the same font.)
"CCL-programs" are a little special-purpose scripts defined within XEmacs or in some
package. Those scripts allow XEmacs to use fonts that are in different encoding from
the encoding that is used by Mule for text in buffer. Returning to the above example,
we need to somehow tell XEmacs that we have different encodings of fonts and text and
so it needs to convert characters between those encodings when displaying. That’s what
‘set-charset-ccl-program’ function is used for. There are quite a few various CCL programs defined within XEmacs, and there is no comprehensive list of them, so you currently
have to consult sources.
We know that there is a CCL program called ‘ccl-encode-koi8-r-font’ that is used exactly for needed purpose: to convert characters between ‘ISO8859-5’ encoding and ‘koi8-r’.
Use:
(set-charset-ccl-program ’cyrillic-iso8859-5 ’ccl-encode-koi8-r-font)
There are several more uses for CCL programs, not related to fonts, but those uses are
not described here.
18.6 Coding Systems
Users of various languages have established many more-or-less standard coding systems
for representing them. XEmacs does not use these coding systems internally; instead, it
converts from various coding systems to its own system when reading data, and converts the
internal coding system to other coding systems when writing data. Conversion is possible
in reading or writing files, in sending or receiving from the terminal, and in exchanging data
with subprocesses.
XEmacs assigns a name to each coding system. Most coding systems are used for one
language, and the name of the coding system starts with the language name. Some coding
systems are used for several languages; their names usually start with ‘iso’. There are also
special coding systems binary and no-conversion which do not convert printing characters
at all.
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In addition to converting various representations of non-ASCII characters, a coding
system can perform end-of-line conversion. XEmacs handles three different conventions for
how to separate lines in a file: newline, carriage-return linefeed, and just carriage-return.
C-h C coding hRETi
Describe coding system coding.
C-h C hRETi
Describe the coding systems currently in use.
M-x list-coding-systems
Display a list of all the supported coding systems.
C-u M-x list-coding-systems
Display comprehensive list of specific details of all supported coding systems.
The command C-x RET C (describe-coding-system) displays information about particular coding systems. You can specify a coding system name as argument; alternatively,
with an empty argument, it describes the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, both in the current buffer and as the defaults, and the priority list for recognizing
coding systems (see Section 18.7 [Recognize Coding], page 157).
To display a list of all the supported coding systems, type M-x list-coding-systems.
The list gives information about each coding system, including the letter that stands for it
in the mode line (see Section 1.3 [Mode Line], page 15).
Each of the coding systems that appear in this list—except for binary, which means
no conversion of any kind—specifies how and whether to convert printing characters, but
leaves the choice of end-of-line conversion to be decided based on the contents of each file.
For example, if the file appears to use carriage-return linefeed between lines, that end-of-line
conversion will be used.
Each of the listed coding systems has three variants which specify exactly what to do
for end-of-line conversion:
...-unix
Don’t do any end-of-line conversion; assume the file uses newline to separate
lines. (This is the convention normally used on Unix and GNU systems.)
...-dos
Assume the file uses carriage-return linefeed to separate lines, and do the appropriate conversion. (This is the convention normally used on Microsoft systems.)
...-mac
Assume the file uses carriage-return to separate lines, and do the appropriate
conversion. (This is the convention normally used on the Macintosh system.)
These variant coding systems are omitted from the list-coding-systems display for
brevity, since they are entirely predictable. For example, the coding system iso-8859-1
has variants iso-8859-1-unix, iso-8859-1-dos and iso-8859-1-mac.
In contrast, the coding system binary specifies no character code conversion at all—none
for non-Latin-1 byte values and none for end of line. This is useful for reading or writing
binary files, tar files, and other files that must be examined verbatim.
The easiest way to edit a file with no conversion of any kind is with the M-x find-fileliterally command. This uses binary, and also suppresses other XEmacs features that
might convert the file contents before you see them. See Section 15.2 [Visiting], page 116.
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The coding system no-conversion means that the file contains non-Latin-1 characters
stored with the internal XEmacs encoding. It handles end-of-line conversion based on
the data encountered, and has the usual three variants to specify the kind of end-of-line
conversion.
18.7 Recognizing Coding Systems
Most of the time, XEmacs can recognize which coding system to use for any given
file–once you have specified your preferences.
Some coding systems can be recognized or distinguished by which byte sequences appear
in the data. However, there are coding systems that cannot be distinguished, not even
potentially. For example, there is no way to distinguish between Latin-1 and Latin-2; they
use the same byte values with different meanings.
XEmacs handles this situation by means of a priority list of coding systems. Whenever
XEmacs reads a file, if you do not specify the coding system to use, XEmacs checks the data
against each coding system, starting with the first in priority and working down the list,
until it finds a coding system that fits the data. Then it converts the file contents assuming
that they are represented in this coding system.
The priority list of coding systems depends on the selected language environment (see
Section 18.2 [Language Environments], page 152). For example, if you use French, you
probably want XEmacs to prefer Latin-1 to Latin-2; if you use Czech, you probably want
Latin-2 to be preferred. This is one of the reasons to specify a language environment.
However, you can alter the priority list in detail with the command M-x prefer-codingsystem. This command reads the name of a coding system from the minibuffer, and adds it
to the front of the priority list, so that it is preferred to all others. If you use this command
several times, each use adds one element to the front of the priority list.
Sometimes a file name indicates which coding system to use for the file. The variable file-coding-system-alist specifies this correspondence. There is a special function
modify-coding-system-alist for adding elements to this list. For example, to read and
write all ‘.txt’ using the coding system china-iso-8bit, you can execute this Lisp expression:
(modify-coding-system-alist ’file "\\.txt\\’" ’china-iso-8bit)
The first argument should be file, the second argument should be a regular expression that
determines which files this applies to, and the third argument says which coding system to
use for these files.
You can specify the coding system for a particular file using the ‘-*-...-*-’ construct at
the beginning of a file, or a local variables list at the end (see Section 29.2.5 [File Variables],
page 299). You do this by defining a value for the “variable” named coding. XEmacs does
not really have a variable coding; instead of setting a variable, it uses the specified coding
system for the file. For example, ‘-*-mode: C; coding: iso-8859-1;-*-’ specifies use of
the iso-8859-1 coding system, as well as C mode.
Once XEmacs has chosen a coding system for a buffer, it stores that coding system in
buffer-file-coding-system and uses that coding system, by default, for operations that
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write from this buffer into a file. This includes the commands save-buffer and writeregion. If you want to write files from this buffer using a different coding system, you can
specify a different coding system for the buffer using set-buffer-file-coding-system
(see Section 18.8 [Specify Coding], page 158).
18.8 Specifying a Coding System
In cases where XEmacs does not automatically choose the right coding system, you can
use these commands to specify one:
C-x hRETi f coding hRETi
Use coding system coding for the visited file in the current buffer.
C-x hRETi c coding hRETi
Specify coding system coding for the immediately following command.
C-x hRETi k coding hRETi
Use coding system coding for keyboard input. (This feature is non-functional
and is temporarily disabled.)
C-x hRETi t coding hRETi
Use coding system coding for terminal output.
C-x hRETi p coding hRETi
Use coding system coding for subprocess input and output in the current buffer.
The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) specifies the file coding
system for the current buffer—in other words, which coding system to use when saving or
rereading the visited file. You specify which coding system using the minibuffer. Since this
command applies to a file you have already visited, it affects only the way the file is saved.
Another way to specify the coding system for a file is when you visit the file. First use
the command C-x hRETi c (universal-coding-system-argument); this command uses the
minibuffer to read a coding system name. After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding
system is used for the immediately following command.
So if the immediately following command is C-x C-f, for example, it reads the file using
that coding system (and records the coding system for when the file is saved). Or if the
immediately following command is C-x C-w, it writes the file using that coding system.
Other file commands affected by a specified coding system include C-x C-i and C-x C-v, as
well as the other-window variants of C-x C-f.
In addition, if you run some file input commands with the precedent C-u, you can specify
coding system to read from minibuffer. So if the immediately following command is C-x Cf, for example, it reads the file using that coding system (and records the coding system for
when the file is saved). Other file commands affected by a specified coding system include
C-x C-i and C-x C-v, as well as the other-window variants of C-x C-f.
The variable default-buffer-file-coding-system specifies the choice of coding system to use when you create a new file. It applies when you find a new file, and when you
create a buffer and then save it in a file. Selecting a language environment typically sets
this variable to a good choice of default coding system for that language environment.
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The command C-x hRETi t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies the coding system
for terminal output. If you specify a character code for terminal output, all characters
output to the terminal are translated into that coding system.
This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built to support specific languages or character sets—for example, European terminals that support one of the ISO
Latin character sets.
By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all.
The command C-x hRETi k (set-keyboard-coding-system) specifies the coding system
for keyboard input. Character-code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals
with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters—for example, some terminals designed
for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
By default, keyboard input is not translated at all.
There is a similarity between using a coding system translation for keyboard input, and
using an input method: both define sequences of keyboard input that translate into single
characters. However, input methods are designed to be convenient for interactive use by
humans, and the sequences that are translated are typically sequences of ASCII printing
characters. Coding systems typically translate sequences of non-graphic characters.
(This feature is non-functional and is temporarily disabled.)
The command C-x hRETi p (set-buffer-process-coding-system) specifies the coding
system for input and output to a subprocess. This command applies to the current buffer;
normally, each subprocess has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command in the corresponding
buffer.
By default, process input and output are not translated at all.
The variable file-name-coding-system specifies a coding system to use for encoding
file names. If you set the variable to a coding system name (as a Lisp symbol or a string),
XEmacs encodes file names using that coding system for all file operations. This makes
it possible to use non-Latin-1 characters in file names—or, at least, those non-Latin-1
characters which the specified coding system can encode. By default, this variable is nil,
which implies that you cannot use non-Latin-1 characters in file names.
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Chapter 19: Major Modes
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19 Major Modes
Emacs has many different major modes, each of which customizes Emacs for editing text
of a particular sort. The major modes are mutually exclusive; at any time, each buffer has
one major mode. The mode line normally contains the name of the current major mode in
parentheses. See Section 1.3 [Mode Line], page 15.
The least specialized major mode is called Fundamental mode. This mode has no modespecific redefinitions or variable settings. Each Emacs command behaves in its most general
manner, and each option is in its default state. For editing any specific type of text, such as
Lisp code or English text, you should switch to the appropriate major mode, such as Lisp
mode or Text mode.
Selecting a major mode changes the meanings of a few keys to become more specifically
adapted to the language being edited. hTABi, hDELi, and hLFDi are changed frequently. In
addition, commands which handle comments use the mode to determine how to delimit
comments. Many major modes redefine the syntactical properties of characters appearing
in the buffer. See Section 29.5 [Syntax], page 308.
The major modes fall into three major groups. Lisp mode (which has several variants),
C mode, and Muddle mode are for specific programming languages. Text mode, Nroff
mode, TEX mode, and Outline mode are for editing English text. The remaining major
modes are not intended for use on users’ files; they are used in buffers created by Emacs
for specific purposes and include Dired mode for buffers made by Dired (see Section 15.9
[Dired], page 135), Mail mode for buffers made by C-x m (see Chapter 26 [Sending Mail],
page 243), and Shell mode for buffers used for communicating with an inferior shell process
(see Section 28.2.2 [Interactive Shell], page 281).
Most programming language major modes specify that only blank lines separate paragraphs. This is so that the paragraph commands remain useful. See Section 21.4 [Paragraphs], page 176. They also cause Auto Fill mode to use the definition of hTABi to indent
the new lines it creates. This is because most lines in a program are usually indented. See
Chapter 20 [Indentation], page 163.
19.1 Choosing Major Modes
You can select a major mode explicitly for the current buffer, but most of the time
Emacs determines which mode to use based on the file name or some text in the file.
Use a M-x command to explicitly select a new major mode. Add -mode to the name of
a major mode to get the name of a command to select that mode. For example, to enter
Lisp mode, execute M-x lisp-mode.
When you visit a file, Emacs usually chooses the right major mode based on the file’s
name. For example, files whose names end in .c are edited in C mode. The variable automode-alist controls the correspondence between file names and major mode. Its value is
a list in which each element has the form:
(regexp . mode-function)
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For example, one element normally found in the list has the form ("\\.c$" . c-mode). It
is responsible for selecting C mode for files whose names end in ‘.c’. (Note that ‘\\’ is
needed in Lisp syntax to include a ‘\’ in the string, which is needed to suppress the special
meaning of ‘.’ in regexps.) The only practical way to change this variable is with Lisp code.
You can specify which major mode should be used for editing a certain file by a special
sort of text in the first non-blank line of the file. The mode name should appear in this
line both preceded and followed by ‘-*-’. Other text may appear on the line as well. For
example,
;-*-Lisp-*tells Emacs to use Lisp mode. Note how the semicolon is used to make Lisp treat this line
as a comment. Such an explicit specification overrides any default mode based on the file
name.
Another format of mode specification is:
-*-Mode: modename;-*which allows other things besides the major mode name to be specified. However, Emacs
does not look for anything except the mode name.
The major mode can also be specified in a local variables list. See Section 29.2.5 [File
Variables], page 299.
When you visit a file that does not specify a major mode to use, or when you create a new
buffer with C-x b, Emacs uses the major mode specified by the variable default-majormode. Normally this value is the symbol fundamental-mode, which specifies Fundamental
mode. If default-major-mode is nil, the major mode is taken from the previously selected
buffer.
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20 Indentation
hTABi
Indent current line “appropriately” in a mode-dependent fashion.
hLFDi
Perform hRETi followed by hTABi (newline-and-indent).
M-^
Merge two lines (delete-indentation). This would cancel out the effect of
hLFDi.
C-M-o
Split line at point; text on the line after point becomes a new line indented to
the same column that it now starts in (split-line).
M-m
Move (forward or back) to the first non-blank character on the current line
(back-to-indentation).
C-M-\
Indent several lines to same column (indent-region).
C-x hTABi
Shift block of lines rigidly right or left (indent-rigidly).
M-i
Indent from point to the next prespecified tab stop column (tab-to-tab-stop).
M-x indent-relative
Indent from point to under an indentation point in the previous line.
Most programming languages have some indentation convention. For Lisp code, lines
are indented according to their nesting in parentheses. The same general idea is used for C
code, though details differ.
Use the hTABi command to indent a line whatever the language. Each major mode
defines this command to perform indentation appropriate for the particular language. In
Lisp mode, hTABi aligns a line according to its depth in parentheses. No matter where in the
line you are when you type hTABi, it aligns the line as a whole. In C mode, hTABi implements
a subtle and sophisticated indentation style that knows about many aspects of C syntax.
In Text mode, hTABi runs the command tab-to-tab-stop, which indents to the next
tab stop column. You can set the tab stops with M-x edit-tab-stops.
20.1 Indentation Commands and Techniques
If you just want to insert a tab character in the buffer, you can type C-q hTABi.
To move over the indentation on a line, type Meta-m (back-to-indentation). This
command, given anywhere on a line, positions point at the first non-blank character on the
line.
To insert an indented line before the current line, type C-a C-o hTABi. To make an
indented line after the current line, use C-e hLFDi.
C-M-o (split-line) moves the text from point to the end of the line vertically down, so
that the current line becomes two lines. C-M-o first moves point forward over any spaces and
tabs. Then it inserts after point a newline and enough indentation to reach the same column
point is on. Point remains before the inserted newline; in this regard, C-M-o resembles C-o.
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To join two lines cleanly, use the Meta-^ (delete-indentation) command to delete the
indentation at the front of the current line, and the line boundary as well. Empty spaces
are replaced by a single space, or by no space if at the beginning of a line, before a close
parenthesis, or after an open parenthesis. To delete just the indentation of a line, go to the
beginning of the line and use Meta-\ (delete-horizontal-space), which deletes all spaces
and tabs around the cursor.
There are also commands for changing the indentation of several lines at once. ControlMeta-\ (indent-region) gives each line which begins in the region the “usual” indentation
by invoking hTABi at the beginning of the line. A numeric argument specifies the column
to indent to. Each line is shifted left or right so that its first non-blank character appears
in that column. C-x hTABi (indent-rigidly) moves all the lines in the region right by its
argument (left, for negative arguments). The whole group of lines moves rigidly sideways,
which is how the command gets its name.
M-x indent-relative indents at point based on the previous line (actually, the last
non-empty line.) It inserts whitespace at point, moving point, until it is underneath an
indentation point in the previous line. An indentation point is the end of a sequence of
whitespace or the end of the line. If point is farther right than any indentation point in the
previous line, the whitespace before point is deleted and the first indentation point then
applicable is used. If no indentation point is applicable even then, tab-to-tab-stop is run
(see next section).
indent-relative is the definition of hTABi in Indented Text mode. See Chapter 21
[Text], page 167.
20.2 Tab Stops
For typing in tables, you can use Text mode’s definition of hTABi, tab-to-tab-stop.
This command inserts indentation before point, enough to reach the next tab stop column.
Even if you are not in Text mode, this function is associated with M-i anyway.
You can arbitrarily set the tab stops used by M-i. They are stored as a list of columnnumbers in increasing order in the variable tab-stop-list.
The convenient way to set the tab stops is using M-x edit-tab-stops, which creates and
selects a buffer containing a description of the tab stop settings. You can edit this buffer to
specify different tab stops, and then type C-c C-c to make those new tab stops take effect.
In the tab stop buffer, C-c C-c runs the function edit-tab-stops-note-changes rather
than the default save-buffer. edit-tab-stops records which buffer was current when
you invoked it, and stores the tab stops in that buffer. Normally all buffers share the same
tab stops and changing them in one buffer affects all. If you make tab-stop-list local in
one buffer edit-tab-stops in that buffer edits only the local settings.
Below is the text representing ordinary tab stops every eight columns:
:
:
:
:
:
:
0
1
2
3
4
0123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678
To install changes, type C-c C-c
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The first line contains a colon at each tab stop. The remaining lines help you see where
the colons are and tell you what to do.
Note that the tab stops that control tab-to-tab-stop have nothing to do with displaying
tab characters in the buffer. See Section 12.4 [Display Vars], page 95, for more information
on that.
20.3 Tabs vs. Spaces
Emacs normally uses both tabs and spaces to indent lines. If you prefer, all indentation
can be made from spaces only. To request this, set indent-tabs-mode to nil. This is
a per-buffer variable; altering the variable affects only the current buffer, but there is a
default value which you can change as well. See Section 29.2.4 [Locals], page 298.
There are also commands to convert tabs to spaces or vice versa, always preserving
the columns of all non-blank text. M-x tabify scans the region for sequences of spaces,
and converts sequences of at least three spaces to tabs if that is possible without changing
indentation. M-x untabify changes all tabs in the region to corresponding numbers of
spaces.
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Chapter 21: Commands for Human Languages
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21 Commands for Human Languages
The term text has two widespread meanings in our area of the computer field. One is
data that is a sequence of characters. In this sense of the word any file that you edit with
Emacs is text. The other meaning is more restrictive: a sequence of characters in a human
language for humans to read (possibly after processing by a text formatter), as opposed to
a program or commands for a program.
Human languages have syntactic and stylistic conventions that editor commands should
support or use to advantage: conventions involving words, sentences, paragraphs, and capital letters. This chapter describes Emacs commands for all these things. There are also
commands for filling, or rearranging paragraphs into lines of approximately equal length.
The commands for moving over and killing words, sentences, and paragraphs, while intended
primarily for editing text, are also often useful for editing programs.
Emacs has several major modes for editing human language text. If a file contains plain
text, use Text mode, which customizes Emacs in small ways for the syntactic conventions
of text. For text which contains embedded commands for text formatters, Emacs has other
major modes, each for a particular text formatter. Thus, for input to TEX, you can use
TEX mode; for input to nroff, Nroff mode.
21.1 Text Mode
You should use Text mode—rather than Fundamental or Lisp mode—to edit files of text
in a human language. Invoke M-x text-mode to enter Text mode. In Text mode, hTABi
runs the function tab-to-tab-stop, which allows you to use arbitrary tab stops set with
M-x edit-tab-stops (see Section 20.2 [Tab Stops], page 164). Features concerned with
comments in programs are turned off unless they are explicitly invoked. The syntax table
is changed so that periods are not considered part of a word, while apostrophes, backspaces
and underlines are.
A similar variant mode is Indented Text mode, intended for editing text in which most
lines are indented. This mode defines hTABi to run indent-relative (see Chapter 20
[Indentation], page 163), and makes Auto Fill indent the lines it creates. As a result, a line
made by Auto Filling, or by hLFDi, is normally indented just like the previous line. Use M-x
indented-text-mode to select this mode.
Entering Text mode or Indented Text mode calls the value of the variable text-modehook with no arguments, if that value exists and is not nil. This value is also called when
modes related to Text mode are entered; this includes Nroff mode, TEX mode, Outline
mode, and Mail mode. Your hook can look at the value of major-mode to see which of
these modes is actually being entered.
Two modes similar to Text mode are of use for editing text that is to be passed through
a text formatter before achieving its final readable form.
21.1.1 Nroff Mode
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Nroff mode is a mode like Text mode but modified to handle nroff commands present
in the text. Invoke M-x nroff-mode to enter this mode. Nroff mode differs from Text
mode in only a few ways. All nroff command lines are considered paragraph separators,
so that filling never garbles the nroff commands. Pages are separated by ‘.bp’ commands.
Comments start with backslash-doublequote. There are also three special commands that
are not available in Text mode:
M-n
Move to the beginning of the next line that isn’t an nroff command (forwardtext-line). An argument is a repeat count.
M-p
Like M-n but move up (backward-text-line).
M-?
Prints in the echo area the number of text lines (lines that are not nroff commands) in the region (count-text-lines).
The other feature of Nroff mode is Electric Nroff newline mode. This is a minor mode
that you can turn on or off with M-x electric-nroff-mode (see Section 29.1 [Minor Modes],
page 291). When the mode is on and you use hRETi to end a line containing an nroff command
that opens a kind of grouping, Emacs automatically inserts the matching nroff command to
close that grouping on the following line. For example, if you are at the beginning of a line
and type .(b hRETi, the matching command ‘.)b’ will be inserted on a new line following
point.
Entering Nroff mode calls the value of the variable text-mode-hook with no arguments,
if that value exists and is not nil; then it does the same with the variable nroff-mode-hook.
21.1.2 TEX Mode
TEX is a powerful text formatter written by Donald Knuth; like GNU Emacs, it is free.
LaTEX is a simplified input format for TEX, implemented by TEX macros. It is part of TEX.
Emacs has a special TEX mode for editing TEX input files. It provides facilities for
checking the balance of delimiters and for invoking TEX on all or part of the file.
TEX mode has two variants, Plain TEX mode and LaTEX mode, which are two distinct
major modes that differ only slightly. These modes are designed for editing the two different
input formats. The command M-x tex-mode looks at the contents of a buffer to determine
whether it appears to be LaTEX input or not; it then selects the appropriate mode. If it
can’t tell which is right (e.g., the buffer is empty), the variable tex-default-mode controls
which mode is used.
The commands M-x plain-tex-mode and M-x latex-mode explicitly select one of the
variants of TEX mode. Use these commands when M-x tex-mode does not guess right.
TEX for Unix systems can be obtained from the University of Washington for a distribution fee.
To order a full distribution, send $140.00 for a 1/2 inch 9-track tape, $165.00 for two
4-track 1/4 inch cartridge tapes (foreign sites $150.00, for 1/2 inch, $175.00 for 1/4 inch,
to cover the extra postage) payable to the University of Washington to:
Chapter 21: Commands for Human Languages
169
The Director
Northwest Computer Support Group, DW-10
University of Washington
Seattle, Washington 98195
Purchase orders are acceptable, but there is an extra charge of $10.00 to pay for processing
charges. (The total cost comes to $150 for domestic sites, $175 for foreign sites).
The normal distribution is a tar tape, blocked 20, 1600 bpi, on an industry standard 2400
foot half-inch reel. The physical format for the 1/4 inch streamer cartridges uses QIC-11,
8000 bpi, 4-track serpentine recording for the SUN. Also, SystemV tapes can be written in
cpio format, blocked 5120 bytes, ASCII headers.
21.1.2.1 TEX Editing Commands
Here are the special commands provided in TEX mode for editing the text of the file.
"
Insert, according to context, either ‘‘‘’ or ‘"’ or ‘’’’ (TeX-insert-quote).
hLFDi
Insert a paragraph break (two newlines) and check the previous paragraph for
unbalanced braces or dollar signs (tex-terminateparagraph).
M-x validate-tex-buffer
Check each paragraph in the buffer for unbalanced braces or dollar signs.
C-c {
Insert ‘{}’ and position point between them (tex-insert-braces).
C-c }
Move forward past the next unmatched close brace (up-list).
C-c C-e
Close a block for LaTEX (tex-close-latex-block).
In TEX, the character ‘"’ is not normally used; you use ‘‘‘’ to start a quotation and ‘’’’
to end one. TEX mode defines the key " to insert ‘‘‘’ after whitespace or an open brace,
‘"’ after a backslash, or ‘’’’ otherwise. This is done by the command tex-insert-quote.
If you need the character ‘"’ itself in unusual contexts, use C-q to insert it. Also, " with a
numeric argument always inserts that number of ‘"’ characters.
In TEX mode, ‘$’ has a special syntax code which attempts to understand the way TEX
math mode delimiters match. When you insert a ‘$’ that is meant to exit math mode,
the position of the matching ‘$’ that entered math mode is displayed for a second. This is
the same feature that displays the open brace that matches a close brace that is inserted.
However, there is no way to tell whether a ‘$’ enters math mode or leaves it; so when you
insert a ‘$’ that enters math mode, the previous ‘$’ position is shown as if it were a match,
even though they are actually unrelated.
If you prefer to keep braces balanced at all times, you can use C-c { (tex-insertbraces) to insert a pair of braces. It leaves point between the two braces so you can insert
the text that belongs inside. Afterward, use the command C-c } (up-list) to move forward
past the close brace.
There are two commands for checking the matching of braces. hLFDi (tex-terminateparagraph) checks the paragraph before point, and inserts two newlines to start a new
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paragraph. It prints a message in the echo area if any mismatch is found. M-x validatetex-buffer checks the entire buffer, paragraph by paragraph. When it finds a paragraph
that contains a mismatch, it displays point at the beginning of the paragraph for a few
seconds and pushes a mark at that spot. Scanning continues until the whole buffer has
been checked or until you type another key. The positions of the last several paragraphs
with mismatches can be found in the mark ring (see Section 9.1.4 [Mark Ring], page 75).
Note that square brackets and parentheses, not just braces, are matched in TEX mode.
This is wrong if you want to check TEX syntax. However, parentheses and square brackets
are likely to be used in text as matching delimiters and it is useful for the various motion
commands and automatic match display to work with them.
In LaTEX input, ‘\begin’ and ‘\end’ commands must balance. After you insert a
‘\begin’, use C-c C-f (tex-close-latex-block) to insert automatically a matching ‘\end’
(on a new line following the ‘\begin’). A blank line is inserted between the two, and point
is left there.
21.1.2.2 TEX Printing Commands
You can invoke TEX as an inferior of Emacs on either the entire contents of the buffer
or just a region at a time. Running TEX in this way on just one chapter is a good way to
see what your changes look like without taking the time to format the entire file.
C-c C-r
Invoke TEX on the current region, plus the buffer’s header (tex-region).
C-c C-b
Invoke TEX on the entire current buffer (tex-buffer).
C-c C-l
Recenter the window showing output from the inferior TEX so that the last line
can be seen (tex-recenter-output-buffer).
C-c C-k
Kill the inferior TEX (tex-kill-job).
C-c C-p
Print the output from the last C-c C-r or C-c C-b command (tex-print).
C-c C-q
Show the printer queue (tex-show-print-queue).
You can pass the current buffer through an inferior TEX using C-c C-b (tex-buffer).
The formatted output appears in a file in ‘/tmp’; to print it, type C-c C-p (tex-print). Afterward use C-c C-q (tex-show-print-queue) to view the progress of your output towards
being printed.
The console output from TEX, including any error messages, appears in a buffer called
‘*TeX-shell*’. If TEX gets an error, you can switch to this buffer and feed it input (this
works as in Shell mode; see Section 28.2.2 [Interactive Shell], page 281). Without switching
to this buffer, you can scroll it so that its last line is visible by typing C-c C-l.
Type C-c C-k (tex-kill-job) to kill the TEX process if you see that its output is no
longer useful. Using C-c C-b or C-c C-r also kills any TEX process still running.
You can pass an arbitrary region through an inferior TEX by typing C-c C-r (texregion). This is tricky, however, because most files of TEX input contain commands at the
beginning to set parameters and define macros. Without them, no later part of the file will
format correctly. To solve this problem, C-c C-r allows you to designate a part of the file
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as containing essential commands; it is included before the specified region as part of the
input to TEX. The designated part of the file is called the header.
To indicate the bounds of the header in Plain TEX mode, insert two special strings in the
file: ‘%**start of header’ before the header, and ‘%**end of header’ after it. Each string
must appear entirely on one line, but there may be other text on the line before or after.
The lines containing the two strings are included in the header. If ‘%**start of header’
does not appear within the first 100 lines of the buffer, C-c C-r assumes there is no header.
In LaTEX mode, the header begins with ‘\documentstyle’ and ends with
‘\begin{document}’. These are commands that LaTEX requires you to use, so you don’t
need to do anything special to identify the header.
When you enter either kind of TEX mode, Emacs calls with no arguments the value of
the variable text-mode-hook, if that value exists and is not nil. Emacs then calls the
variable TeX-mode-hook and either plain-TeX-mode-hook or LaTeX-mode-hook under the
same conditions.
21.1.3 Outline Mode
Outline mode is a major mode similar to Text mode but intended for editing outlines.
It allows you to make parts of the text temporarily invisible so that you can see just the
overall structure of the outline. Type M-x outline-mode to turn on Outline mode in the
current buffer.
When you enter Outline mode, Emacs calls with no arguments the value of the variable
text-mode-hook, if that value exists and is not nil; then it does the same with the variable
outline-mode-hook.
When a line is invisible in outline mode, it does not appear on the screen. The screen
appears exactly as if the invisible line were deleted, except that an ellipsis (three periods
in a row) appears at the end of the previous visible line (only one ellipsis no matter how
many invisible lines follow).
All editing commands treat the text of the invisible line as part of the previous visible line.
For example, C-n moves onto the next visible line. Killing an entire visible line, including its
terminating newline, really kills all the following invisible lines as well; yanking everything
back yanks the invisible lines and they remain invisible.
21.1.3.1 Format of Outlines
Outline mode assumes that the lines in the buffer are of two types: heading lines and
body lines. A heading line represents a topic in the outline. Heading lines start with one or
more stars; the number of stars determines the depth of the heading in the outline structure.
Thus, a heading line with one star is a major topic; all the heading lines with two stars
between it and the next one-star heading are its subtopics; and so on. Any line that is not
a heading line is a body line. Body lines belong to the preceding heading line. Here is an
example:
* Food
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This is the body,
which says something about the topic of food.
** Delicious Food
This is the body of the second-level header.
** Distasteful Food
This could have
a body too, with
several lines.
*** Dormitory Food
* Shelter
A second first-level topic with its header line.
A heading line together with all following body lines is called collectively an entry. A
heading line together with all following deeper heading lines and their body lines is called
a subtree.
You can customize the criterion for distinguishing heading lines by setting the variable outline-regexp. Any line whose beginning has a match for this regexp is considered a heading line. Matches that start within a line (not at the beginning) do not
count. The length of the matching text determines the level of the heading; longer matches
make a more deeply nested level. Thus, for example, if a text formatter has commands
‘@chapter’, ‘@section’ and ‘@subsection’ to divide the document into chapters and sections, you can make those lines count as heading lines by setting outline-regexp to
‘"@chap\\|@\\(sub\\)*section"’. Note the trick: the two words ‘chapter’ and ‘section’
are the same length, but by defining the regexp to match only ‘chap’ we ensure that the
length of the text matched on a chapter heading is shorter, so that Outline mode will know
that sections are contained in chapters. This works as long as no other command starts
with ‘@chap’.
Outline mode makes a line invisible by changing the newline before it into an ASCII
Control-M (code 015). Most editing commands that work on lines treat an invisible line as
part of the previous line because, strictly speaking, it is part of that line, since there is no
longer a newline in between. When you save the file in Outline mode, Control-M characters
are saved as newlines, so the invisible lines become ordinary lines in the file. Saving does
not change the visibility status of a line inside Emacs.
21.1.3.2 Outline Motion Commands
Some special commands in Outline mode move backward and forward to heading lines.
C-c C-n
Move point to the next visible heading line (outline-next-visible-heading).
C-c C-p
Move point to the previous visible heading line
(outline-previous-visible-heading).
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C-c C-f
Move point to the next visible heading line at the same level as the one point
is on (outline-forward-same-level).
C-c C-b
Move point to the previous visible heading line at the same level (outlinebackward-same-level).
C-c C-u
Move point up to a lower-level (more inclusive) visible heading line (outlineup-heading).
C-c C-n (next-visible-heading) moves down to the next heading line. C-c C-p
(previous-visible-heading) moves similarly backward. Both accept numeric arguments
as repeat counts. The names emphasize that invisible headings are skipped, but this is not
really a special feature. All editing commands that look for lines ignore the invisible lines
automatically.
More advanced motion commands understand the levels of headings. The commands
C-c C-f (outline-forward-same-level) and C-c C-b (outline-backward-same-level)
move from one heading line to another visible heading at the same depth in the outline. C-c
C-u (outline-up-heading) moves backward to another heading that is less deeply nested.
21.1.3.3 Outline Visibility Commands
The other special commands of outline mode are used to make lines visible or invisible.
Their names all start with hide or show. Most of them exist as pairs of opposites. They
are not undoable; instead, you can undo right past them. Making lines visible or invisible
is simply not recorded by the undo mechanism.
M-x hide-body
Make all body lines in the buffer invisible.
M-x show-all
Make all lines in the buffer visible.
C-c C-d
Make everything under this heading invisible, not including this heading itself
(hide-subtree).
C-c C-s
Make everything under this heading visible, including body, subheadings, and
their bodies (show-subtree).
M-x hide-leaves
Make the body of this heading line, and of all its subheadings, invisible.
M-x show-branches
Make all subheadings of this heading line, at all levels, visible.
C-c C-i
Make immediate subheadings (one level down) of this heading line visible (showchildren).
M-x hide-entry
Make this heading line’s body invisible.
M-x show-entry
Make this heading line’s body visible.
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Two commands that are exact opposites are M-x hide-entry and M-x show-entry.
They are used with point on a heading line, and apply only to the body lines of that
heading. The subtopics and their bodies are not affected.
Two more powerful opposites are C-c C-d (hide-subtree) and C-c C-s (show-subtree).
Both should be used when point is on a heading line, and both apply to all the lines of that
heading’s subtree: its body, all its subheadings, both direct and indirect, and all of their
bodies. In other words, the subtree contains everything following this heading line, up to
and not including the next heading of the same or higher rank.
Intermediate between a visible subtree and an invisible one is having all the subheadings
visible but none of the body. There are two commands for doing this, one that hides the
bodies and one that makes the subheadings visible. They are M-x hide-leaves and M-x
show-branches.
A little weaker than show-branches is C-c C-i (show-children). It makes just the
direct subheadings visible—those one level down. Deeper subheadings remain invisible.
Two commands have a blanket effect on the whole file. M-x hide-body makes all body
lines invisible, so that you see just the outline structure. M-x show-all makes all lines
visible. You can think of these commands as a pair of opposites even though M-x show-all
applies to more than just body lines.
You can turn off the use of ellipses at the ends of visible lines by setting selectivedisplay-ellipses to nil. The result is no visible indication of the presence of invisible
lines.
21.2 Words
Emacs has commands for moving over or operating on words. By convention, the keys
for them are all Meta- characters.
M-f
Move forward over a word (forward-word).
M-b
Move backward over a word (backward-word).
M-d
Kill up to the end of a word (kill-word).
M-hDELi
Kill back to the beginning of a word (backward-kill-word).
M-@
Mark the end of the next word (mark-word).
M-t
Transpose two words; drag a word forward or backward across other words
(transpose-words).
Notice how these keys form a series that parallels the character-based C-f, C-b, C-d, C-t
and hDELi. M-@ is related to C-@, which is an alias for C-hSPCi.
The commands Meta-f (forward-word) and Meta-b (backward-word) move forward
and backward over words. They are analogous to Control-f and Control-b, which move
over single characters. Like their Control- analogues, Meta-f and Meta-b move several
words if given an argument. Meta-f with a negative argument moves backward, and Metab with a negative argument moves forward. Forward motion stops after the last letter of
the word, while backward motion stops before the first letter.
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Meta-d (kill-word) kills the word after point. To be precise, it kills everything from
point to the place Meta-f would move to. Thus, if point is in the middle of a word, Meta-d
kills just the part after point. If some punctuation comes between point and the next word,
it is killed along with the word. (To kill only the next word but not the punctuation before
it, simply type Meta-f to get to the end and kill the word backwards with Meta-hDELi.)
Meta-d takes arguments just like Meta-f.
Meta-hDELi (backward-kill-word) kills the word before point. It kills everything from
point back to where Meta-b would move to. If point is after the space in ‘FOO, BAR’, then
‘FOO, ’ is killed. To kill just ‘FOO’, type Meta-b Meta-d instead of Meta-hDELi.
Meta-t (transpose-words) exchanges the word before or containing point with the following word. The delimiter characters between the words do not move. For example, transposing ‘FOO, BAR’ results in ‘BAR, FOO’ rather than ‘BAR FOO,’. See Section 14.2 [Transpose],
page 111, for more on transposition and on arguments to transposition commands.
To operate on the next n words with an operation which applies between point and
mark, you can either set the mark at point and then move over the words, or you can use
the command Meta-@ (mark-word) which does not move point but sets the mark where
Meta-f would move to. It can be given arguments just like Meta-f.
The word commands’ understanding of syntax is completely controlled by the syntax
table. For example, any character can be declared to be a word delimiter. See Section 29.5
[Syntax], page 308.
21.3 Sentences
The Emacs commands for manipulating sentences and paragraphs are mostly on Metakeys, and therefore are like the word-handling commands.
M-a
Move back to the beginning of the sentence (backward-sentence).
M-e
Move forward to the end of the sentence (forward-sentence).
M-k
Kill forward to the end of the sentence (kill-sentence).
C-x hDELi
Kill back to the beginning of the sentence
(backward-kill-sentence).
The commands Meta-a and Meta-e (backward-sentence and forward-sentence) move
to the beginning and end of the current sentence, respectively. They resemble Control-a
and Control-e, which move to the beginning and end of a line. Unlike their counterparts,
Meta-a and Meta-e move over successive sentences if repeated or given numeric arguments.
Emacs assumes the typist’s convention is followed, and thus considers a sentence to end
wherever there is a ‘.’, ‘?’, or ‘!’ followed by the end of a line or two spaces, with any
number of ‘)’, ‘]’, ‘’’, or ‘"’ characters allowed in between. A sentence also begins or ends
wherever a paragraph begins or ends.
Neither M-a nor M-e moves past the newline or spaces beyond the sentence edge at which
it is stopping.
M-a and M-e have a corresponding kill command, just like C-a and C-e have C-k. The
command is M-k (kill-sentence) which kills from point to the end of the sentence. With
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minus one as an argument it kills back to the beginning of the sentence. Larger arguments
serve as repeat counts.
There is a special command, C-x hDELi (backward-kill-sentence), for killing back to
the beginning of a sentence, which is useful when you change your mind in the middle of
composing text.
The variable sentence-end controls recognition of the end of a sentence. It is a regexp
that matches the last few characters of a sentence, together with the whitespace following
the sentence. Its normal value is:
"[.?!][]\"’)]*\\($\\|\t\\| \\)[ \t\n]*"
This example is explained in the section on regexps. See Section 13.5 [Regexps], page 101.
21.4 Paragraphs
The Emacs commands for manipulating paragraphs are also Meta- keys.
M-{
Move back to previous paragraph beginning
(backward-paragraph).
M-}
Move forward to next paragraph end (forward-paragraph).
M-h
Put point and mark around this or next paragraph (mark-paragraph).
Meta-{ moves to the beginning of the current or previous paragraph, while Meta-} moves
to the end of the current or next paragraph. Blank lines and text formatter command lines
separate paragraphs and are not part of any paragraph. An indented line starts a new
paragraph.
In major modes for programs (as opposed to Text mode), paragraphs begin and end only
at blank lines. As a result, the paragraph commands continue to be useful even though
there are no paragraphs per se.
When there is a fill prefix, paragraphs are delimited by all lines which don’t start with
the fill prefix. See Section 21.6 [Filling], page 177.
To operate on a paragraph, you can use the command Meta-h (mark-paragraph) to set
the region around it. This command puts point at the beginning and mark at the end of
the paragraph point was in. If point is between paragraphs (in a run of blank lines or at
a boundary), the paragraph following point is surrounded by point and mark. If there are
blank lines preceding the first line of the paragraph, one of the blank lines is included in
the region. Thus, for example, M-h C-w kills the paragraph around or after point.
The precise definition of a paragraph boundary is controlled by the variables paragraphseparate and paragraph-start. The value of paragraph-start is a regexp that matches
any line that either starts or separates paragraphs. The value of paragraph-separate
is another regexp that matches only lines that separate paragraphs without being part of
any paragraph. Lines that start a new paragraph and are contained in it must match
both regexps. For example, normally paragraph-start is "^[ \t\n\f]" and paragraphseparate is "^[ \t\f]*$".
Normally it is desirable for page boundaries to separate paragraphs. The default values
of these variables recognize the usual separator for pages.
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21.5 Pages
Files are often thought of as divided into pages by the formfeed character (ASCII
Control-L, octal code 014). For example, if a file is printed on a line printer, each “page”
of the file starts on a new page of paper. Emacs treats a page-separator character just like
any other character. It can be inserted with C-q C-l or deleted with hDELi. You are free to
paginate your file or not. However, since pages are often meaningful divisions of the file,
commands are provided to move over them and operate on them.
C-x [
Move point to previous page boundary (backward-page).
C-x ]
Move point to next page boundary (forward-page).
C-x C-p
Put point and mark around this page (or another page) (mark-page).
C-x l
Count the lines in this page (count-lines-page).
The C-x [ (backward-page) command moves point to immediately after the previous
page delimiter. If point is already right after a page delimiter, the command skips that one
and stops at the previous one. A numeric argument serves as a repeat count. The C-x ]
(forward-page) command moves forward past the next page delimiter.
The C-x C-p command (mark-page) puts point at the beginning of the current page and
the mark at the end. The page delimiter at the end is included (the mark follows it). The
page delimiter at the front is excluded (point follows it). You can follow this command by
C-w to kill a page you want to move elsewhere. If you insert the page after a page delimiter,
at a place where C-x ] or C-x [ would take you, the page will be properly delimited before
and after once again.
A numeric argument to C-x C-p is used to specify which page to go to, relative to the
current one. Zero means the current page. One means the next page, and −1 means the
previous one.
The C-x l command (count-lines-page) can help you decide where to break a page in
two. It prints the total number of lines in the current page in the echo area, then divides
the lines into those preceding the current line and those following it, for example
Page has 96 (72+25) lines
Notice that the sum is off by one; this is correct if point is not at the beginning of a line.
The variable page-delimiter should have as its value a regexp that matches the beginning of a line that separates pages. This defines where pages begin. The normal value of
this variable is "^\f", which matches a formfeed character at the beginning of a line.
21.6 Filling Text
If you use Auto Fill mode, Emacs fills text (breaks it up into lines that fit in a specified
width) as you insert it. When you alter existing text it is often no longer be properly filled
afterwards and you can use explicit commands for filling.
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21.6.1 Auto Fill Mode
Auto Fill mode is a minor mode in which lines are broken automatically when they
become too wide. Breaking happens only when you type a hSPCi or hRETi.
M-x auto-fill-mode
Enable or disable Auto Fill mode.
hSPCi
hRETi
In Auto Fill mode, break lines when appropriate.
M-x auto-fill-mode turns Auto Fill mode on if it was off, or off if it was on. With
a positive numeric argument the command always turns Auto Fill mode on, and with a
negative argument it always turns it off. The presence of the word ‘Fill’ in the mode line,
inside the parentheses, indicates that Auto Fill mode is in effect. Auto Fill mode is a minor
mode; you can turn it on or off for each buffer individually. See Section 29.1 [Minor Modes],
page 291.
In Auto Fill mode, lines are broken automatically at spaces when they get longer than
desired. Line breaking and rearrangement takes place only when you type hSPCi or hRETi.
To insert a space or newline without permitting line-breaking, type C-q hSPCi or C-q hLFDi
(recall that a newline is really a linefeed). C-o inserts a newline without line breaking.
Auto Fill mode works well with Lisp mode: when it makes a new line in Lisp mode,
it indents that line with hTABi. If a line ending in a Lisp comment gets too long, the text
of the comment is split into two comment lines. Optionally, new comment delimiters are
inserted at the end of the first line and the beginning of the second, so that each line is a
separate comment. The variable comment-multi-line controls the choice (see Section 22.6
[Comments], page 190).
Auto Fill mode does not refill entire paragraphs. It can break lines but cannot merge
lines. Editing in the middle of a paragraph can result in a paragraph that is not correctly
filled. The easiest way to make the paragraph properly filled again is using an explicit fill
commands.
Many users like Auto Fill mode and want to use it in all text files. The section on init
files explains how you can arrange this permanently for yourself. See Section 29.6 [Init File],
page 311.
21.6.2 Explicit Fill Commands
M-q
Fill current paragraph (fill-paragraph).
M-g
Fill each paragraph in the region (fill-region).
C-x f
Set the fill column (set-fill-column).
M-x fill-region-as-paragraph
Fill the region, considering it as one paragraph.
M-s
Center a line.
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To refill a paragraph, use the command Meta-q (fill-paragraph). It causes the paragraph containing point, or the one after point if point is between paragraphs, to be refilled.
All line breaks are removed, and new ones are inserted where necessary. M-q can be undone
with C-_. See Chapter 5 [Undo], page 55.
To refill many paragraphs, use M-g (fill-region), which divides the region into paragraphs and fills each of them.
Meta-q and Meta-g use the same criteria as Meta-h for finding paragraph boundaries
(see Section 21.4 [Paragraphs], page 176). For more control, you can use M-x fill-regionas-paragraph, which refills everything between point and mark. This command recognizes
only blank lines as paragraph separators.
A numeric argument to M-g or M-q causes it to justify the text as well as filling it. Extra
spaces are inserted to make the right margin line up exactly at the fill column. To remove
the extra spaces, use M-q or M-g with no argument.
The variable auto-fill-inhibit-regexp takes as a value a regexp to match lines that
should not be auto-filled.
The command Meta-s (center-line) centers the current line within the current fill
column. With an argument, it centers several lines individually and moves past them.
The maximum line width for filling is in the variable fill-column. Altering the value
of fill-column makes it local to the current buffer; until then, the default value—initially
70—is in effect. See Section 29.2.4 [Locals], page 298.
The easiest way to set fill-column is to use the command C-x f (set-fill-column).
With no argument, it sets fill-column to the current horizontal position of point. With a
numeric argument, it uses that number as the new fill column.
21.6.3 The Fill Prefix
To fill a paragraph in which each line starts with a special marker (which might be a few
spaces, giving an indented paragraph), use the fill prefix feature. The fill prefix is a string
which is not included in filling. Emacs expects every line to start with a fill prefix.
C-x .
Set the fill prefix (set-fill-prefix).
M-q
Fill a paragraph using current fill prefix (fill-paragraph).
M-x fill-individual-paragraphs
Fill the region, considering each change of indentation as starting a new paragraph.
To specify a fill prefix, move to a line that starts with the desired prefix, put point at
the end of the prefix, and give the command C-x . (set-fill-prefix). That’s a period
after the C-x. To turn off the fill prefix, specify an empty prefix: type C-x . with point at
the beginning of a line.
When a fill prefix is in effect, the fill commands remove the fill prefix from each line
before filling and insert it on each line after filling. Auto Fill mode also inserts the fill prefix
inserted on new lines it creates. Lines that do not start with the fill prefix are considered to
start paragraphs, both in M-q and the paragraph commands; this is just right if you are using
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paragraphs with hanging indentation (every line indented except the first one). Lines which
are blank or indented once the prefix is removed also separate or start paragraphs; this is
what you want if you are writing multi-paragraph comments with a comment delimiter on
each line.
The fill prefix is stored in the variable fill-prefix. Its value is a string, or nil when
there is no fill prefix. This is a per-buffer variable; altering the variable affects only the
current buffer, but there is a default value which you can change as well. See Section 29.2.4
[Locals], page 298.
Another way to use fill prefixes is through M-x fill-individual-paragraphs. This
function divides the region into groups of consecutive lines with the same amount and kind
of indentation and fills each group as a paragraph, using its indentation as a fill prefix.
21.7 Case Conversion Commands
Emacs has commands for converting either a single word or any arbitrary range of text
to upper case or to lower case.
M-l
Convert following word to lower case (downcase-word).
M-u
Convert following word to upper case (upcase-word).
M-c
Capitalize the following word (capitalize-word).
C-x C-l
Convert region to lower case (downcase-region).
C-x C-u
Convert region to upper case (upcase-region).
The word conversion commands are used most frequently. Meta-l (downcase-word)
converts the word after point to lower case, moving past it. Thus, repeating Meta-l converts
successive words. Meta-u (upcase-word) converts to all capitals instead, while Meta-c
(capitalize-word) puts the first letter of the word into upper case and the rest into lower
case. The word conversion commands convert several words at once if given an argument.
They are especially convenient for converting a large amount of text from all upper case
to mixed case: you can move through the text using M-l, M-u, or M-c on each word as
appropriate, occasionally using M-f instead to skip a word.
When given a negative argument, the word case conversion commands apply to the
appropriate number of words before point, but do not move point. This is convenient when
you have just typed a word in the wrong case: you can give the case conversion command
and continue typing.
If a word case conversion command is given in the middle of a word, it applies only to
the part of the word which follows point. This is just like what Meta-d (kill-word) does.
With a negative argument, case conversion applies only to the part of the word before point.
The other case conversion commands are C-x C-u (upcase-region) and C-x C-l
(downcase-region), which convert everything between point and mark to the specified
case. Point and mark do not move.
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22 Editing Programs
Emacs has many commands designed to understand the syntax of programming languages such as Lisp and C. These commands can:
• Move over or kill balanced expressions or sexps (see Section 22.2 [Lists], page 182).
• Move over or mark top-level balanced expressions (defuns, in Lisp; functions, in C).
• Show how parentheses balance (see Section 22.5 [Matching], page 189).
• Insert, kill, or align comments (see Section 22.6 [Comments], page 190).
• Follow the usual indentation conventions of the language (see Section 22.4 [Grinding],
page 185).
The commands available for words, sentences, and paragraphs are useful in editing code
even though their canonical application is for editing human language text. Most symbols
contain words (see Section 21.2 [Words], page 174); sentences can be found in strings and
comments (see Section 21.3 [Sentences], page 175). Paragraphs per se are not present in
code, but the paragraph commands are useful anyway, because Lisp mode and C mode
define paragraphs to begin and end at blank lines (see Section 21.4 [Paragraphs], page 176).
Judicious use of blank lines to make the program clearer also provides interesting chunks of
text for the paragraph commands to work on.
The selective display feature is useful for looking at the overall structure of a function
(see Section 12.3 [Selective Display], page 95). This feature causes only the lines that are
indented less than a specified amount to appear on the screen.
22.1 Major Modes for Programming Languages
Emacs has several major modes for the programming languages Lisp, Scheme (a variant
of Lisp), C, Fortran, and Muddle. Ideally, a major mode should be implemented for each
programming language you might want to edit with Emacs; but often the mode for one
language can serve for other syntactically similar languages. The language modes that exist
are those that someone decided to take the trouble to write.
There are several variants of Lisp mode, which differ in the way they interface to Lisp
execution. See Section 23.2 [Lisp Modes], page 210.
Each of the programming language modes defines the hTABi key to run an indentation
function that knows the indentation conventions of that language and updates the current
line’s indentation accordingly. For example, in C mode hTABi is bound to c-indent-line.
hLFDi is normally defined to do hRETi followed by hTABi; thus it, too, indents in a mode-specific
fashion.
In most programming languages, indentation is likely to vary from line to line. So the
major modes for those languages rebind hDELi to treat a tab as if it were the equivalent
number of spaces (using the command backward-delete-char-untabify). This makes it
possible to rub out indentation one column at a time without worrying whether it is made
up of spaces or tabs. In these modes, use C-b C-d to delete a tab character before point.
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Programming language modes define paragraphs to be separated only by blank lines, so
that the paragraph commands remain useful. Auto Fill mode, if enabled in a programming
language major mode, indents the new lines which it creates.
Turning on a major mode calls a user-supplied function called the mode hook, which
is the value of a Lisp variable. For example, turning on C mode calls the value of the
variable c-mode-hook if that value exists and is non-nil. Mode hook variables for other
programming language modes include lisp-mode-hook, emacs-lisp-mode-hook, lispinteraction-mode-hook, scheme-mode-hook, and muddle-mode-hook. The mode hook
function receives no arguments.
22.2 Lists and Sexps
By convention, Emacs keys for dealing with balanced expressions are usually ControlMeta- characters. They tend to be analogous in function to their Control- and Metaequivalents. These commands are usually thought of as pertaining to expressions in programming languages, but can be useful with any language in which some sort of parentheses
exist (including English).
The commands fall into two classes. Some commands deal only with lists (parenthetical
groupings). They see nothing except parentheses, brackets, braces (depending on what
must balance in the language you are working with), and escape characters that might be
used to quote those.
The other commands deal with expressions or sexps. The word ‘sexp’ is derived from
s-expression, the term for a symbolic expression in Lisp. In Emacs, the notion of ‘sexp’ is
not limited to Lisp. It refers to an expression in the language your program is written in.
Each programming language has its own major mode, which customizes the syntax tables
so that expressions in that language count as sexps.
Sexps typically include symbols, numbers, and string constants, as well as anything
contained in parentheses, brackets, or braces.
In languages that use prefix and infix operators, such as C, it is not possible for all
expressions to be sexps. For example, C mode does not recognize ‘foo + bar’ as an sexp,
even though it is a C expression; it recognizes ‘foo’ as one sexp and ‘bar’ as another, with
the ‘+’ as punctuation between them. This is a fundamental ambiguity: both ‘foo + bar’
and ‘foo’ are legitimate choices for the sexp to move over if point is at the ‘f’. Note that
‘(foo + bar)’ is a sexp in C mode.
Some languages have obscure forms of syntax for expressions that nobody has bothered
to make Emacs understand properly.
C-M-f
Move forward over an sexp (forward-sexp).
C-M-b
Move backward over an sexp (backward-sexp).
C-M-k
Kill sexp forward (kill-sexp).
C-M-u
Move up and backward in list structure (backward-up-list).
C-M-d
Move down and forward in list structure (down-list).
C-M-n
Move forward over a list (forward-list).
Chapter 22: Editing Programs
C-M-p
Move backward over a list (backward-list).
C-M-t
Transpose expressions (transpose-sexps).
C-M-@
Put mark after following expression (mark-sexp).
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To move forward over an sexp, use C-M-f (forward-sexp). If the first significant character after point is an opening delimiter (‘(’ in Lisp; ‘(’, ‘[’, or ‘{’ in C), C-M-f moves past
the matching closing delimiter. If the character begins a symbol, string, or number, C-M-f
moves over that. If the character after point is a closing delimiter, C-M-f just moves past
it. (This last is not really moving across an sexp; it is an exception which is included in
the definition of C-M-f because it is as useful a behavior as anyone can think of for that
situation.)
The command C-M-b (backward-sexp) moves backward over a sexp. The detailed rules
are like those above for C-M-f, but with directions reversed. If there are any prefix characters
(single quote, back quote, and comma, in Lisp) preceding the sexp, C-M-b moves back over
them as well.
C-M-f or C-M-b with an argument repeats that operation the specified number of times;
with a negative argument, it moves in the opposite direction.
In languages such as C where the comment-terminator can be recognized, the sexp commands move across comments as if they were whitespace. In Lisp and other languages where
comments run until the end of a line, it is very difficult to ignore comments when parsing
backwards; therefore, in such languages the sexp commands treat the text of comments as
if it were code.
Killing an sexp at a time can be done with C-M-k (kill-sexp). C-M-k kills the characters
that C-M-f would move over.
The list commands, C-M-n (forward-list) and C-M-p (backward-list), move over lists
like the sexp commands but skip over any number of other kinds of sexps (symbols, strings,
etc). In some situations, these commands are useful because they usually ignore comments,
since the comments usually do not contain any lists.
C-M-n and C-M-p stay at the same level in parentheses, when that is possible. To move
up one (or n) levels, use C-M-u (backward-up-list). C-M-u moves backward up past one
unmatched opening delimiter. A positive argument serves as a repeat count; a negative
argument reverses direction of motion and also requests repetition, so it moves forward and
up one or more levels.
To move down in list structure, use C-M-d (down-list). In Lisp mode, where ‘(’ is the
only opening delimiter, this is nearly the same as searching for a ‘(’. An argument specifies
the number of levels of parentheses to go down.
C-M-t (transpose-sexps) drags the previous sexp across the next one. An argument
serves as a repeat count, and a negative argument drags backwards (thus canceling out the
effect of C-M-t with a positive argument). An argument of zero, rather than doing nothing,
transposes the sexps ending after point and the mark.
To make the region be the next sexp in the buffer, use C-M-@ (mark-sexp) which sets
the mark at the same place that C-M-f would move to. C-M-@ takes arguments like C-M-f.
In particular, a negative argument is useful for putting the mark at the beginning of the
previous sexp.
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The list and sexp commands’ understanding of syntax is completely controlled by the
syntax table. Any character can, for example, be declared to be an opening delimiter and
act like an open parenthesis. See Section 29.5 [Syntax], page 308.
22.3 Defuns
In Emacs, a parenthetical grouping at the top level in the buffer is called a defun. The
name derives from the fact that most top-level lists in Lisp are instances of the special form
defun, but Emacs calls any top-level parenthetical grouping counts a defun regardless of its
contents or the programming language. For example, in C, the body of a function definition
is a defun.
C-M-a
Move to beginning of current or preceding defun (beginning-of-defun).
C-M-e
Move to end of current or following defun (end-of-defun).
C-M-h
Put region around whole current or following defun (mark-defun).
The commands to move to the beginning and end of the current defun are C-M-a
(beginning-of-defun) and C-M-e (end-of-defun).
To operate on the current defun, use C-M-h (mark-defun) which puts point at the
beginning and the mark at the end of the current or next defun. This is the easiest way
to prepare for moving the defun to a different place. In C mode, C-M-h runs the function
mark-c-function, which is almost the same as mark-defun, but which backs up over the
argument declarations, function name, and returned data type so that the entire C function
is inside the region.
To compile and evaluate the current defun, use M-x compile-defun. This function prints
the results in the minibuffer. If you include an argument, it inserts the value in the current
buffer after the defun.
Emacs assumes that any open-parenthesis found in the leftmost column is the start of
a defun. Therefore, never put an open-parenthesis at the left margin in a Lisp file unless
it is the start of a top level list. Never put an open-brace or other opening delimiter at the
beginning of a line of C code unless it starts the body of a function. The most likely problem
case is when you want an opening delimiter at the start of a line inside a string. To avoid
trouble, put an escape character (‘\’ in C and Emacs Lisp, ‘/’ in some other Lisp dialects)
before the opening delimiter. It will not affect the contents of the string.
The original Emacs found defuns by moving upward a level of parentheses until there
were no more levels to go up. This required scanning back to the beginning of the buffer
for every function. To speed this up, Emacs was changed to assume that any ‘(’ (or other
character assigned the syntactic class of opening-delimiter) at the left margin is the start of a
defun. This heuristic is nearly always right; however, it mandates the convention described
above.
22.4 Indentation for Programs
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185
The best way to keep a program properly indented (“ground”) is to use Emacs to reindent it as you change the program. Emacs has commands to indent properly either a single
line, a specified number of lines, or all of the lines inside a single parenthetical grouping.
22.4.1 Basic Program Indentation Commands
hTABi
Adjust indentation of current line.
hLFDi
Equivalent to hRETi followed by hTABi (newline-and-indent).
The basic indentation command is hTABi, which gives the current line the correct indentation as determined from the previous lines. The function that hTABi runs depends on the
major mode; it is lisp-indent-line in Lisp mode, c-indent-line in C mode, etc. These
functions understand different syntaxes for different languages, but they all do about the
same thing. hTABi in any programming language major mode inserts or deletes whitespace at
the beginning of the current line, independent of where point is in the line. If point is inside
the whitespace at the beginning of the line, hTABi leaves it at the end of that whitespace;
otherwise, hTABi leaves point fixed with respect to the characters around it.
Use C-q hTABi to insert a tab at point.
When entering a large amount of new code, use hLFDi (newline-and-indent), which
is equivalent to a hRETi followed by a hTABi. hLFDi creates a blank line, then gives it the
appropriate indentation.
indents the second and following lines of the body of a parenthetical grouping each
under the preceding one; therefore, if you alter one line’s indentation to be nonstandard,
the lines below tend to follow it. This is the right behavior in cases where the standard
result of hTABi does not look good.
hTABi
Remember that Emacs assumes that an open-parenthesis, open-brace, or other opening
delimiter at the left margin (including the indentation routines) is the start of a function.
You should therefore never have an opening delimiter in column zero that is not the beginning of a function, not even inside a string. This restriction is vital for making the
indentation commands fast. See Section 22.3 [Defuns], page 184, for more information on
this behavior.
22.4.2 Indenting Several Lines
Several commands are available to re-indent several lines of code which have been altered
or moved to a different level in a list structure.
C-M-q
Re-indent all the lines within one list (indent-sexp).
C-u hTABi
Shift an entire list rigidly sideways so that its first line is properly indented.
C-M-\
Re-indent all lines in the region (indent-region).
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To re-indent the contents of a single list, position point before the beginning of it and
type C-M-q. This key is bound to indent-sexp in Lisp mode, indent-c-exp in C mode,
and bound to other suitable functions in other modes. The indentation of the line the sexp
starts on is not changed; therefore, only the relative indentation within the list, and not its
position, is changed. To correct the position as well, type a hTABi before C-M-q.
If the relative indentation within a list is correct but the indentation of its beginning
is not, go to the line on which the list begins and type C-u hTABi. When you give hTABi a
numeric argument, it moves all the lines in the group, starting on the current line, sideways
the same amount that the current line moves. The command does not move lines that start
inside strings, or C preprocessor lines when in C mode.
Another way to specify a range to be re-indented is with point and mark. The command
C-M-\ (indent-region) applies hTABi to every line whose first character is between point
and mark.
22.4.3 Customizing Lisp Indentation
The indentation pattern for a Lisp expression can depend on the function called by the
expression. For each Lisp function, you can choose among several predefined patterns of
indentation, or define an arbitrary one with a Lisp program.
The standard pattern of indentation is as follows: the second line of the expression
is indented under the first argument, if that is on the same line as the beginning of the
expression; otherwise, the second line is indented underneath the function name. Each
following line is indented under the previous line whose nesting depth is the same.
If the variable lisp-indent-offset is non-nil, it overrides the usual indentation pattern for the second line of an expression, so that such lines are always indented lispindent-offset more columns than the containing list.
Certain functions override the standard pattern. Functions whose names start with def
always indent the second line by lisp-body-indention extra columns beyond the openparenthesis starting the expression.
Individual functions can override the standard pattern in various ways, according to the
lisp-indent-function property of the function name. (Note: lisp-indent-function
was formerly called lisp-indent-hook). There are four possibilities for this property:
nil
This is the same as no property; the standard indentation pattern is used.
defun
The pattern used for function names that start with def is used for this function
also.
a number, number
The first number arguments of the function are distinguished arguments; the
rest are considered the body of the expression. A line in the expression is
indented according to whether the first argument on it is distinguished or not.
If the argument is part of the body, the line is indented lisp-body-indent
more columns than the open-parenthesis starting the containing expression. If
the argument is distinguished and is either the first or second argument, it is
indented twice that many extra columns. If the argument is distinguished and
not the first or second argument, the standard pattern is followed for that line.
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a symbol, symbol
symbol should be a function name; that function is called to calculate the indentation of a line within this expression. The function receives two arguments:
state
The value returned by parse-partial-sexp (a Lisp primitive for
indentation and nesting computation) when it parses up to the
beginning of this line.
pos
The position at which the line being indented begins.
It should return either a number, which is the number of columns of indentation
for that line, or a list whose first element is such a number. The difference
between returning a number and returning a list is that a number says that all
following lines at the same nesting level should be indented just like this one; a
list says that following lines might call for different indentations. This makes a
difference when the indentation is computed by C-M-q; if the value is a number,
C-M-q need not recalculate indentation for the following lines until the end of
the list.
22.4.4 Customizing C Indentation
Two variables control which commands perform C indentation and when.
If c-auto-newline is non-nil, newlines are inserted both before and after braces that
you insert and after colons and semicolons. Correct C indentation is done on all the lines
that are made this way.
If c-tab-always-indent is non-nil, the hTABi command in C mode does indentation
only if point is at the left margin or within the line’s indentation. If there is non-whitespace
to the left of point, hTABi just inserts a tab character in the buffer. Normally, this variable
is nil, and hTABi always reindents the current line.
C does not have anything analogous to particular function names for which special forms
of indentation are desirable. However, it has a different need for customization facilities:
many different styles of C indentation are in common use.
There are six variables you can set to control the style that Emacs C mode will use.
c-indent-level
Indentation of C statements within surrounding block. The surrounding block’s
indentation is the indentation of the line on which the open-brace appears.
c-continued-statement-offset
Extra indentation given to a substatement, such as the then-clause of an if or
body of a while.
c-brace-offset
Extra indentation for lines that start with an open brace.
c-brace-imaginary-offset
An open brace following other text is treated as if it were this far to the right
of the start of its line.
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c-argdecl-indent
Indentation level of declarations of C function arguments.
c-label-offset
Extra indentation for a line that is a label, case, or default.
The variable c-indent-level controls the indentation for C statements with respect to
the surrounding block. In the example:
{
foo ();
the difference in indentation between the lines is c-indent-level. Its standard value is 2.
If the open-brace beginning the compound statement is not at the beginning of its line,
the c-indent-level is added to the indentation of the line, not the column of the openbrace. For example,
if (losing) {
do_this ();
One popular indentation style is that which results from setting c-indent-level to 8 and
putting open-braces at the end of a line in this way. Another popular style prefers to put
the open-brace on a separate line.
In fact, the value of the variable c-brace-imaginary-offset is also added to the indentation of such a statement. Normally this variable is zero. Think of this variable as the
imaginary position of the open brace, relative to the first non-blank character on the line.
By setting the variable to 4 and c-indent-level to 0, you can get this style:
if (x == y) {
do_it ();
}
When c-indent-level is zero, the statements inside most braces line up exactly under
the open brace. An exception are braces in column zero, like those surrounding a function’s
body. The statements inside those braces are not placed at column zero. Instead, c-braceoffset and c-continued-statement-offset (see below) are added to produce a typical
offset between brace levels, and the statements are indented that far.
c-continued-statement-offset controls the extra indentation for a line that starts
within a statement (but not within parentheses or brackets). These lines are usually statements inside other statements, like the then-clauses of if statements and the bodies of while
statements. The c-continued-statement-offset parameter determines the difference in
indentation between the two lines in:
if (x == y)
do_it ();
The default value for c-continued-statement-offset is 2. Some popular indentation
styles correspond to a value of zero for c-continued-statement-offset.
c-brace-offset is the extra indentation given to a line that starts with an open-brace.
Its standard value is zero; compare:
if (x == y)
{
with:
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if (x == y)
do_it ();
If you set c-brace-offset to 4, the first example becomes:
if (x == y)
{
c-argdecl-indent controls the indentation of declarations of the arguments of a C
function. It is absolute: argument declarations receive exactly c-argdecl-indent spaces.
The standard value is 5 and results in code like this:
char *
index (string, char)
char *string;
int char;
c-label-offset is the extra indentation given to a line that contains a label, a case
statement, or a default: statement. Its standard value is −2 and results in code like this:
switch (c)
{
case ’x’:
If c-label-offset were zero, the same code would be indented as:
switch (c)
{
case ’x’:
This example assumes that the other variables above also have their default values.
Using the indentation style produced by the default settings of the variables just discussed and putting open braces on separate lines produces clear and readable files. For an
example, look at any of the C source files of XEmacs.
22.5 Automatic Display of Matching Parentheses
The Emacs parenthesis-matching feature shows you automatically how parentheses
match in the text. Whenever a self-inserting character that is a closing delimiter is typed,
the cursor moves momentarily to the location of the matching opening delimiter, provided
that is visible on the screen. If it is not on the screen, some text starting with that opening
delimiter is displayed in the echo area. Either way, you see the grouping you are closing off.
In Lisp, automatic matching applies only to parentheses. In C, it also applies to braces
and brackets. Emacs knows which characters to regard as matching delimiters based on the
syntax table set by the major mode. See Section 29.5 [Syntax], page 308.
If the opening delimiter and closing delimiter are mismatched—as in ‘[x)’—the echo
area displays a warning message. The correct matches are specified in the syntax table.
Two variables control parenthesis matching displays. blink-matching-paren turns the
feature on or off. The default is t (match display is on); nil turns it off. blink-matchingparen-distance specifies how many characters back Emacs searches to find a matching
opening delimiter. If the match is not found in the specified region, scanning stops, and
nothing is displayed. This prevents wasting lots of time scanning when there is no match.
The default is 4000.
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22.6 Manipulating Comments
The comment commands insert, kill and align comments.
M-;
Insert or align comment (indent-for-comment).
C-x ;
Set comment column (set-comment-column).
C-u - C-x ;
Kill comment on current line (kill-comment).
M-hLFDi
Like hRETi followed by inserting and aligning a comment (indent-new-commentline).
The command that creates a comment is Meta-; (indent-for-comment). If there is no
comment already on the line, a new comment is created and aligned at a specific column
called the comment column. Emacs creates the comment by inserting the string at the value
of comment-start; see below. Point is left after that string. If the text of the line extends
past the comment column, indentation is done to a suitable boundary (usually, at least one
space is inserted). If the major mode has specified a string to terminate comments, that
string is inserted after point, to keep the syntax valid.
You can also use Meta-; to align an existing comment. If a line already contains the
string that starts comments, M-; just moves point after it and re-indents it to the conventional place. Exception: comments starting in column 0 are not moved.
Some major modes have special rules for indenting certain kinds of comments in certain
contexts. For example, in Lisp code, comments which start with two semicolons are indented
as if they were lines of code, instead of at the comment column. Comments which start
with three semicolons are supposed to start at the left margin. Emacs understands these
conventions by indenting a double-semicolon comment using hTABi and by not changing the
indentation of a triple-semicolon comment at all.
;; This function is just an example.
;;; Here either two or three semicolons are appropriate.
(defun foo (x)
;;; And now, the first part of the function:
;; The following line adds one.
(1+ x))
; This line adds one.
In C code, a comment preceded on its line by nothing but whitespace is indented like a
line of code.
Even when an existing comment is properly aligned, M-; is still useful for moving directly
to the start of the comment.
C-u - C-x ; (kill-comment) kills the comment on the current line, if there is one. The
indentation before the start of the comment is killed as well. If there does not appear to be
a comment in the line, nothing happens. To reinsert the comment on another line, move to
the end of that line, type first C-y, and then M-; to realign the comment. Note that C-u
- C-x ; is not a distinct key; it is C-x ; (set-comment-column) with a negative argument.
That command is programmed to call kill-comment when called with a negative argument.
However, kill-comment is a valid command which you could bind directly to a key if you
wanted to.
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22.6.1 Multiple Lines of Comments
If you are typing a comment and want to continue it on another line, use the command
Meta-hLFDi (indent-new-comment-line), which terminates the comment you are typing,
creates a new blank line afterward, and begins a new comment indented under the old
one. If Auto Fill mode is on and you go past the fill column while typing, the comment is
continued in just this fashion. If point is not at the end of the line when you type M-hLFDi,
the text on the rest of the line becomes part of the new comment line.
22.6.2 Options Controlling Comments
The comment column is stored in the variable comment-column. You can explicitly
set it to a number. Alternatively, the command C-x ; (set-comment-column) sets the
comment column to the column point is at. C-u C-x ; sets the comment column to match
the last comment before point in the buffer, and then calls Meta-; to align the current line’s
comment under the previous one. Note that C-u - C-x ; runs the function kill-comment
as described above.
comment-column is a per-buffer variable; altering the variable affects only the current
buffer. You can also change the default value. See Section 29.2.4 [Locals], page 298. Many
major modes initialize this variable for the current buffer.
The comment commands recognize comments based on the regular expression that is the
value of the variable comment-start-skip. This regexp should not match the null string.
It may match more than the comment starting delimiter in the strictest sense of the word;
for example, in C mode the value of the variable is "/\\*+ *", which matches extra stars
and spaces after the ‘/*’ itself. (Note that ‘\\’ is needed in Lisp syntax to include a ‘\’ in
the string, which is needed to deny the first star its special meaning in regexp syntax. See
Section 13.5 [Regexps], page 101.)
When a comment command makes a new comment, it inserts the value of commentstart to begin it. The value of comment-end is inserted after point and will follow the
text you will insert into the comment. In C mode, comment-start has the value "/* " and
comment-end has the value " */".
comment-multi-line controls how M-hLFDi (indent-new-comment-line) behaves when
used inside a comment. If comment-multi-line is nil, as it normally is, then M-hLFDi
terminates the comment on the starting line and starts a new comment on the new following
line. If comment-multi-line is not nil, then M-hLFDi sets up the new following line as part
of the same comment that was found on the starting line. This is done by not inserting a
terminator on the old line and not inserting a starter on the new line. In languages where
multi-line comments are legal, the value you choose for this variable is a matter of taste.
The variable comment-indent-hook should contain a function that is called to compute
the indentation for a newly inserted comment or for aligning an existing comment. Major
modes set this variable differently. The function is called with no arguments, but with point
at the beginning of the comment, or at the end of a line if a new comment is to be inserted.
The function should return the column in which the comment ought to start. For example,
in Lisp mode, the indent hook function bases its decision on the number of semicolons that
begin an existing comment and on the code in the preceding lines.
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22.7 Editing Without Unbalanced Parentheses
M-(
Put parentheses around next sexp(s) (insert-parentheses).
M-)
Move past next close parenthesis and re-indent (move-over-close-andreindent).
The commands M-( (insert-parentheses) and M-) (move-over-close-and-reindent)
are designed to facilitate a style of editing which keeps parentheses balanced at all times.
M-( inserts a pair of parentheses, either together as in ‘()’, or, if given an argument, around
the next several sexps, and leaves point after the open parenthesis. Instead of typing ( F O O
), you can type M-( F O O, which has the same effect except for leaving the cursor before the
close parenthesis. You can then type M-), which moves past the close parenthesis, deletes
any indentation preceding it (in this example there is none), and indents with hLFDi after it.
22.8 Completion for Lisp Symbols
Completion usually happens in the minibuffer. An exception is completion for Lisp
symbol names, which is available in all buffers.
The command M-hTABi (lisp-complete-symbol) takes the partial Lisp symbol before
point to be an abbreviation, and compares it against all non-trivial Lisp symbols currently
known to Emacs. Any additional characters that they all have in common are inserted at
point. Non-trivial symbols are those that have function definitions, values, or properties.
If there is an open-parenthesis immediately before the beginning of the partial symbol,
only symbols with function definitions are considered as completions.
If the partial name in the buffer has more than one possible completion and they have no
additional characters in common, a list of all possible completions is displayed in another
window.
22.9 Documentation Commands
As you edit Lisp code to be run in Emacs, you can use the commands C-h f (describefunction) and C-h v (describe-variable) to print documentation of functions and variables you want to call. These commands use the minibuffer to read the name of a function
or variable to document, and display the documentation in a window.
For extra convenience, these commands provide default arguments based on the code in
the neighborhood of point. C-h f sets the default to the function called in the innermost list
containing point. C-h v uses the symbol name around or adjacent to point as its default.
The M-x manual-entry command gives you access to documentation on Unix commands,
system calls, and libraries. The command reads a topic as an argument, and displays
the Unix manual page for that topic. manual-entry always searches all 8 sections of the
manual and concatenates all the entries it finds. For example, the topic ‘termcap’ finds the
description of the termcap library from section 3, followed by the description of the termcap
data base from section 5.
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22.10 Change Logs
The Emacs command M-x add-change-log-entry helps you keep a record of when and
why you have changed a program. It assumes that you have a file in which you write a
chronological sequence of entries describing individual changes. The default is to store the
change entries in a file called ‘ChangeLog’ in the same directory as the file you are editing.
The same ‘ChangeLog’ file therefore records changes for all the files in a directory.
A change log entry starts with a header line that contains your name and the current
date. Except for these header lines, every line in the change log starts with a tab. One
entry can describe several changes; each change starts with a line starting with a tab and a
star. M-x add-change-log-entry visits the change log file and creates a new entry unless
the most recent entry is for today’s date and your name. In either case, it adds a new line
to start the description of another change just after the header line of the entry. When M-x
add-change-log-entry is finished, all is prepared for you to edit in the description of what
you changed and how. You must then save the change log file yourself.
The change log file is always visited in Indented Text mode, which means that hLFDi and
auto-filling indent each new line like the previous line. This is convenient for entering the
contents of an entry, which must be indented. See Section 21.1 [Text Mode], page 167.
Here is an example of the formatting conventions used in the change log for Emacs:
Wed Jun 26 19:29:32 1985 Richard M. Stallman (rms at mit-prep)
* xdisp.c (try_window_id):
If C-k is done at end of next-to-last line,
this fn updates window_end_vpos and cannot leave
window_end_pos nonnegative (it is zero, in fact).
If display is preempted before lines are output,
this is inconsistent. Fix by setting
blank_end_of_window to nonzero.
Tue Jun 25 05:25:33 1985
Richard M. Stallman
(rms at mit-prep)
* cmds.c (Fnewline):
Call the auto fill hook if appropriate.
* xdisp.c (try_window_id):
If point is found by compute_motion after xp, record that
permanently. If display_text_line sets point position wrong
(case where line is killed, point is at eob and that line is
not displayed), set it again in final compute_motion.
22.11 Tags Tables
A tags table is a description of how a multi-file program is broken up into files. It lists
the names of the component files and the names and positions of the functions (or other
named subunits) in each file. Grouping the related files makes it possible to search or replace
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through all the files with one command. Recording the function names and positions makes
possible the M-. command which finds the definition of a function by looking up which of
the files it is in.
Tags tables are stored in files called tags table files. The conventional name for a tags
table file is ‘TAGS’.
Each entry in the tags table records the name of one tag, the name of the file that the
tag is defined in (implicitly), and the position in that file of the tag’s definition.
Just what names from the described files are recorded in the tags table depends on
the programming language of the described file. They normally include all functions and
subroutines, and may also include global variables, data types, and anything else convenient.
Each name recorded is called a tag.
The Ebrowse is a separate facility tailored for C++, with tags and a class browser. See
section “Top” in Ebrowse User’s Manual.
22.11.1 Source File Tag Syntax
Here is how tag syntax is defined for the most popular languages:
• In C code, any C function or typedef is a tag, and so are definitions of struct, union and
enum. You can tag function declarations and external variables in addition to function
definitions by giving the ‘--declarations’ option to etags. #define macro definitions
and enum constants are also tags, unless you specify ‘--no-defines’ when making the
tags table. Similarly, global variables are tags, unless you specify ‘--no-globals’. Use
of ‘--no-globals’ and ‘--no-defines’ can make the tags table file much smaller.
• In C++ code, in addition to all the tag constructs of C code, member functions are also
recognized, and optionally member variables if you use the ‘--members’ option. Tags
for variables and functions in classes are named ‘class::variable’ and ‘class::function’.
operator functions tags are named, for example ‘operator+’.
• In Java code, tags include all the constructs recognized in C++, plus the interface,
extends and implements constructs. Tags for variables and functions in classes are
named ‘class.variable’ and ‘class.function’.
• In LaTEX text, the argument of any of the commands \chapter, \section, \subsection,
\subsubsection, \eqno, \label, \ref, \cite, \bibitem, \part, \appendix, \entry,
or \index, is a tag.
Other commands can make tags as well, if you specify them in the environment variable
TEXTAGS before invoking etags. The value of this environment variable should be a
colon-separated list of command names. For example,
TEXTAGS="def:newcommand:newenvironment"
export TEXTAGS
specifies (using Bourne shell syntax) that the commands ‘\def’, ‘\newcommand’ and
‘\newenvironment’ also define tags.
• In Lisp code, any function defined with defun, any variable defined with defvar or
defconst, and in general the first argument of any expression that starts with ‘(def’
in column zero, is a tag.
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• In Scheme code, tags include anything defined with def or with a construct whose
name starts with ‘def’. They also include variables set with set! at top level in the
file.
Several other languages are also supported:
• In Ada code, functions, procedures, packages, tasks, and types are tags. Use the
‘--packages-only’ option to create tags for packages only.
With Ada, it is possible to have the same name used for different entity kinds (e.g. the
same name for a procedure and a function). Also, for things like packages, procedures
and functions, there is the spec (i.e. the interface) and the body (i.e. the implementation). To facilitate the choice to the user, a tag value is appended with a qualifier:
function
/f
procedure /p
package spec
/s
package body
/b
type
/t
task
/k
So, as an example, M-x find-tag bidule/b will go directly to the body of the package
bidule while M-x find-tag bidule will just search for any tag bidule.
• In assembler code, labels appearing at the beginning of a line, followed by a colon, are
tags.
• In Bison or Yacc input files, each rule defines as a tag the nonterminal it constructs.
The portions of the file that contain C code are parsed as C code.
• In Cobol code, tags are paragraph names; that is, any word starting in column 8 and
followed by a period.
• In Erlang code, the tags are the functions, records, and macros defined in the file.
• In Fortran code, functions, subroutines and blockdata are tags.
• In makefiles, targets are tags.
• In Objective C code, tags include Objective C definitions for classes, class categories,
methods, and protocols.
• In Pascal code, the tags are the functions and procedures defined in the file.
• In Perl code, the tags are the procedures defined by the sub, my and local keywords.
Use ‘--globals’ if you want to tag global variables.
• In PostScript code, the tags are the functions.
• In Prolog code, a tag name appears at the left margin.
• In Python code, def or class at the beginning of a line generate a tag.
You can also generate tags based on regexp matching (see Section 22.11.3 [Etags Regexps], page 197) to handle other formats and languages.
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22.11.2 Creating Tags Tables
The etags program is used to create a tags table file. It knows the syntax of several
languages, as described in the previous section. Here is how to run etags:
etags inputfiles...
The etags program reads the specified files, and writes a tags table named ‘TAGS’ in the
current working directory. You can intermix compressed and plain text source file names.
etags knows about the most common compression formats, and does the right thing. So
you can compress all your source files and have etags look for compressed versions of its
file name arguments, if it does not find uncompressed versions. Under MS-DOS, etags also
looks for file names like ‘mycode.cgz’ if it is given ‘mycode.c’ on the command line and
‘mycode.c’ does not exist.
etags recognizes the language used in an input file based on its file name and contents.
You can specify the language with the ‘--language=name’ option, described below.
If the tags table data become outdated due to changes in the files described in the table,
the way to update the tags table is the same way it was made in the first place. It is not
necessary to do this often.
If the tags table fails to record a tag, or records it for the wrong file, then Emacs cannot
possibly find its definition. However, if the position recorded in the tags table becomes
a little bit wrong (due to some editing in the file that the tag definition is in), the only
consequence is a slight delay in finding the tag. Even if the stored position is very wrong,
Emacs will still find the tag, but it must search the entire file for it.
So you should update a tags table when you define new tags that you want to have
listed, or when you move tag definitions from one file to another, or when changes become
substantial. Normally there is no need to update the tags table after each edit, or even
every day.
One tags table can effectively include another. Specify the included tags file name with
the ‘--include=file’ option when creating the file that is to include it. The latter file then
acts as if it contained all the files specified in the included file, as well as the files it directly
contains.
If you specify the source files with relative file names when you run etags, the tags file
will contain file names relative to the directory where the tags file was initially written.
This way, you can move an entire directory tree containing both the tags file and the source
files, and the tags file will still refer correctly to the source files.
If you specify absolute file names as arguments to etags, then the tags file will contain
absolute file names. This way, the tags file will still refer to the same files even if you move
it, as long as the source files remain in the same place. Absolute file names start with ‘/’,
or with ‘device:/’ on MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
When you want to make a tags table from a great number of files, you may have problems
listing them on the command line, because some systems have a limit on its length. The
simplest way to circumvent this limit is to tell etags to read the file names from its standard
input, by typing a dash in place of the file names, like this:
find . -name "*.[chCH]" -print | etags -
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Use the option ‘--language=name’ to specify the language explicitly. You can intermix
these options with file names; each one applies to the file names that follow it. Specify
‘--language=auto’ to tell etags to resume guessing the language from the file names and
file contents. Specify ‘--language=none’ to turn off language-specific processing entirely;
then etags recognizes tags by regexp matching alone (see Section 22.11.3 [Etags Regexps],
page 197).
‘etags --help’ prints the list of the languages etags knows, and the file name rules for
guessing the language. It also prints a list of all the available etags options, together with
a short explanation.
22.11.3 Etags Regexps
The ‘--regex’ option provides a general way of recognizing tags based on regexp matching. You can freely intermix it with file names. Each ‘--regex’ option adds to the preceding
ones, and applies only to the following files. The syntax is:
--regex=/tagregexp[/nameregexp]/
where tagregexp is used to match the lines to tag. It is always anchored, that is, it behaves
as if preceded by ‘^’. If you want to account for indentation, just match any initial number
of blanks by beginning your regular expression with ‘[ \t]*’. In the regular expressions,
‘\’ quotes the next character, and ‘\t’ stands for the tab character. Note that etags does
not handle the other C escape sequences for special characters.
The syntax of regular expressions in etags is the same as in Emacs, augmented with
the interval operator, which works as in grep and ed. The syntax of an interval operator is
‘\{m,n\}’, and its meaning is to match the preceding expression at least m times and up
to n times.
You should not match more characters with tagregexp than that needed to recognize
what you want to tag. If the match is such that more characters than needed are unavoidably
matched by tagregexp (as will usually be the case), you should add a nameregexp, to pick
out just the tag. This will enable Emacs to find tags more accurately and to do completion
on tag names more reliably. You can find some examples below.
The option ‘--ignore-case-regex’ (or ‘-c’) is like ‘--regex’, except that the regular
expression provided will be matched without regard to case, which is appropriate for various
programming languages.
The ‘-R’ option deletes all the regexps defined with ‘--regex’ options. It applies to the
file names following it, as you can see from the following example:
etags --regex=/reg1/ voo.doo --regex=/reg2/ \
bar.ber -R --lang=lisp los.er
Here etags chooses the parsing language for ‘voo.doo’ and ‘bar.ber’ according to their
contents. etags also uses reg1 to recognize additional tags in ‘voo.doo’, and both reg1
and reg2 to recognize additional tags in ‘bar.ber’. etags uses the Lisp tags rules, and no
regexp matching, to recognize tags in ‘los.er’.
A regular expression can be bound to a given language, by prepending it with ‘{lang}’.
When you do this, etags will use the regular expression only for files of that language.
‘etags --help’ prints the list of languages recognised by etags. The following example
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tags the DEFVAR macros in the Emacs source files. etags applies this regular expression to
C files only:
--regex=’{c}/[ \t]*DEFVAR_[A-Z_ \t(]+"\([^"]+\)"/’
This feature is particularly useful when storing a list of regular expressions in a file. The
following option syntax instructs etags to read two files of regular expressions. The regular
expressions contained in the second file are matched without regard to case.
--regex=@first-file --ignore-case-regex=@second-file
A regex file contains one regular expressions per line. Empty lines, and lines beginning with
space or tab are ignored. When the first character in a line is ‘@’, etags assumes that the
rest of the line is the name of a file of regular expressions. This means that such files can
be nested. All the other lines are taken to be regular expressions. For example, one can
create a file called ‘emacs.tags’ with the following contents (the first line in the file is a
comment):
-- This is for GNU Emacs source files
{c}/[ \t]*DEFVAR_[A-Z_ \t(]+"\([^"]+\)"/\1/
and then use it like this:
etags --regex=@emacs.tags *.[ch] */*.[ch]
Here are some more examples. The regexps are quoted to protect them from shell
interpretation.
• Tag Octave files:
etags --language=none \
--regex=’/[ \t]*function.*=[ \t]*\([^ \t]*\)[ \t]*(/\1/’ \
--regex=’/###key \(.*\)/\1/’ \
--regex=’/[ \t]*global[ \t].*/’ \
*.m
Note that tags are not generated for scripts so that you have to add a line by yourself
of the form ‘###key <script-name>’ if you want to jump to it.
• Tag Tcl files:
etags --language=none --regex=’/proc[ \t]+\([^ \t]+\)/\1/’ *.tcl
• Tag VHDL files:
--language=none \
--regex=’/[ \t]*\(ARCHITECTURE\|CONFIGURATION\) +[^ ]* +OF/’ \
--regex=’/[ \t]*\(ATTRIBUTE\|ENTITY\|FUNCTION\|PACKAGE\
\( BODY\)?\|PROCEDURE\|PROCESS\|TYPE\)[ \t]+\([^ \t(]+\)/\3/’
22.11.4 Selecting a Tags Table
At any time Emacs has one selected tags table, and all the commands for working with
tags tables use the selected one. To select a tags table, use the variable tag-table-alist.
The value of tag-table-alist is a list that determines which TAGS files should be active
for a given buffer. This is not really an association list, in that all elements are checked. The
car of each element of this list is a pattern against which the buffers file name is compared;
if it matches, then the cdr of the list should be the name of the tags table to use. If more
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than one element of this list matches the buffers file name, all of the associated tags tables
are used. Earlier ones are searched first.
If the car of elements of this list are strings, they are treated as regular-expressions
against which the file is compared (like the auto-mode-alist). If they are not strings, they
are evaluated. If they evaluate to non-nil, the current buffer is considered to match.
If the cdr of the elements of this list are strings, they are assumed to name a tags file. If
they name a directory, the string ‘tags’ is appended to them to get the file name. If they
are not strings, they are evaluated and must return an appropriate string.
For example:
(setq tag-table-alist
’(("/usr/src/public/perl/" . "/usr/src/public/perl/perl-3.0/")
("\\.el$" . "/usr/local/emacs/src/")
("/jbw/gnu/" . "/usr15/degree/stud/jbw/gnu/")
("" . "/usr/local/emacs/src/")
))
The example defines the tags table alist in the following way:
• Anything in the directory ‘/usr/src/public/perl/’ should use the ‘TAGS’ file ‘/usr/src/public/perl
• Files ending in ‘.el’ should use the ‘TAGS’ file ‘/usr/local/emacs/src/TAGS’.
• Anything in or below the directory ‘/jbw/gnu/’ should use the ‘TAGS’ file ‘/usr15/degree/stud/jbw/gn
If you had a file called ‘/usr/jbw/foo.el’, it would use both ‘TAGS’ files,
‘/usr/local/emacs/src/TAGS’ and ‘/usr15/degree/stud/jbw/gnu/TAGS’ (in that order),
because it matches both patterns.
If the buffer-local variable buffer-tag-table is set, it names a tags table that is searched
before all others when find-tag is executed from this buffer.
If there is a file called ‘TAGS’ in the same directory as the file in question, then that tags
file will always be used as well (after the buffer-tag-table but before the tables specified
by this list).
If the variable tags-file-name is set, the ‘TAGS’ file it names will apply to all buffers
(for backwards compatibility.) It is searched first.
If the value of the variable tags-always-build-completion-table is t, the tags file
will always be added to the completion table without asking first, regardless of the size of
the tags file.
The function M-x visit-tags-table, is largely made obsolete by the variable tagtable-alist, tells tags commands to use the tags table file file first. The file should be
the name of a file created with the etags program. A directory name is also acceptable; it
means the file ‘TAGS’ in that directory. The function only stores the file name you provide
in the variable tags-file-name. Emacs does not actually read in the tags table contents
until you try to use them. You can set the variable explicitly instead of using visit-tagstable. The value of the variable tags-file-name is the name of the tags table used by
all buffers. This is for backward compatibility, and is largely supplanted by the variable
tag-table-alist.
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22.11.5 Finding a Tag
The most important thing that a tags table enables you to do is to find the definition of
a specific tag.
M-. tag &optional other-window
Find first definition of tag (find-tag).
C-u M-.
Find next alternate definition of last tag specified.
C-x 4 . tag
Find first definition of tag, but display it in another window (find-tag-otherwindow).
M-. (find-tag) is the command to find the definition of a specified tag. It searches
through the tags table for that tag, as a string, then uses the tags table information to
determine the file in which the definition is used and the approximate character position
of the definition in the file. Then find-tag visits the file, moves point to the approximate
character position, and starts searching ever-increasing distances away for the text that
should appear at the beginning of the definition.
If an empty argument is given (by typing hRETi), the sexp in the buffer before or around
point is used as the name of the tag to find. See Section 22.2 [Lists], page 182, for information
on sexps.
The argument to find-tag need not be the whole tag name; it can be a substring of
a tag name. However, there can be many tag names containing the substring you specify.
Since find-tag works by searching the text of the tags table, it finds the first tag in the
table that the specified substring appears in. To find other tags that match the substring,
give find-tag a numeric argument, as in C-u M-.. This does not read a tag name, but
continues searching the tag table’s text for another tag containing the same substring last
used. If your keyboard has a real hMETAi key, M-0 M-. is an easier alternative to C-u M-..
If the optional second argument other-window is non-nil, it uses another window to
display the tag. Multiple active tags tables and completion are supported.
Variables of note include the following:
tag-table-alist
Controls which tables apply to which buffers.
tags-file-name
Stores a default tags table.
tags-build-completion-table
Controls completion behavior.
buffer-tag-table
Specifies a buffer-local table.
make-tags-files-invisible
Sets whether tags tables should be very hidden.
tag-mark-stack-max
Specifies how many tags-based hops to remember.
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Like most commands that can switch buffers, find-tag has another similar command
that displays the new buffer in another window. C-x 4 . invokes the function find-tagother-window. (This key sequence ends with a period.)
Emacs comes with a tags table file ‘TAGS’ (in the directory containing Lisp libraries) that
includes all the Lisp libraries and all the C sources of Emacs. By specifying this file with
visit-tags-table and then using M-. you can quickly look at the source of any Emacs
function.
22.11.6 Searching and Replacing with Tags Tables
The commands in this section visit and search all the files listed in the selected tags
table, one by one. For these commands, the tags table serves only to specify a sequence of
files to search. A related command is M-x grep (see Section 23.1 [Compilation], page 209).
M-x tags-search hRETi regexp hRETi
Search for regexp through the files in the selected tags table.
M-x tags-query-replace hRETi regexp hRETi replacement hRETi
Perform a query-replace-regexp on each file in the selected tags table.
M-,
Restart one of the commands above, from the current location of point (tagsloop-continue).
M-x tags-search reads a regexp using the minibuffer, then searches for matches in all
the files in the selected tags table, one file at a time. It displays the name of the file being
searched so you can follow its progress. As soon as it finds an occurrence, tags-search
returns.
Having found one match, you probably want to find all the rest. To find one more match,
type M-, (tags-loop-continue) to resume the tags-search. This searches the rest of the
current buffer, followed by the remaining files of the tags table.
M-x tags-query-replace performs a single query-replace-regexp through all the files
in the tags table. It reads a regexp to search for and a string to replace with, just like ordinary M-x query-replace-regexp. It searches much like M-x tags-search, but repeatedly,
processing matches according to your input. See Section 13.7 [Replace], page 106, for more
information on query replace.
It is possible to get through all the files in the tags table with a single invocation of M-x
tags-query-replace. But often it is useful to exit temporarily, which you can do with any
input event that has no special query replace meaning. You can resume the query replace
subsequently by typing M-,; this command resumes the last tags search or replace command
that you did.
The commands in this section carry out much broader searches than the find-tag family.
The find-tag commands search only for definitions of tags that match your substring or
regexp. The commands tags-search and tags-query-replace find every occurrence of
the regexp, as ordinary search commands and replace commands do in the current buffer.
These commands create buffers only temporarily for the files that they have to search
(those which are not already visited in Emacs buffers). Buffers in which no match is found
are quickly killed; the others continue to exist.
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It may have struck you that tags-search is a lot like grep. You can also run grep itself
as an inferior of Emacs and have Emacs show you the matching lines one by one. This
works much like running a compilation; finding the source locations of the grep matches
works like finding the compilation errors. See Section 23.1 [Compilation], page 209.
If you wish to process all the files in a selected tags table, but M-x tags-search and M-x
tags-query-replace are not giving you the desired result, you can use M-x next-file.
C-u M-x next-file
With a numeric argument, regardless of its value, visit the first file in the tags
table and prepare to advance sequentially by files.
M-x next-file
Visit the next file in the selected tags table.
22.11.7 Tags Table Inquiries
M-x list-tags
Display a list of the tags defined in a specific program file.
M-x tags-apropos
Display a list of all tags matching a specified regexp.
M-x list-tags reads the name of one of the files described by the selected tags table,
and displays a list of all the tags defined in that file. The “file name” argument is really
just a string to compare against the names recorded in the tags table; it is read as a string
rather than a file name. Therefore, completion and defaulting are not available, and you
must enter the string the same way it appears in the tag table. Do not include a directory as
part of the file name unless the file name recorded in the tags table contains that directory.
M-x tags-apropos is like apropos for tags. It reads a regexp, then finds all the tags in
the selected tags table whose entries match that regexp, and displays the tag names found.
22.12 Fortran Mode
Fortran mode provides special motion commands for Fortran statements and subprograms, and indentation commands that understand Fortran conventions of nesting, line
numbers, and continuation statements.
Special commands for comments are provided because Fortran comments are unlike those
of other languages.
Built-in abbrevs optionally save typing when you insert Fortran keywords.
Use M-x fortran-mode to switch to this major mode. Doing so calls the value of
fortran-mode-hook as a function of no arguments if that variable has a non-nil value.
Fortran mode was contributed by Michael Prange.
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22.12.1 Motion Commands
Fortran mode provides special commands to move by subprograms (functions and subroutines) and by statements. There is also a command to put the region around one
subprogram, which is convenient for killing it or moving it.
C-M-a
Move to beginning of subprogram
(beginning-of-fortran-subprogram).
C-M-e
Move to end of subprogram (end-of-fortran-subprogram).
C-M-h
Put point at beginning of subprogram and mark at end (mark-fortransubprogram).
C-c C-n
Move to beginning of current or next statement (fortran-nextstatement).
C-c C-p
Move to beginning of current or previous statement (fortranprevious-statement).
22.12.2 Fortran Indentation
Special commands and features are available for indenting Fortran code. They make
sure various syntactic entities (line numbers, comment line indicators, and continuation
line flags) appear in the columns that are required for standard Fortran.
22.12.2.1 Fortran Indentation Commands
hTABi
Indent the current line (fortran-indent-line).
M-hLFDi
Break the current line and set up a continuation line.
C-M-q
Indent all the lines of the subprogram point is in (fortran-indent-subprogram).
hTABi is redefined by Fortran mode to reindent the current line for Fortran (fortranindent-line). Line numbers and continuation markers are indented to their required
columns, and the body of the statement is independently indented, based on its nesting in
the program.
The key C-M-q is redefined as fortran-indent-subprogram, a command that reindents
all the lines of the Fortran subprogram (function or subroutine) containing point.
The key M-hLFDi is redefined as fortran-split-line, a command to split a line in
the appropriate fashion for Fortran. In a non-comment line, the second half becomes a
continuation line and is indented accordingly. In a comment line, both halves become
separate comment lines.
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22.12.2.2 Line Numbers and Continuation
If a number is the first non-whitespace in the line, it is assumed to be a line number and
is moved to columns 0 through 4. (Columns are always counted from 0 in XEmacs.) If the
text on the line starts with the conventional Fortran continuation marker ‘$’, it is moved to
column 5. If the text begins with any non whitespace character in column 5, it is assumed
to be an unconventional continuation marker and remains in column 5.
Line numbers of four digits or less are normally indented one space. This amount is controlled by the variable fortran-line-number-indent, which is the maximum indentation
a line number can have. Line numbers are indented to right-justify them to end in column
4 unless that would require more than the maximum indentation. The default value of the
variable is 1.
Simply inserting a line number is enough to indent it according to these rules. As each
digit is inserted, the indentation is recomputed. To turn off this feature, set the variable
fortran-electric-line-number to nil. Then inserting line numbers is like inserting
anything else.
22.12.2.3 Syntactic Conventions
Fortran mode assumes that you follow certain conventions that simplify the task of
understanding a Fortran program well enough to indent it properly:
• Two nested ‘do’ loops never share a ‘continue’ statement.
• The same character appears in column 5 of all continuation lines. It is the value of the
variable fortran-continuation-char. By default, this character is ‘$’.
If you fail to follow these conventions, the indentation commands may indent some lines
unaesthetically. However, a correct Fortran program will retain its meaning when reindented
even if the conventions are not followed.
22.12.2.4 Variables for Fortran Indentation
Several additional variables control how Fortran indentation works.
fortran-do-indent
Extra indentation within each level of ‘do’ statement (the default is 3).
fortran-if-indent
Extra indentation within each level of ‘if’ statement (the default is 3).
fortran-continuation-indent
Extra indentation for bodies of continuation lines (the default is 5).
fortran-check-all-num-for-matching-do
If this is nil, indentation assumes that each ‘do’ statement ends on a ‘continue’
statement. Therefore, when computing indentation for a statement other than
‘continue’, it can save time by not checking for a ‘do’ statement ending there.
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If this is non-nil, indenting any numbered statement must check for a ‘do’ that
ends there. The default is nil.
fortran-minimum-statement-indent
Minimum indentation for Fortran statements. For standard Fortran, this is 6.
Statement bodies are always indented at least this much.
22.12.3 Comments
The usual Emacs comment commands assume that a comment can follow a line of code.
In Fortran, the standard comment syntax requires an entire line to be just a comment.
Therefore, Fortran mode replaces the standard Emacs comment commands and defines
some new variables.
Fortran mode can also handle a non-standard comment syntax where comments start
with ‘!’ and can follow other text. Because only some Fortran compilers accept this syntax,
Fortran mode will not insert such comments unless you have specified to do so in advance
by setting the variable comment-start to ‘"!"’ (see Section 29.2 [Variables], page 291).
M-;
Align comment or insert new comment (fortran-comment-indent).
C-x ;
Applies to nonstandard ‘!’ comments only.
C-c ;
Turn all lines of the region into comments, or (with arg) turn them back into
real code (fortran-comment-region).
M-; in Fortran mode is redefined as the command fortran-comment-indent. Like the
usual M-; command, it recognizes an existing comment and aligns its text appropriately. If
there is no existing comment, a comment is inserted and aligned.
Inserting and aligning comments is not the same in Fortran mode as in other modes.
When a new comment must be inserted, a full-line comment is inserted if the current line
is blank. On a non-blank line, a non-standard ‘!’ comment is inserted if you previously
specified you wanted to use them. Otherwise a full-line comment is inserted on a new line
before the current line.
Non-standard ‘!’ comments are aligned like comments in other languages, but full-line
comments are aligned differently. In a standard full-line comment, the comment delimiter
itself must always appear in column zero. What can be aligned is the text within the
comment. You can choose from three styles of alignment by setting the variable fortrancomment-indent-style to one of these values:
fixed
The text is aligned at a fixed column, which is the value of fortran-commentline-column. This is the default.
relative
The text is aligned as if it were a line of code, but with an additional fortrancomment-line-column columns of indentation.
nil
Text in full-line columns is not moved automatically.
You can also specify the character to be used to indent within full-line comments by
setting the variable fortran-comment-indent-char to the character you want to use.
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Fortran mode introduces two variables comment-line-start and comment-line-startskip, which do for full-line comments what comment-start and comment-start-skip do
for ordinary text-following comments. Normally these are set properly by Fortran mode, so
you do not need to change them.
The normal Emacs comment command C-x ; has not been redefined. It can therefore
be used if you use ‘!’ comments, but is useless in Fortran mode otherwise.
The command C-c ; (fortran-comment-region) turns all the lines of the region into
comments by inserting the string ‘C$$$’ at the front of each one. With a numeric arg, the
region is turned back into live code by deleting ‘C$$$’ from the front of each line. You can
control the string used for the comments by setting the variable fortran-comment-region.
Note that here we have an example of a command and a variable with the same name; the
two uses of the name never conflict because in Lisp and in Emacs it is always clear from
the context which one is referred to.
22.12.4 Columns
C-c C-r
Displays a “column ruler” momentarily above the current line (fortrancolumn-ruler).
C-c C-w
Splits the current window horizontally so that it is 72 columns wide. This may
help you avoid going over that limit (fortran-window-create).
The command C-c C-r (fortran-column-ruler) shows a column ruler above the current line. The comment ruler consists of two lines of text that show you the locations of
columns with special significance in Fortran programs. Square brackets show the limits of
the columns for line numbers, and curly brackets show the limits of the columns for the
statement body. Column numbers appear above them.
Note that the column numbers count from zero, as always in XEmacs. As a result, the
numbers may not be those you are familiar with; but the actual positions in the line are
standard Fortran.
The text used to display the column ruler is the value of the variable fortran-commentruler. By changing this variable, you can change the display.
For even more help, use C-c C-w (fortran-window-create), a command which splits
the current window horizontally, resulting in a window 72 columns wide. When you edit in
this window, you can immediately see when a line gets too wide to be correct Fortran.
22.12.5 Fortran Keyword Abbrevs
Fortran mode provides many built-in abbrevs for common keywords and declarations.
These are the same sort of abbrevs that you can define yourself. To use them, you must
turn on Abbrev mode. see Chapter 24 [Abbrevs], page 233.
The built-in abbrevs are unusual in one way: they all start with a semicolon. You cannot
normally use semicolon in an abbrev, but Fortran mode makes this possible by changing
the syntax of semicolon to “word constituent”.
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For example, one built-in Fortran abbrev is ‘;c’ for ‘continue’. If you insert ‘;c’ and then
insert a punctuation character such as a space or a newline, the ‘;c’ changes automatically
to ‘continue’, provided Abbrev mode is enabled.
Type ‘;?’ or ‘;C-h’ to display a list of all built-in Fortran abbrevs and what they stand
for.
22.13 Asm Mode
Asm mode is a major mode for editing files of assembler code. It defines these commands:
hTABi
tab-to-tab-stop.
hLFDi
Insert a newline and then indent using tab-to-tab-stop.
:
Insert a colon and then remove the indentation from before the label preceding
colon. Then do tab-to-tab-stop.
;
Insert or align a comment.
The variable asm-comment-char specifies which character starts comments in assembler
syntax.
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23 Compiling and Testing Programs
The previous chapter discusses the Emacs commands that are useful for making changes
in programs. This chapter deals with commands that assist in the larger process of developing and maintaining programs.
23.1 Running “make”, or Compilers Generally
Emacs can run compilers for non-interactive languages like C and Fortran as inferior
processes, feeding the error log into an Emacs buffer. It can also parse the error messages
and visit the files in which errors are found, moving point to the line where the error
occurred.
M-x compile
Run a compiler asynchronously under Emacs, with error messages to ‘*compilation*’
buffer.
M-x grep
Run grep asynchronously under Emacs, with matching lines listed in the buffer
named ‘*compilation*’.
M-x kill-compilation
Kill the process made by the M-x compile command.
M-x kill-grep
Kill the running compilation or grep subprocess.
C-x ‘
Visit the next compiler error message or grep match.
To run make or another compiler, type M-x compile. This command reads a shell command line using the minibuffer, then executes the specified command line in an inferior shell
with output going to the buffer named ‘*compilation*’. By default, the current buffer’s default directory is used as the working directory for the execution of the command; therefore,
the makefile comes from this directory.
When the shell command line is read, the minibuffer appears containing a default command line (the command you used the last time you typed M-x compile). If you type just
hRETi, the same command line is used again. The first M-x compile provides make -k as
the default. The default is taken from the variable compile-command; if the appropriate
compilation command for a file is something other than make -k, it can be useful to have the
file specify a local value for compile-command (see Section 29.2.5 [File Variables], page 299).
When you start a compilation, the buffer ‘*compilation*’ is displayed in another window but not selected. Its mode line displays the word ‘run’ or ‘exit’ in the parentheses
to tell you whether compilation is finished. You do not have to keep this buffer visible;
compilation continues in any case.
To kill the compilation process, type M-x kill-compilation. The mode line of the
‘*compilation*’ buffer changes to say ‘signal’ instead of ‘run’. Starting a new compilation
also kills any running compilation, as only one can occur at any time. Starting a new
compilation prompts for confirmation before actually killing a compilation that is running.
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To parse the compiler error messages, type C-x ‘ (next-error). The character following C-x is the grave accent, not the single quote. The command displays the buffer
‘*compilation*’ in one window and the buffer in which the next error occurred in another
window. Point in that buffer is moved to the line where the error was found. The corresponding error message is scrolled to the top of the window in which ‘*compilation*’ is
displayed.
The first time you use C-x ‘ after the start of a compilation, it parses all the error
messages, visits all the files that have error messages, and creates markers pointing at
the lines the error messages refer to. It then moves to the first error message location.
Subsequent uses of C-x ‘ advance down the data set up by the first use. When the preparsed
error messages are exhausted, the next C-x ‘ checks for any more error messages that have
come in; this is useful if you start editing compiler errors while compilation is still going on.
If no additional error messages have come in, C-x ‘ reports an error.
C-u C-x ‘ discards the preparsed error message data and parses the ‘*compilation*’
buffer again, then displays the first error. This way, you can process the same set of errors
again.
Instead of running a compiler, you can run grep and see the lines on which matches were
found. To do this, type M-x grep with an argument line that contains the same arguments
you would give to grep: a grep-style regexp (usually in single quotes to quote the shell’s
special characters) followed by filenames, which may use wildcard characters. The output
from grep goes in the ‘*compilation*’ buffer. You can use C-x ‘ to find the lines that
match as if they were compilation errors.
Note: a shell is used to run the compile command, but the shell is not run in interactive
mode. In particular, this means that the shell starts up with no prompt. If you find your
usual shell prompt making an unsightly appearance in the ‘*compilation*’ buffer, it means
you have made a mistake in your shell’s initialization file (‘.cshrc’ or ‘.shrc’ or . . . ) by
setting the prompt unconditionally. The shell initialization file should set the prompt only
if there already is a prompt. Here’s how to do it in csh:
if ($?prompt) set prompt = ...
23.2 Major Modes for Lisp
Emacs has four different major modes for Lisp. They are the same in terms of editing
commands, but differ in the commands for executing Lisp expressions.
Emacs-Lisp mode
The mode for editing source files of programs to run in Emacs Lisp. This mode
defines C-M-x to evaluate the current defun. See Section 23.3 [Lisp Libraries],
page 211.
Lisp Interaction mode
The mode for an interactive session with Emacs Lisp. It defines hLFDi to evaluate
the sexp before point and insert its value in the buffer. See Section 23.6 [Lisp
Interaction], page 216.
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Lisp mode The mode for editing source files of programs that run in other dialects of Lisp
than Emacs Lisp. This mode defines C-M-x to send the current defun to an
inferior Lisp process. See Section 23.7 [External Lisp], page 217.
Inferior Lisp mode
The mode for an interactive session with an inferior Lisp process. This mode
combines the special features of Lisp mode and Shell mode (see Section 28.2.3
[Shell Mode], page 282).
Scheme mode
Like Lisp mode but for Scheme programs.
Inferior Scheme mode
The mode for an interactive session with an inferior Scheme process.
23.3 Libraries of Lisp Code for Emacs
Lisp code for Emacs editing commands is stored in files whose names conventionally end
in ‘.el’. This ending tells Emacs to edit them in Emacs-Lisp mode (see Section 23.2 [Lisp
Modes], page 210).
23.3.1 Loading Libraries
M-x load-file file
Load the file file of Lisp code.
M-x load-library library
Load the library named library.
M-x locate-library library &optional nosuffix
Show the full path name of Emacs library library.
To execute a file of Emacs Lisp, use M-x load-file. This command reads the file name
you provide in the minibuffer, then executes the contents of that file as Lisp code. It is not
necessary to visit the file first; in fact, this command reads the file as found on disk, not
the text in an Emacs buffer.
Once a file of Lisp code is installed in the Emacs Lisp library directories, users can load
it using M-x load-library. Programs can load it by calling load-library, or with load,
a more primitive function that is similar but accepts some additional arguments.
M-x load-library differs from M-x load-file in that it searches a sequence of directories and tries three file names in each directory. The three names are: first, the specified
name with ‘.elc’ appended; second, the name with ‘.el’ appended; third, the specified
name alone. A ‘.elc’ file would be the result of compiling the Lisp file into byte code; if
possible, it is loaded in preference to the Lisp file itself because the compiled file loads and
runs faster.
Because the argument to load-library is usually not in itself a valid file name, file
name completion is not available. In fact, when using this command, you usually do not
know exactly what file name will be used.
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The sequence of directories searched by M-x load-library is specified by the variable
load-path, a list of strings that are directory names. The elements of this list may not
begin with "‘~’", so you must call expand-file-name on them before adding them to the
list. The default value of the list contains the directory where the Lisp code for Emacs itself
is stored. If you have libraries of your own, put them in a single directory and add that
directory to load-path. nil in this list stands for the current default directory, but it is
probably not a good idea to put nil in the list. If you start wishing that nil were in the
list, you should probably use M-x load-file for this case.
The variable is initialized by the EMACSLOADPATH environment variable. If no value
is specified, the variable takes the default value specified in the file ‘paths.h’ when Emacs
was built. If a path isn’t specified in ‘paths.h’, a default value is obtained from the file
system, near the directory in which the Emacs executable resides.
Like M-x load-library, M-x locate-library searches the directories in load-path to
find the file that M-x load-library would load. If the optional second argument nosuffix
is non-nil, the suffixes ‘.elc’ or ‘.el’ are not added to the specified name library (like
calling load instead of load-library).
You often do not have to give any command to load a library, because the commands
defined in the library are set up to autoload that library. Running any of those commands
causes load to be called to load the library; this replaces the autoload definitions with the
real ones from the library.
If autoloading a file does not finish, either because of an error or because of a C-g quit, all
function definitions made by the file are undone automatically. So are any calls to provide.
As a consequence, the entire file is loaded a second time if you use one of the autoloadable
commands again. This prevents problems when the command is no longer autoloading but
is working incorrectly because the file was only partially loaded. Function definitions are
undone only for autoloading; explicit calls to load do not undo anything if loading is not
completed.
The variable after-load-alist takes an alist of expressions to be evaluated when particular files are loaded. Each element has the form (filename forms...). When load is run
and the filename argument is filename, the forms in the corresponding element are executed
at the end of loading.
filename must match exactly. Normally filename is the name of a library, with no
directory specified, since that is how load is normally called. An error in forms does not
undo the load, but it does prevent execution of the rest of the forms.
23.3.2 Compiling Libraries
Emacs Lisp code can be compiled into byte-code which loads faster, takes up less space
when loaded, and executes faster.
M-x batch-byte-compile
Run byte-compile-file on the files remaining on the command line.
M-x byte-compile-buffer &optional buffer
Byte-compile and evaluate contents of buffer (default is current buffer).
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M-x byte-compile-file
Compile a file of Lisp code named filename into a file of byte code.
M-x byte-compile-and-load-file filename
Compile a file of Lisp code named filename into a file of byte code and load it.
M-x byte-recompile-directory directory
Recompile every ‘.el’ file in directory that needs recompilation.
M-x disassemble
Print disassembled code for object on (optional) stream.
M-x make-obsolete function new
Make the byte-compiler warn that function is obsolete and new should be used
instead.
byte-compile-file creates a byte-code compiled file from an Emacs-Lisp source file.
The default argument for this function is the file visited in the current buffer. The function
reads the specified file, compiles it into byte code, and writes an output file whose name is
made by appending ‘c’ to the input file name. Thus, the file ‘rmail.el’ would be compiled
into ‘rmail.elc’. To compile a file of Lisp code named filename into a file of byte code and
then load it, use byte-compile-and-load-file. To compile and evaluate Lisp code in a
given buffer, use byte-compile-buffer.
To recompile all changed Lisp files in a directory, use M-x byte-recompile-directory.
Specify just the directory name as an argument. Each ‘.el’ file that has been byte-compiled
before is byte-compiled again if it has changed since the previous compilation. A numeric
argument to this command tells it to offer to compile each ‘.el’ file that has not been
compiled yet. You must answer y or n to each offer.
You can use the function batch-byte-compile to invoke Emacs non-interactively from
the shell to do byte compilation. When you use this function, the files to be compiled are
specified with command-line arguments. Use a shell command of the form:
emacs -batch -f batch-byte-compile files...
Directory names may also be given as arguments; in that case, byte-recompiledirectory is invoked on each such directory. batch-byte-compile uses all remaining
command-line arguments as file or directory names, then kills the Emacs process.
M-x disassemble explains the result of byte compilation. Its argument is a function
name. It displays the byte-compiled code in a help window in symbolic form, one instruction
per line. If the instruction refers to a variable or constant, that is shown, too.
23.3.3 Converting Mocklisp to Lisp
XEmacs can run Mocklisp files by converting them to Emacs Lisp first. To convert
a Mocklisp file, visit it and then type M-x convert-mocklisp-buffer. Then save the
resulting buffer of Lisp file in a file whose name ends in ‘.el’ and use the new file as a Lisp
library.
You cannot currently byte-compile converted Mocklisp code. The reason is that converted Mocklisp code uses some special Lisp features to deal with Mocklisp’s incompatible
ideas of how arguments are evaluated and which values signify “true” or “false”.
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23.4 Evaluating Emacs-Lisp Expressions
Lisp programs intended to be run in Emacs should be edited in Emacs-Lisp mode; this
will happen automatically for file names ending in ‘.el’. By contrast, Lisp mode itself
should be used for editing Lisp programs intended for other Lisp systems. Emacs-Lisp
mode can be selected with the command M-x emacs-lisp-mode.
For testing of Lisp programs to run in Emacs, it is useful to be able to evaluate part
of the program as it is found in the Emacs buffer. For example, if you change the text of
a Lisp function definition and then evaluate the definition, Emacs installs the change for
future calls to the function. Evaluation of Lisp expressions is also useful in any kind of
editing task for invoking non-interactive functions (functions that are not commands).
M-:
Read a Lisp expression in the minibuffer, evaluate it, and print the value in the
minibuffer (eval-expression).
C-x C-e
Evaluate the Lisp expression before point, and print the value in the minibuffer
(eval-last-sexp).
C-M-x
Evaluate the defun containing point or after point, and print the value in the
minibuffer (eval-defun).
M-x eval-region
Evaluate all the Lisp expressions in the region.
M-x eval-current-buffer
Evaluate all the Lisp expressions in the buffer.
M-: (eval-expression) is the most basic command for evaluating a Lisp expression
interactively. It reads the expression using the minibuffer, so you can execute any expression
on a buffer regardless of what the buffer contains. When evaluation is complete, the current
buffer is once again the buffer that was current when M-: was typed.
In Emacs-Lisp mode, the key C-M-x is bound to the function eval-defun, which parses
the defun containing point or following point as a Lisp expression and evaluates it. The
value is printed in the echo area. This command is convenient for installing in the Lisp
environment changes that you have just made in the text of a function definition.
The command C-x C-e (eval-last-sexp) performs a similar job but is available in all
major modes, not just Emacs-Lisp mode. It finds the sexp before point, reads it as a Lisp
expression, evaluates it, and prints the value in the echo area. It is sometimes useful to
type in an expression and then, with point still after it, type C-x C-e.
If C-M-x or C-x C-e are given a numeric argument, they print the value by inserting it
into the current buffer at point, rather than in the echo area. The argument value does not
matter.
The most general command for evaluating Lisp expressions from a buffer is eval-region.
M-x eval-region parses the text of the region as one or more Lisp expressions, evaluating
them one by one. M-x eval-current-buffer is similar, but it evaluates the entire buffer.
This is a reasonable way to install the contents of a file of Lisp code that you are just ready
to test. After finding and fixing a bug, use C-M-x on each function that you change, to keep
the Lisp world in step with the source file.
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23.5 The Emacs-Lisp Debugger
XEmacs contains a debugger for Lisp programs executing inside it. This debugger is
normally not used; many commands frequently get Lisp errors when invoked in inappropriate contexts (such as C-f at the end of the buffer) and it would be unpleasant to enter
a special debugging mode in this case. When you want to make Lisp errors invoke the
debugger, you must set the variable debug-on-error to non-nil. Quitting with C-g is not
considered an error, and debug-on-error has no effect on the handling of C-g. However, if
you set debug-on-quit to be non-nil, C-g will invoke the debugger. This can be useful for
debugging an infinite loop; type C-g once the loop has had time to reach its steady state.
debug-on-quit has no effect on errors.
You can make Emacs enter the debugger when a specified function is called or at a
particular place in Lisp code. Use M-x debug-on-entry with argument fun-name to have
Emacs enter the debugger as soon as fun-name is called. Use M-x cancel-debug-on-entry
to make the function stop entering the debugger when called. (Redefining the function also
does this.) To enter the debugger from some other place in Lisp code, you must insert the
expression (debug) there and install the changed code with C-M-x. See Section 23.4 [Lisp
Eval], page 214.
When the debugger is entered, it displays the previously selected buffer in one window
and a buffer named ‘*Backtrace*’ in another window. The backtrace buffer contains one
line for each level of Lisp function execution currently going on. At the beginning of the
buffer is a message describing the reason that the debugger was invoked, for example, an
error message if it was invoked due to an error.
The backtrace buffer is read-only and is in Backtrace mode, a special major mode in
which letters are defined as debugger commands. The usual Emacs editing commands
are available; you can switch windows to examine the buffer that was being edited at the
time of the error, and you can switch buffers, visit files, and perform any other editing
operations. However, the debugger is a recursive editing level (see Section 28.5 [Recursive
Edit], page 286); it is a good idea to return to the backtrace buffer and explicitly exit the
debugger when you don’t want to use it any more. Exiting the debugger kills the backtrace
buffer.
The contents of the backtrace buffer show you the functions that are executing and the
arguments that were given to them. It also allows you to specify a stack frame by moving
point to the line describing that frame. The frame whose line point is on is considered the
current frame. Some of the debugger commands operate on the current frame. Debugger
commands are mainly used for stepping through code one expression at a time. Here is a
list of them:
c
Exit the debugger and continue execution. In most cases, execution of the
program continues as if the debugger had never been entered (aside from the
effect of any variables or data structures you may have changed while inside
the debugger). This includes entry to the debugger due to function entry or
exit, explicit invocation, and quitting or certain errors. Most errors cannot be
continued; trying to continue an error usually causes the same error to occur
again.
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Continue execution, but enter the debugger the next time a Lisp function is
called. This allows you to step through the subexpressions of an expression,
and see what the subexpressions do and what values they compute.
When you enter the debugger this way, Emacs flags the stack frame for the
function call from which you entered. The same function is then called when
you exit the frame. To cancel this flag, use u.
b
Set up to enter the debugger when the current frame is exited. Frames that
invoke the debugger on exit are flagged with stars.
u
Don’t enter the debugger when the current frame is exited. This cancels a b
command on a frame.
e
Read a Lisp expression in the minibuffer, evaluate it, and print the value in the
echo area. This is equivalent to the command M-:.
q
Terminate the program being debugged; return to top-level Emacs command
execution.
If the debugger was entered due to a C-g but you really want to quit, not to
debug, use the q command.
r
Return a value from the debugger. The value is computed by reading an expression with the minibuffer and evaluating it.
The value returned by the debugger makes a difference when the debugger was
invoked due to exit from a Lisp call frame (as requested with b); then the value
specified in the r command is used as the value of that frame.
The debugger’s return value also matters with many errors. For example,
wrong-type-argument errors will use the debugger’s return value instead of
the invalid argument; no-catch errors will use the debugger value as a throw
tag instead of the tag that was not found. If an error was signaled by calling
the Lisp function signal, the debugger’s return value is returned as the value
of signal.
23.6 Lisp Interaction Buffers
The buffer ‘*scratch*’, which is selected when Emacs starts up, is provided for evaluating Lisp expressions interactively inside Emacs. Both the expressions you evaluate and
their output goes in the buffer.
The ‘*scratch*’ buffer’s major mode is Lisp Interaction mode, which is the same as
Emacs-Lisp mode except for one command, hLFDi. In Emacs-Lisp mode, hLFDi is an indentation command. In Lisp Interaction mode, hLFDi is bound to eval-print-last-sexp.
This function reads the Lisp expression before point, evaluates it, and inserts the value in
printed representation before point.
The way to use the ‘*scratch*’ buffer is to insert Lisp expressions at the end, ending
each one with hLFDi so that it will be evaluated. The result is a complete typescript of the
expressions you have evaluated and their values.
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The rationale for this feature is that Emacs must have a buffer when it starts up, but
that buffer is not useful for editing files since a new buffer is made for every file that you
visit. The Lisp interpreter typescript is the most useful thing I can think of for the initial
buffer to do. M-x lisp-interaction-mode will put any buffer in Lisp Interaction mode.
23.7 Running an External Lisp
Emacs has facilities for running programs in other Lisp systems. You can run a Lisp
process as an inferior of Emacs, and pass expressions to it to be evaluated. You can also
pass changed function definitions directly from the Emacs buffers in which you edit the Lisp
programs to the inferior Lisp process.
To run an inferior Lisp process, type M-x run-lisp. This runs the program named lisp,
the same program you would run by typing lisp as a shell command, with both input and
output going through an Emacs buffer named ‘*lisp*’. In other words, any “terminal
output” from Lisp will go into the buffer, advancing point, and any “terminal input” for
Lisp comes from text in the buffer. To give input to Lisp, go to the end of the buffer and
type the input, terminated by hRETi. The ‘*lisp*’ buffer is in Inferior Lisp mode, which
has all the special characteristics of Lisp mode and Shell mode (see Section 28.2.3 [Shell
Mode], page 282).
Use Lisp mode to run the source files of programs in external Lisps. You can select this
mode with M-x lisp-mode. It is used automatically for files whose names end in ‘.l’ or
‘.lisp’, as most Lisp systems usually expect.
When you edit a function in a Lisp program you are running, the easiest way to send the
changed definition to the inferior Lisp process is the key C-M-x. In Lisp mode, this key runs
the function lisp-send-defun, which finds the defun around or following point and sends
it as input to the Lisp process. (Emacs can send input to any inferior process regardless of
what buffer is current.)
Contrast the meanings of C-M-x in Lisp mode (for editing programs to be run in another
Lisp system) and Emacs-Lisp mode (for editing Lisp programs to be run in Emacs): in
both modes it has the effect of installing the function definition that point is in, but the
way of doing so is different according to where the relevant Lisp environment is found. See
Section 23.2 [Lisp Modes], page 210.
23.8 Packages
The XEmacs 21 distribution comes only with a very basic set of built-in modes and
packages. Most of the packages that were part of the distribution of earlier versions of
XEmacs are now available separately. The installer as well as the user can choose which
packages to install; the actual installation process is easy. This gives an installer the ability
to tailor an XEmacs installation for local needs with safe removal of unnecessary code.
Package Terminology:
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23.8.1 Package Flavors
There are two main flavors of packages.
• Regular Packages A regular package is one in which multiple files are involved and one
may not in general safely remove any of them.
• Single-File Packages A single-file package is an aggregate collection of thematically related but otherwise independent lisp files. These files are bundled together for download
convenience and individual files may be deleted at will without any loss of functionality.
However, we would recommend that you follow this rule of thumb: "When in doubt,
don’t delete".
23.8.2 Package Distributions
XEmacs Lisp packages are distributed in two ways, depending on the intended use. Binary Packages are for installers and end-users that can be installed directly into an XEmacs
package directory. Source Packages are for developers and include all files necessary for
rebuilding bytecompiled lisp and creating tarballs for distribution.
23.8.3 Binary Packages
Binary packages may be installed directly into an XEmacs package hierarchy.
23.8.4 Source Packages
Source packages contain all of the Package author’s (where appropriate in regular packages) source code plus all of the files necessary to build distribution tarballs (Unix Tar
format files, gzipped for space savings).
Currently, source packages are only available via CVS. See
for details.
http://cvs.xemacs.org/
Installing Packages:
23.8.5 Getting Started
When you first download XEmacs 21, you will usually first grab the core distribution, a
file called ‘xemacs-21.x.x.tar.gz’. (Replace the 21.x.x by the current version number.)
The core distribution contains the sources of XEmacs and a minimal set of Emacs Lisp
files, which are in the subdirectory named ‘lisp’. This subdirectory used to contain all
Emacs Lisp files distributed with XEmacs. Now, to conserve disk space, most non-essential
packages were made optional.
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23.8.6 Choosing the Packages You Need
The Section 23.8.10 [Available Packages], page 226 can currently be found in the same ftp
directory where you grabbed the core distribution from, and are located in the subdirectory
‘packages’. Package file names follow the naming convention ‘<package-name>-<version>-pkg.tar.gz’.
If you have hundefinedi [(EFS)], page hundefinedi, packages can be installed over the
network. Alternatively, if you have copies of the packages locally, you can install packages
from a local disk or CDROM.
The file ‘etc/PACKAGES’ in the core distribution contains a list of the Section 23.8.10
[Available Packages], page 226 at the time of the XEmacs release.
You can also get a list of available packages, and whether or not they are installed, using
the visual package browser and installer. You can access it via the menus:
Tools -> Packages -> List and Install
Or, you can get to it via the keyboard:
M-x pui-list-packages
Hint to system administrators of multi-user systems: it might be a good idea to install
all packages and not interfere with the wishes of your users.
If you can’t find which package provides the feature you require, try using the packageget-package-provider function. Eg., if you know that you need thingatpt, type:
M-x package-get-package-provider RET thingatpt
which will return something like (fsf-compat "1.08"). You can the use one of the methods
above for installing the package you want.
23.8.7 XEmacs and Installing Packages
There are three main ways to install packages:
But regardless of the method you use to install packages, they can only be used by
XEmacs after a restart.
Installing the Sumo Packages:
Those with little time, cheap connections and plenty of disk space can install all the
packages at once using the sumo tarballs. Download the file: ‘xemacs-sumo.tar.gz’
For an XEmacs compiled with Mule you also need: ‘xemacs-mule-sumo.tar.gz’
N.B. They are called ’Sumo Tarballs’ for good reason. They are currently about 19MB
and 4.5MB (gzipped) respectively.
Install them by:
cd $prefix/lib/xemacs ; gunzip -c <tarballname> | tar xvf - RET
Or, if you have GNU tar:
cd $prefix/lib/xemacs ; tar zxvf /path/to/<tarballname> RET
As the Sumo tarballs are not regenerated as often as the individual packages, it is
recommended that you use the automatic package tools afterwards to pick up any recent
updates.
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Manual Package Installation:
Fetch the packages from the FTP site, CD-ROM whatever. The filenames have the form
‘name-<version>-pkg.tar.gz’ and are gzipped tar files. For a fresh install it is sufficient
to untar the file at the top of the package hierarchy.
Note: If you are upgrading packages already installed, it’s best to remove the old package
first hundefinedi [Removing Packages], page hundefinedi.
For example if we are installing the ‘xemacs-base’ package (version 1.48):
mkdir $prefix/lib/xemacs/xemacs-packages RET # if it does not exist yet
cd $prefix/lib/xemacs/xemacs-packages RET
gunzip -c /path/to/xemacs-base-1.48-pkg.tar.gz | tar xvf - RET
Or if you have GNU tar, the last step can be:
tar zxvf /path/to/xemacs-base-1.48-pkg.tar.gz RET
For MULE related packages, it is best to untar into the mule-packages hierarchy, i.e. for
the ‘mule-base’ package, version 1.37:
mkdir $prefix/lib/xemacs/mule-packages RET # if it does not exist yet
cd $prefix/lib/xemacs/mule-packages RET
gunzip -c /path/to/mule-base-1.37-pkg.tar.gz | tar xvf - RET
Or if you have GNU tar, the last step can be:
tar zxvf /path/to/mule-base-1.37-pkg.tar.gz RET
Automatic Package Installation:
XEmacs comes with some tools to make the periodic updating and installing easier. It
will notice if new packages or versions are available and will fetch them from the FTP site.
Unfortunately this requires that a few packages are already in place. You will have to
install them by hand as above or use a SUMO tarball. This requirement will hopefully go
away in the future. The packages you need are:
efs
- To fetch the files from the FTP site or mirrors.
xemacs-base - Needed by efs.
and optionally:
mule-base
- Needed if you want to use XEmacs with MULE.
After installing these by hand, fire up XEmacs and follow these steps.
1. Choose a download site. via menu: Tools -> Packages -> Add Download Site via keyb:
M-x customize-variable RET package-get-remote RET (put in the details of remote
host and directory)
If the package tarballs AND the package-index file are in a local directory, you can:
M-x pui-add-install-directory RET
2. Obtain a list of packages and display the list in a buffer named ‘*Packages*’. menu:
Tools -> Packages -> List & Install keyb: M-x pui-list-packages RET
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XEmacs will now connect to the remote site and download the latest package-index
file. If you see an error about the package-index entries not being PGP signed, you can
safely ignore this because PGP has not been integrated into the XEmacs package tools
yet.
The visual package browser will then display a list of all packages. Help information
will be displayed at the very bottom of the buffer; you may have to scroll down to see
it. You can also press ? to get the same help. From this buffer, you can tell the package
status by the character in the first column:
-
The package has not been installed.
*
The package has been installed, but a newer version is available. The
current version is out-of-date.
+
The package has been marked for installation/update.
If there is no character in the first column, the package has been installed and is upto-date.
From here, you can select or unselect packages for installation using the hRETi key, the
Mouse-2 button or selecting "Select" from the (Popup) Menu. Once you’ve finished
selecting the packages, you can press the x key (or use the menu) to actually install
the packages. Note that you will have to restart XEmacs for XEmacs to recognize any
new packages.
Key summary:
?
Display simple help.
hRETi
hMouse-2i
Toggle between selecting and unselecting a package for installation.
x
Install selected packages.
hSPCi
View, in the minibuffer, additional information about the package, such as
the package date (not the build date) and the package author. Moving the
mouse over a package name will also do the same thing.
v
Toggle between verbose and non-verbose package display.
g
Refresh the package display.
q
Kill the package buffer.
Moving the mouse over a package will also cause additional information about the
package to be displayed in the minibuffer.
3. Choose the packages you wish to install. mouse: Click button 2 on the package name.
keyb: RET on the package name
4. Make sure you have everything you need. menu: Packages -> Add Required keyb: r
XEmacs will now search for packages that are required by the ones that you have chosen
to install and offer to select those packages also.
For novices and gurus alike, this step can save your bacon. It’s easy to forget to install
a critical package.
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5. Download and install the packages. menu: Packages -> Install/Remove Selected keyb:
x
You can also install packages using a semi-manual interface:
M-x package-get-all <return>
Enter the name of the package (e.g., prog-modes), and XEmacs will search for the latest
version and install it and any packages that it depends upon.
Which Packages to Install:
This is difficult to say. When in doubt install a package. If you administrate a big site
it might be a good idea to just install everything. A good minimal set of packages for
XEmacs-latin1 would be
xemacs-base, xemacs-devel, c-support, cc-mode, debug, dired, efs, edit-utils, fsf-compat,
mail-lib, net-utils, os-utils, prog-modes, text-modes, time
If you are using the XEmacs package tools, don’t forget to do:
Packages -> Add Required
To make sure you have everything that the packages you have chosen to install need.
See also Section 23.8.10 [Available Packages], page 226 for further descriptions of the
individual packages.
Removing Packages:
Because the exact files and their locations contained in a package may change it is
recommended to remove a package first before installing a new version. In order to facilitate
removal each package contains an ‘pgkinfo/MANIFEST.pkgname’ file which list all the files
belonging to the package.
No need to panic, you don’t have to go through the ‘pkinfo/MANIFEST.pkgname’ and
manually delete the files. Instead, use M-x package-get-delete-package RET.
Note that the interactive package tools included with XEmacs already do this for you.
Building Packages:
Currently, source packages are only available via anonymous CVS. See http://cvs.xemacs.org/
for details of checking out the ‘xemacs-packages’ module.
23.8.8 Prerequisites for Building Source Packages
GNU cp
GNU install
(or a BSD compatible install program).
GNU make
(3.75 or later preferred).
makeinfo
(1.68 from texinfo-3.11 or later required).
Chapter 23: Compiling and Testing Programs
GNU tar
(or equivalent).
GNU gzip
(or equivalent).
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A properly configured ‘Local.rules’ file.
hundefinedi [Local.rules File], page hundefinedi.
And of course, XEmacs 21.0 or higher.
23.8.9 What You Can Do With Source Packages
The packages CVS sources are most useful for creating XEmacs package tarballs for
installation into your own XEmacs installations or for distributing to others.
Supported operations from ‘make’ are:
all
Bytecompile all files, build and bytecompile byproduct files like ‘auto-autoloads.el’
and ‘custom-load.el’. Create info version of TeXinfo documentation if
present.
bindist
Does a make all as well as create a binary package tarball in the staging directory.
install
Bytecompile all files, build and bytecompile byproduct files like ‘auto-autoloads.el’
and ‘custom-load.el’. Create info version of TeXinfo documentation if
present. And install everything into the staging directory.
srckit
Usually aliased to srckit-std. This does a make distclean and creates a
package source tarball in the staging directory. This is generally only of use for
package maintainers.
binkit
May be aliased to binkit-sourceonly, binkit-sourceinfo, binkit-sourcedata,
or binkit-sourcedatainfo. sourceonly indicates there is nothing to install
in a data directory or info directory. sourceinfo indicates that source and info
files are to be installed. sourcedata indicates that source and etc (data) files
are to be installed. sourcedatainfo indicates source, etc (data), and info files
are to be installed. A few packages have needs beyond the basic templates so
this is not yet complete.
dist
Runs the rules srckit followed by binkit. This is primarily of use by XEmacs
maintainers producing files for distribution.
clean
Remove all built files except ‘auto-autoloads.el’ and ‘custom-load.el’.
distclean
Remove all created files.
The Local.rules File:
This file is used when building and installing packages from source. In the top level of
the CVS module, ‘xemacs-packages’, contains the file, ‘Local.rules.template’. Simply
copy that to ‘Local.rules’ and edit it to suit your needs.
These are the variables in ’Local.rules’ that you will need to address.
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symlink = Set this to ’t’ if you want to do a "run in place". Setting this doesn’t work well
with ’make bindist’
XEMACS PACKAGES =
This is where you set the normal packages that you want to install. eg:
XEMACS_PACKAGES = xemacs-packages/xemacs-base xemacs-packages/bbdb
XEMACS STAGING = ${XEMACS PACKAGES BASE}/../Packages
Set this to where you want normal packages to be installed to.
PACKAGE INDEX = package-index
If you want the package-index file to have a different name, change this.
BUILD WITHOUT MULE =
Building from CVS defaults to building the Mule packages. Set this to ’t’ if
you don’t want/have Mule
MULE PACKAGES =
Same as for ’XEMACS PACKAGES’ except you list the Mule packages you
want to install here. eg:
MULE_PACKAGES = mule-packages/mule-base mule-packages/skk
MULE STAGING = ${XEMACS PACKAGES BASE}/../Mule-Packages
Set this to where you want Mule packages installed to. Note: ’make bindist’
does not use this variable.
XEMACS = xemacs
If your XEmacs isn’t in your path, change this.
XEMACS NATIVE NT =
Set this to ’t’ if you are building on WinNT.
INSTALL = install -c
The path to your BSD compatible install program.
TAR = tar
The path to your tar program
BZIP2 =
If you want bzip2 tarballs, set this.
MAKEINFO = makeinfo
The path to your makeinfo program
Creating Packages:
Creating a package from an existing Lisp library is not very difficult.
In addition to the Lisp libraries themselves, you need a ‘package-info.in’ file and
a simple ‘Makefile’. The rest is done by ‘XEmacs.rules’, part of the packaging system
infrastructure.
‘package-info.in’ contains a single Lisp form like this:
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225
(name
; your package’s name
(standards-version 1.1
version VERSION
author-version AUTHOR_VERSION
date DATE
build-date BUILD_DATE
maintainer MAINTAINER
distribution xemacs
; change to "mule" if MULE is needed
priority high
category CATEGORY
dump nil
description "description"
; a one-line description string
filename FILENAME
md5sum MD5SUM
size SIZE
provides (feature1 feature2)
; one for every ‘provides’ form
requires (REQUIRES)
type regular
))
You must fill in the four commented lines. The value of name is the name of your package
as an unquoted symbol. Normally it is the name of the main Lisp file or principal feature
provided. The allowed values for distribution are xemacs and mule. Write them as unquoted
symbols. The description is a quoted Lisp string; use the usual conventions. The value
for provides is a list of feature symbols (written unquoted). All of the features provided
by libraries in your package should be elements of this list. Implementing an automatic
method for generating the ‘provides’ line is desirable, but as yet undone.
The variables in upper-case are references to variables set in the ‘Makefile’ or automatically generated. Do not change them; they are automatically filled in by the build
process.
The remaining lines refer to implementation constants (standards-version), or features that are unimplemented or have been removed (priority and dump). The type
line is not normally relevant to external maintainers; the alternate value is single-file,
which refers to packages consed up out of a number of single-file libraries that are more
or less thematically related. An example is prog-modes. Single-file packages are basically
for administrative convenience, and new packages should generally be created as regular
packages.
The ‘Makefile’ is quite stylized. The idea is similar to an ‘Imakefile’ or an automake
file: the complexity is hidden in generic rules files, in this case the ‘XEmacs.rules’ include
file in the top directory of the packages hierarchy. Although a number of facilities are
available for complex libraries, most simple packages’ ‘Makefile’s contain a copyright notice,
a few variable definitions, an include for ‘XEmacs.rules’, and a couple of standard targets.
The first few make variables defined are VERSION, AUTHOR_VERSION, MAINTAINER,
PACKAGE, PKG_TYPE, REQUIRES, and CATEGORY. All but one were described in the description of ‘package-info.in’. The last is an administrative grouping. Current categories
include standard, and mule.
Next, define the variable ELCS. This contains the list of the byte-compiled Lisp files used
by the package. These files and their ‘.el’ versions will be included in the binary package.
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If there are other files (such as extra Lisp sources or an upstream ‘Makefile’) that are
normally placed in the installed Lisp directory, but not byte-compiled, they can be listed
as the value of EXTRA_SOURCES.
The include is simply
include ../../XEmacs.rules
The standard targets follow. These are
all:: $(ELCS) auto-autoloads.elc
srckit: srckit-alias
binkit: binkit-alias
Other targets (such as Texinfo sources) may need to be added as dependencies for the
all target. Dependencies for srckit and binkit (that is, values for srckit-alias and binkitalias) are defined in ‘XEmacs.rules’. The most useful of these values are given in the
following table.
srckit-alias
Usually set to srckit-std.
binkit-alias
May be set to binkit-sourceonly, binkit-sourceinfo, binkit-sourcedata,
or binkit-sourcedatainfo. sourceonly indicates there is nothing to install
in a data directory or info directory. sourceinfo indicates that source and info
files are to be installed. sourcedata indicates that source and etc (data) files
are to be installed. sourcedatainfo indicates source, etc (data), and info files
are to be installed.
Data files include things like pixmaps for a package-specific toolbar, and are normally installed in ‘etc/PACKAGE NAME’. A few packages have needs beyond the basic templates.
See ‘XEmacs.rules’ or a future revision of this manual for details.
Available Packages:
This section lists the Lisp packages that are currently available from xemacs.org and it’s
mirrors. If a particular package that you are looking for isn’t here, please send a message
to the XEmacs Beta list (xemacs-beta@xemacs.org).
This data is up-to-date as of August 8, 2002.
23.8.10 Normal Packages
A very broad selection of elisp packages.
‘Sun’
Support for Sparcworks.
‘ada’
Ada language support.
‘apel’
A Portable Emacs Library. Used by XEmacs MIME support.
‘auctex’
Basic TeX/LaTeX support.
Chapter 23: Compiling and Testing Programs
‘bbdb’
The Big Brother Data Base: a rolodex-like database program.
‘build’
Build XEmacs using custom widgets.
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‘c-support’
Basic single-file add-ons for editing C code.
‘calc’
Emacs calculator.
‘calendar’
Calendar and diary support.
‘cc-mode’
C, C++ and Java language support.
‘clearcase’
Support for the Clearcase version control system.
‘cookie’
"Fortune cookie"-style messages. Includes Spook (suspicious phrases) and Yow
(Zippy quotes).
‘crisp’
Crisp/Brief emulation.
‘debug’
GUD, gdb, dbx debugging support.
‘dictionary’
Interface to RFC2229 dictionary servers.
‘dired’
The DIRectory EDitor is for manipulating, and running commands on files in
a directory.
‘docbookide’
DocBook editing support.
‘ecrypto’
Crypto functionality in Emacs Lisp.
‘edebug’
A Lisp debugger.
‘ediff’
Interface over patch.
‘edit-utils’
Single file lisp packages for various XEmacs goodies. Load this and weed out
the junk you don’t want.
‘edt’
DEC EDIT/EDT emulation.
‘efs’
Treat files on remote systems the same as local files.
‘eieio’
Enhanced Implementation of Emacs Interpreted Objects.
‘elib’
Portable Emacs Lisp utilities library.
‘emerge’
Another interface over patch.
‘eshell’
Command shell implemented entirely in Emacs Lisp.
‘ess’
ESS: Emacs Speaks Statistics.
‘eterm’
Terminal emulator.
‘eudc’
Emacs Unified Directory Client (LDAP, PH).
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‘footnote’
Footnoting in mail message editing modes.
‘forms’
Forms editing support (obsolete, use the built-in Widget instead).
‘frame-icon’
Provide a WM icon based on major mode.
‘fsf-compat’
FSF Emacs compatibility files.
‘games’
Tetris, Sokoban, and Snake.
‘gnats’
XEmacs bug reports.
‘gnus’
The Gnus Newsreader and Mailreader.
‘haskell-mode’
Haskell editing support.
‘hm--html-menus’
HTML editing.
‘ibuffer’
Advanced replacement for buffer-menu.
‘idlwave’
Editing and Shell mode for the Interactive Data Language.
‘igrep’
Enhanced front-end for Grep.
‘ilisp’
Front-end for interacting with Inferior Lisp (external lisps).
‘ispell’
Spell-checking with ispell.
‘jde’
Java language and development support.
‘liece’
IRC (Internet Relay Chat) client for Emacs.
‘mail-lib’
Fundamental lisp files for providing email support.
‘mailcrypt’
Support for messaging encryption with PGP.
‘mew’
Messaging in an Emacs World; a MIME-based email program.
‘mh-e’
Front end support for MH.
‘mine’
Elisp implementation of the game ’Minehunt’.
‘misc-games’
Other amusements and diversions.
‘mmm-mode’
Support for Multiple Major Modes within a single buffer.
‘net-utils’
Miscellaneous Networking Utilities. This is a single-file package and files may
be deleted at will.
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‘os-utils’
Miscellaneous single-file O/S utilities, for printing, archiving, compression, remote shells, etc.
‘ocaml’
Objective Caml editing support.
‘pc’
PC style interface emulation.
‘pcl-cvs’
CVS frontend.
‘pcomplete’
Provides programmatic completion.
‘prog-modes’
Miscellaneous single-file lisp files for various programming languages.
‘ps-print’
Print buffers to PostScript printers.
‘psgml’
Validated HTML/SGML editing.
‘reftex’
Emacs support for LaTeX cross-references, citations.
‘rmail’
An obsolete Emacs mailer. If you do not already use it don’t start.
‘sasl’
Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL) library.
‘scheme’
Front-end support for Inferior Scheme.
‘semantic’
Semantic bovinator.
‘sgml’
SGML/Linuxdoc-SGML editing.
‘sh-script’
Support for editing shell scripts.
‘sieve’
Manage Sieve email filtering scripts.
‘slider’
User interface tool.
‘sml-mode’
Standard ML editing support.
‘sounds-au’
XEmacs Sun sound files.
‘sounds-wav’
XEmacs Microsoft sound files.
‘speedbar’
Provides a separate frame with convenient references.
‘strokes’
Mouse enhancement utility.
‘supercite’
An Emacs citation tool. Useful with all Emacs Mailers and Newsreaders.
‘texinfo’
XEmacs TeXinfo support.
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‘text-modes’
Various single file lisp packages for editing text files.
‘textools’
Single-file TeX support.
‘time’
Display time & date on the modeline.
‘tm’
Emacs MIME support. Not needed for Gnus >= 5.8.0
‘tooltalk’
Support for building with Tooltalk.
‘tpu’
DEC EDIT/TPU support.
‘tramp’
Remote shell-based file editing. This is similar to EFS or Ange-FTP, but works
with rsh/ssh and rcp/scp.
‘vc’
Version Control for Free systems.
‘vc-cc’
Version Control for ClearCase. This package will shortly be replaced with
clearcase.el
‘vhdl’
Support for VHDL.
‘view-process’
A Unix process browsing tool.
‘viper’
VI emulation support.
‘vm’
An Emacs mailer.
‘w3’
A Web browser.
‘xemacs-base’
Fundamental XEmacs support. Install this unless you wish a totally naked
XEmacs.
‘xemacs-devel’
XEmacs Lisp developer support. This package contains utilities for supporting
Lisp development. It is a single-file package so it may be tailored.
‘xslide’
XSL editing support.
‘xslt-process’
A minor mode for (X)Emacs which allows running an XSLT processor on a
buffer.
‘zenirc’
ZENIRC IRC Client.
23.8.11 Mule Support (mule)
MULti-lingual Enhancement. Support for world scripts such as Latin, Arabic, Cyrillic, Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Hebrew etc. To use these packages your XEmacs must be
compiled with Mule support.
‘edict’
Lisp Interface to EDICT, Kanji Dictionary.
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‘egg-its’
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Wnn (4.2 and 6) support. SJ3 support. Must be installed prior to XEmacs
build.
‘latin-unity’
Unify character sets in a buffer. When characters belong to disjoint character
sets, this attempts to translate the characters so that they belong to one character set. If the buffer coding system is not sufficient, this suggests different
coding systems.
‘leim’
Quail. Used for everything other than English and Japanese.
‘locale’
Used for localized menubars (French and Japanese) and localized splash screens
(Japanese).
‘lookup’
Dictionary support. (This isn’t an English dictionary program)
‘mule-base’
Basic Mule support. Must be installed prior to building with Mule.
‘mule-ucs’
Extended coding systems (including Unicode) for XEmacs.
‘skk’
Another Japanese Language Input Method. Can be used without a separate
process running as a dictionary server.
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Chapter 24: Abbrevs
233
24 Abbrevs
An abbrev is a word which expands into some different text. Abbrevs are defined by the
user to expand in specific ways. For example, you might define ‘foo’ as an abbrev expanding
to ‘find outer otter’. With this abbrev defined, you would be able to get ‘find outer
otter ’ into the buffer by typing f o o hSPCi.
Abbrevs expand only when Abbrev mode (a minor mode) is enabled. Disabling Abbrev
mode does not cause abbrev definitions to be discarded, but they do not expand until
Abbrev mode is enabled again. The command M-x abbrev-mode toggles Abbrev mode; with
a numeric argument, it turns Abbrev mode on if the argument is positive, off otherwise.
See Section 29.1 [Minor Modes], page 291. abbrev-mode is also a variable; Abbrev mode is
on when the variable is non-nil. The variable abbrev-mode automatically becomes local
to the current buffer when it is set.
Abbrev definitions can be mode-specific—active only in one major mode. Abbrevs can
also have global definitions that are active in all major modes. The same abbrev can
have a global definition and various mode-specific definitions for different major modes. A
mode-specific definition for the current major mode overrides a global definition.
You can define Abbrevs interactively during an editing session. You can also save lists
of abbrev definitions in files and reload them in later sessions. Some users keep extensive
lists of abbrevs that they load in every session.
A second kind of abbreviation facility is called the dynamic expansion. Dynamic abbrev
expansion happens only when you give an explicit command and the result of the expansion
depends only on the current contents of the buffer. See Section 24.5 [Dynamic Abbrevs],
page 236.
24.1 Defining Abbrevs
C-x a g
Define an abbrev to expand into some text before point (add-global-abbrev).
C-x a l
Similar, but define an abbrev available only in the current major mode (addmode-abbrev).
C-x a i g
Define a word in the buffer as an abbrev (inverse-add-global-abbrev).
C-x a i l
Define a word in the buffer as a mode-specific abbrev (inverse-add-modeabbrev).
M-x kill-all-abbrevs
After this command, no abbrev definitions remain in effect.
The usual way to define an abbrev is to enter the text you want the abbrev to expand
to, position point after it, and type C-x a g (add-global-abbrev). This reads the abbrev
itself using the minibuffer, and then defines it as an abbrev for one or more words before
point. Use a numeric argument to say how many words before point should be taken as the
expansion. For example, to define the abbrev ‘foo’ as in the example above, insert the text
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‘find outer otter’, then type
C-u 3 C-x a g f o o hRETi.
An argument of zero to C-x a g means to use the contents of the region as the expansion
of the abbrev being defined.
The command C-x a l (add-mode-abbrev) is similar, but defines a mode-specific abbrev.
Mode-specific abbrevs are active only in a particular major mode. C-x a l defines an abbrev
for the major mode in effect at the time C-x a l is typed. The arguments work the same
way they do for C-x a g.
If the text of an abbrev you want is already in the buffer instead of the expansion,
use command C-x a i g (inverse-add-global-abbrev) instead of C-x a g, or use C-x a i
l (inverse-add-mode-abbrev) instead of C-x a l. These commands are called “inverse”
because they invert the meaning of the argument found in the buffer and the argument read
using the minibuffer.
To change the definition of an abbrev, just add the new definition. You will be asked to
confirm if the abbrev has a prior definition. To remove an abbrev definition, give a negative
argument to C-x a g or C-x a l. You must choose the command to specify whether to
kill a global definition or a mode-specific definition for the current mode, since those two
definitions are independent for one abbrev.
M-x kill-all-abbrevs removes all existing abbrev definitions.
24.2 Controlling Abbrev Expansion
An abbrev expands whenever it is in a buffer just before point and you type a selfinserting punctuation character (hSPCi, comma, etc.). Most often an abbrev is used by
inserting the abbrev followed by punctuation.
Abbrev expansion preserves case; thus, ‘foo’ expands into ‘find outer otter’, ‘Foo’ into
‘Find outer otter’, and ‘FOO’ into ‘FIND OUTER OTTER’ or ‘Find Outer Otter’ according to
the variable abbrev-all-caps (a non-nil value chooses the first of the two expansions).
Two commands are available to control abbrev expansion:
M-’
Separate a prefix from a following abbrev to be expanded (abbrev-prefixmark).
C-x a e
Expand the abbrev before point (expand-abbrev). This is effective even when
Abbrev mode is not enabled.
M-x unexpand-abbrev
Undo last abbrev expansion.
M-x expand-region-abbrevs
Expand some or all abbrevs found in the region.
You may wish to expand an abbrev with a prefix attached. For example, if ‘cnst’ expands
into ‘construction’, you may want to use it to enter ‘reconstruction’. It does not work
to type recnst, because that is not necessarily a defined abbrev. Instead, you can use the
command M-’ (abbrev-prefix-mark) between the prefix ‘re’ and the abbrev ‘cnst’. First,
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insert ‘re’. Then type M-’; this inserts a minus sign in the buffer to indicate that it has done
its work. Then insert the abbrev ‘cnst’. The buffer now contains ‘re-cnst’. Now insert a
punctuation character to expand the abbrev ‘cnst’ into ‘construction’. The minus sign
is deleted at this point by M-’. The resulting text is the desired ‘reconstruction’.
If you actually want the text of the abbrev in the buffer, rather than its expansion, insert
the following punctuation with C-q. Thus, foo C-q - leaves ‘foo-’ in the buffer.
If you expand an abbrev by mistake, you can undo the expansion (replace the expansion
by the original abbrev text) with M-x unexpand-abbrev. You can also use C-_ (undo) to
undo the expansion; but that will first undo the insertion of the punctuation character.
M-x expand-region-abbrevs searches through the region for defined abbrevs, and offers
to replace each one it finds with its expansion. This command is useful if you have typed
text using abbrevs but forgot to turn on Abbrev mode first. It may also be useful together
with a special set of abbrev definitions for making several global replacements at once. The
command is effective even if Abbrev mode is not enabled.
24.3 Examining and Editing Abbrevs
M-x list-abbrevs
Print a list of all abbrev definitions.
M-x edit-abbrevs
Edit a list of abbrevs; you can add, alter, or remove definitions.
The output from M-x list-abbrevs looks like this:
(lisp-mode-abbrev-table)
"dk"
0
"define-key"
(global-abbrev-table)
"dfn"
0
"definition"
(Some blank lines of no semantic significance, and some other abbrev tables, have been
omitted.)
A line containing a name in parentheses is the header for abbrevs in a particular abbrev
table; global-abbrev-table contains all the global abbrevs, and the other abbrev tables
that are named after major modes contain the mode-specific abbrevs.
Within each abbrev table, each non-blank line defines one abbrev. The word at the
beginning is the abbrev. The number that appears is the number of times the abbrev has
been expanded. Emacs keeps track of this to help you see which abbrevs you actually use,
in case you want to eliminate those that you don’t use often. The string at the end of the
line is the expansion.
M-x edit-abbrevs allows you to add, change or kill abbrev definitions by editing a list
of them in an Emacs buffer. The list has the format described above. The buffer of abbrevs
is called ‘*Abbrevs*’, and is in Edit-Abbrevs mode. This mode redefines the key C-c C-c
to install the abbrev definitions as specified in the buffer. The edit-abbrevs-redefine
command does this. Any abbrevs not described in the buffer are eliminated when this is
done.
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edit-abbrevs is actually the same as list-abbrevs, except that it selects the buffer
‘*Abbrevs*’ whereas list-abbrevs merely displays it in another window.
24.4 Saving Abbrevs
These commands allow you to keep abbrev definitions between editing sessions.
M-x write-abbrev-file
Write a file describing all defined abbrevs.
M-x read-abbrev-file
Read such an abbrev file and define abbrevs as specified there.
M-x quietly-read-abbrev-file
Similar, but do not display a message about what is going on.
M-x define-abbrevs
Define abbrevs from buffer.
M-x insert-abbrevs
Insert all abbrevs and their expansions into the buffer.
Use M-x write-abbrev-file to save abbrev definitions for use in a later session. The
command reads a file name using the minibuffer and writes a description of all current
abbrev definitions into the specified file. The text stored in the file looks like the output of
M-x list-abbrevs.
M-x read-abbrev-file prompts for a file name using the minibuffer and reads the specified file, defining abbrevs according to its contents. M-x quietly-read-abbrev-file is
the same but does not display a message in the echo area; it is actually useful primarily in
the init file. See Section 29.6 [Init File], page 311. If you give an empty argument to either
of these functions, the file name Emacs uses is the value of the variable abbrev-file-name,
which is by default "~/.abbrev_defs".
Emacs offers to save abbrevs automatically if you have changed any of them, whenever
it offers to save all files (for C-x s or C-x C-c). Set the variable save-abbrevs to nil to
inhibit this feature.
The commands M-x insert-abbrevs and M-x define-abbrevs are similar to the previous commands but work on text in an Emacs buffer. M-x insert-abbrevs inserts text
into the current buffer before point, describing all current abbrev definitions; M-x defineabbrevs parses the entire current buffer and defines abbrevs accordingly.
24.5 Dynamic Abbrev Expansion
The abbrev facility described above operates automatically as you insert text, but all
abbrevs must be defined explicitly. By contrast, dynamic abbrevs allow the meanings of
abbrevs to be determined automatically from the contents of the buffer, but dynamic abbrev
expansion happens only when you request it explicitly.
Chapter 24: Abbrevs
M-/
237
Expand the word in the buffer before point as a dynamic abbrev, by searching
in the buffer for words starting with that abbreviation (dabbrev-expand).
For example, if the buffer contains ‘does this follow ’ and you type f o M-/, the effect
is to insert ‘follow’ because that is the last word in the buffer that starts with ‘fo’. A
numeric argument to M-/ says to take the second, third, etc. distinct expansion found
looking backward from point. Repeating M-/ searches for an alternative expansion by
looking farther back. After the entire buffer before point has been considered, the buffer
after point is searched.
Dynamic abbrev expansion is completely independent of Abbrev mode; the expansion
of a word with M-/ is completely independent of whether it has a definition as an ordinary
abbrev.
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Chapter 25: Editing Pictures
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25 Editing Pictures
If you want to create a picture made out of text characters (for example, a picture
of the division of a register into fields, as a comment in a program), use the command
edit-picture to enter Picture mode.
In Picture mode, editing is based on the quarter-plane model of text. In this model,
the text characters lie studded on an area that stretches infinitely far to the right and
downward. The concept of the end of a line does not exist in this model; the most you can
say is where the last non-blank character on the line is found.
Of course, Emacs really always considers text as a sequence of characters, and lines really
do have ends. But in Picture mode most frequently-used keys are rebound to commands
that simulate the quarter-plane model of text. They do this by inserting spaces or by
converting tabs to spaces.
Most of the basic editing commands of Emacs are redefined by Picture mode to do
essentially the same thing but in a quarter-plane way. In addition, Picture mode defines
various keys starting with the C-c prefix to run special picture editing commands.
One of these keys, C-c C-c, is pretty important. Often a picture is part of a larger file
that is usually edited in some other major mode. M-x edit-picture records the name of
the previous major mode. You can then use the C-c C-c command (picture-mode-exit)
to restore that mode. C-c C-c also deletes spaces from the ends of lines, unless you give it
a numeric argument.
The commands used in Picture mode all work in other modes (provided the ‘picture’
library is loaded), but are only bound to keys in Picture mode. Note that the descriptions
below talk of moving “one column” and so on, but all the picture mode commands handle
numeric arguments as their normal equivalents do.
Turning on Picture mode calls the value of the variable picture-mode-hook as a function, with no arguments, if that value exists and is non-nil.
25.1 Basic Editing in Picture Mode
Most keys do the same thing in Picture mode that they usually do, but do it in a quarterplane style. For example, C-f is rebound to run picture-forward-column, which moves
point one column to the right, by inserting a space if necessary, so that the actual end
of the line makes no difference. C-b is rebound to run picture-backward-column, which
always moves point left one column, converting a tab to multiple spaces if necessary. C-n
and C-p are rebound to run picture-move-down and picture-move-up, which can either
insert spaces or convert tabs as necessary to make sure that point stays in exactly the same
column. C-e runs picture-end-of-line, which moves to after the last non-blank character
on the line. There was no need to change C-a, as the choice of screen model does not affect
beginnings of lines.
Insertion of text is adapted to the quarter-plane screen model through the use of Overwrite mode (see Section 29.1 [Minor Modes], page 291). Self-inserting characters replace
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existing text, column by column, rather than pushing existing text to the right. hRETi runs
picture-newline, which just moves to the beginning of the following line so that new text
will replace that line.
Text is erased instead of deleted and killed. hDELi (picture-backward-clear-column)
replaces the preceding character with a space rather than removing it. C-d (pictureclear-column) does the same in a forward direction. C-k (picture-clear-line) really
kills the contents of lines, but never removes the newlines from a buffer.
To do actual insertion, you must use special commands. C-o (picture-open-line)
creates a blank line, but does so after the current line; it never splits a line. C-M-o, splitline, makes sense in Picture mode, so it remains unchanged. hLFDi (picture-duplicateline) inserts another line with the same contents below the current line.
To actually delete parts of the picture, use C-w, or with C-c C-d (which is defined as
delete-char, as C-d is in other modes), or with one of the picture rectangle commands
(see Section 25.4 [Rectangles in Picture], page 241).
25.2 Controlling Motion After Insert
Since “self-inserting” characters just overwrite and move point in Picture mode, there
is no essential restriction on how point should be moved. Normally point moves right,
but you can specify any of the eight orthogonal or diagonal directions for motion after a
“self-inserting” character. This is useful for drawing lines in the buffer.
C-c <
Move left after insertion (picture-movement-left).
C-c >
Move right after insertion (picture-movement-right).
C-c ^
Move up after insertion (picture-movement-up).
C-c .
Move down after insertion (picture-movement-down).
C-c ‘
Move up and left (“northwest”) after insertion
(picture-movement-nw).
C-c ’
Move up and right (“northeast”) after insertion
(picture-movement-ne).
C-c /
Move down and left (“southwest”) after insertion
(picture-movement-sw).
C-c \
Move down and right (“southeast”) after insertion
(picture-movement-se).
Two motion commands move based on the current Picture insertion direction. The command C-c C-f (picture-motion) moves in the same direction as motion after “insertion”
currently does, while C-c C-b (picture-motion-reverse) moves in the opposite direction.
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25.3 Picture Mode Tabs
Two kinds of tab-like action are provided in Picture mode. Context-based tabbing is done
with M-hTABi (picture-tab-search). With no argument, it moves to a point underneath
the next “interesting” character that follows whitespace in the previous non-blank line.
“Next” here means “appearing at a horizontal position greater than the one point starts
out at”. With an argument, as in C-u M-hTABi, the command moves to the next such
interesting character in the current line. M-hTABi does not change the text; it only moves
point. “Interesting” characters are defined by the variable picture-tab-chars, which
contains a string of characters considered interesting. Its default value is "!-~".
hTABi itself runs picture-tab, which operates based on the current tab stop settings;
it is the Picture mode equivalent of tab-to-tab-stop. Without arguments it just moves
point, but with a numeric argument it clears the text that it moves over.
The context-based and tab-stop-based forms of tabbing are brought together by the
command C-c hTABi (picture-set-tab-stops.) This command sets the tab stops to the
positions which M-hTABi would consider significant in the current line. If you use this command with hTABi, you can get the effect of context-based tabbing. But M-hTABi is more
convenient in the cases where it is sufficient.
25.4 Picture Mode Rectangle Commands
Picture mode defines commands for working on rectangular pieces of the text in ways
that fit with the quarter-plane model. The standard rectangle commands may also be useful
(see Section 10.5 [Rectangles], page 87).
C-c C-k
Clear out the region-rectangle (picture-clear-rectangle). With argument,
kill it.
C-c C-w r
Similar but save rectangle contents in register r first (picture-clear-rectangleto-register).
C-c C-y
Copy last killed rectangle into the buffer by overwriting, with upper left corner
at point (picture-yank-rectangle). With argument, insert instead.
C-c C-x r
Similar, but use the rectangle in register r
(picture-yank-rectangle-from-register).
The picture rectangle commands C-c C-k (picture-clear-rectangle) and C-c C-w
(picture-clear-rectangle-to-register) differ from the standard rectangle commands
in that they normally clear the rectangle instead of deleting it; this is analogous with the
way C-d is changed in Picture mode.
However, deletion of rectangles can be useful in Picture mode, so these commands delete
the rectangle if given a numeric argument.
The Picture mode commands for yanking rectangles differ from the standard ones in
overwriting instead of inserting. This is the same way that Picture mode insertion of
other text is different from other modes. C-c C-y (picture-yank-rectangle) inserts (by
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overwriting) the rectangle that was most recently killed, while C-c C-x (picture-yankrectangle-from-register) does for the rectangle found in a specified register.
Since most region commands in Picture mode operate on rectangles, when you select a
region of text with the mouse in Picture mode, it is highlighted as a rectangle.
Chapter 26: Sending Mail
243
26 Sending Mail
To send a message in Emacs, start by typing the command (C-x m) to select and initialize
the ‘*mail*’ buffer. You can then edit the text and headers of the message in the mail buffer,
and type the command (C-c C-c) to send the message.
C-x m
Begin composing a message to send (mail).
C-x 4 m
Likewise, but display the message in another window (mail-other-window).
C-c C-c
In Mail mode, send the message and switch to another buffer (mail-send-andexit).
The command C-x m (mail) selects a buffer named ‘*mail*’ and initializes it with the
skeleton of an outgoing message. C-x 4 m (mail-other-window) selects the ‘*mail*’ buffer
in a different window, leaving the previous current buffer visible.
Because the buffer for mail composition is an ordinary Emacs buffer, you can switch to
other buffers while in the middle of composing mail, and switch back later (or never). If
you use the C-x m command again when you have been composing another message but
have not sent it, a new mail buffer will be created; in this way, you can compose multiple
messages at once. You can switch back to and complete an unsent message by using the
normal buffer selection mechanisms.
C-u C-x m is another way to switch back to a message in progress: it will search for an
existing, unsent mail message buffer and select it.
26.1 The Format of the Mail Buffer
In addition to the text or contents, a message has header fields, which say who sent
it, when, to whom, why, and so on. Some header fields, such as the date and sender, are
created automatically after the message is sent. Others, such as the recipient names, must
be specified by you in order to send the message properly.
Mail mode provides a few commands to help you edit some header fields, and some are
preinitialized in the buffer automatically at times. You can insert or edit any header fields
using ordinary editing commands.
The line in the buffer that says:
--text follows this line-is a special delimiter that separates the headers you have specified from the text. Whatever
follows this line is the text of the message; the headers precede it. The delimiter line
itself does not appear in the message actually sent. The text used for the delimiter line is
controlled by the variable mail-header-separator.
Here is an example of what the headers and text in the ‘*mail*’ buffer might look like.
To: rms@mc
CC: mly@mc, rg@oz
Subject: The XEmacs User’s Manual
--Text follows this line-Please ignore this message.
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26.2 Mail Header Fields
There are several header fields you can use in the ‘*mail*’ buffer. Each header field
starts with a field name at the beginning of a line, terminated by a colon. It does not
matter whether you use upper or lower case in the field name. After the colon and optional
whitespace comes the contents of the field.
‘To’
This field contains the mailing addresses of the message.
‘Subject’
The contents of the ‘Subject’ field should be a piece of text that says what the
message is about. Subject fields are useful because most mail-reading programs
can provide a summary of messages, listing the subject of each message but not
its text.
‘CC’
This field contains additional mailing addresses to send the message to, but
whose readers should not regard the message as addressed to them.
‘BCC’
This field contains additional mailing addresses to send the message to, but
which should not appear in the header of the message actually sent.
‘FCC’
This field contains the name of one file (in Unix mail file format) to which a
copy of the message should be appended when the message is sent.
‘From’
Use the ‘From’ field to say who you are, when the account you are using to send
the mail is not your own. The contents of the ‘From’ field should be a valid
mailing address, since replies will normally go there.
‘Reply-To’
Use the ‘Reply-To’ field to direct replies to a different address, not your own.
‘From’ and ‘Reply-To’ have the same effect on where replies go, but they convey
a different meaning to the person who reads the message.
‘In-Reply-To’
This field contains a piece of text describing a message you are replying to.
Some mail systems can use the information to correlate related pieces of mail.
This field is normally filled in by your mail handling package when you are
replying to a message and you never need to think about it.
The ‘To’, ‘CC’, ‘BCC’ and ‘FCC’ fields can appear any number of times, to specify many places
to send the message.
The ‘To’, ‘CC’, and ‘BCC’, fields can have continuation lines. All the lines starting with
whitespace, following the line on which the field starts, are considered part of the field. For
example,
To: foo@here, this@there,
me@gnu.cambridge.mass.usa.earth.spiral3281
If you have a ‘~/.mailrc’ file, Emacs scans it for mail aliases the first time you try to send
mail in an Emacs session. Emacs expands aliases found in the ‘To’, ‘CC’, and ‘BCC’ fields
where appropriate. You can set the variable mail-abbrev-mailrc-file to the name of the
file with mail aliases. If nil, ‘~/.mailrc’ is used.
Your ‘.mailrc’ file ensures that word-abbrevs are defined for each of your mail aliases
when point is in a ‘To’, ‘CC’, ‘BCC’, or ‘From’ field. The aliases are defined in your ‘.mailrc’
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file or in a file specified by the MAILRC environment variable if it exists. Your mail aliases
expand any time you type a word-delimiter at the end of an abbreviation.
In this version of Emacs, what you see is what you get: in contrast to some other versions,
no abbreviations are expanded after you have sent the mail. This means you don’t suffer
the annoyance of having the system do things behind your back—if the system rewrites an
address you typed, you know it immediately, instead of after the mail has been sent and it’s
too late to do anything about it. For example, you will never again be in trouble because
you forgot to delete an old alias from your ‘.mailrc’ and a new local user is given a userid
which conflicts with one of your aliases.
Your mail alias abbrevs are in effect only when point is in an appropriate header field.
The mail aliases will not expand in the body of the message, or in other header fields. The
default mode-specific abbrev table mail-mode-abbrev-table is used instead if defined.
That means if you have been using mail-mode specific abbrevs, this code will not adversely
affect you. You can control which header fields the abbrevs are used in by changing the
variable mail-abbrev-mode-regexp.
If auto-fill mode is on, abbrevs wrap at commas instead of at word boundaries, and
header continuation lines will be properly indented.
You can also insert a mail alias with mail-interactive-insert-alias. This function,
which is bound to C-c C-a, prompts you for an alias (with completion) and inserts its
expansion at point.
In this version of Emacs, it is possible to have lines like the following in your ‘.mailrc’
file:
alias someone "John Doe <doe@quux.com>"
That is, if you want an address to have embedded spaces, simply surround it with doublequotes. The quotes are necessary because the format of the ‘.mailrc’ file uses spaces as
address delimiters.
Aliases in the ‘.mailrc’ file may be nested. For example, assume you define aliases like:
alias group1 fred ethel
alias group2 larry curly moe
alias everybody group1 group2
When you now type ‘everybody’ on the ‘To’ line, it will expand to:
fred, ethyl, larry, curly, moe
Aliases may contain forward references; the alias of ‘everybody’ in the example above
can precede the aliases of ‘group1’ and ‘group2’.
In this version of Emacs, you can use the source ‘.mailrc’ command for reading aliases
from some other file as well.
Aliases may contain hyphens, as in "alias foo-bar foo@bar", even though wordabbrevs normally cannot contain hyphens.
To read in the contents of another ‘.mailrc’-type file from Emacs, use the command
M-x merge-mail-aliases. The rebuild-mail-aliases command is similar, but deletes
existing aliases first.
If you want multiple addresses separated by a string other than ‘,’ (a comma), then set
the variable mail-alias-separator-string to it. This has to be a comma bracketed by
whitespace if you want any kind of reasonable behavior.
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If the variable mail-archive-file-name is non-nil, it should be a string naming a file.
Each time you start to edit a message to send, an ‘FCC’ field is entered for that file. Unless
you remove the ‘FCC’ field, every message is written into that file when it is sent.
26.3 Mail Mode
The major mode used in the ‘*mail*’ buffer is Mail mode. Mail mode is similar to Text
mode, but several commands are provided on the C-c prefix. These commands all deal
specifically with editing or sending the message.
C-c C-s
Send the message, and leave the ‘*mail*’ buffer selected (mail-send).
C-c C-c
Send the message, and select some other buffer (mail-send-and-exit).
C-c C-f C-t
Move to the ‘To’ header field, creating one if there is none (mail-to).
C-c C-f C-s
Move to the ‘Subject’ header field, creating one if there is none (mailsubject).
C-c C-f C-c
Move to the ‘CC’ header field, creating one if there is none (mail-cc).
C-c C-w
Insert the file ‘~/.signature’ at the end of the message text (mail-signature).
C-c C-y
Yank the selected message (mail-yank-original).
C-c C-q
Fill all paragraphs of yanked old messages, each individually (mail-fillyanked-message).
hbutton3i
Pops up a menu of useful mail-mode commands.
There are two ways to send a message. C-c C-c (mail-send-and-exit) is the usual way
to send the message. It sends the message and then deletes the window (if there is another
window) or switches to another buffer. It puts the ‘*mail*’ buffer at the lowest priority for
automatic reselection, since you are finished with using it. C-c C-s (mail-send) sends the
message and marks the ‘*mail*’ buffer unmodified, but leaves that buffer selected so that
you can modify the message (perhaps with new recipients) and send it again.
Mail mode provides some other special commands that are useful for editing the headers
and text of the message before you send it. There are three commands defined to move
point to particular header fields, all based on the prefix C-c C-f (‘C-f’ is for “field”). They
are C-c C-f C-t (mail-to) to move to the ‘To’ field, C-c C-f C-s (mail-subject) for the
‘Subject’ field, and C-c C-f C-c (mail-cc) for the ‘CC’ field. These fields have special
motion commands because they are edited most frequently.
C-c C-w (mail-signature) adds a standard piece of text at the end of the message to
say more about who you are. The text comes from the file ‘.signature’ in your home
directory.
When you use an Rmail command to send mail from the Rmail mail reader, you can use
C-c C-y mail-yank-original inside the ‘*mail*’ buffer to insert the text of the message
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you are replying to. Normally Rmail indents each line of that message four spaces and
eliminates most header fields. A numeric argument specifies the number of spaces to indent.
An argument of just C-u says not to indent at all and not to eliminate anything. C-c Cy always uses the current message from the ‘RMAIL’ buffer, so you can insert several old
messages by selecting one in ‘RMAIL’, switching to ‘*mail*’ and yanking it, then switching
back to ‘RMAIL’ to select another.
After using C-c C-y, you can use the command C-c C-q (mail-fill-yanked-message)
to fill the paragraphs of the yanked old message or messages. One use of C-c C-q fills all
such paragraphs, each one separately.
Clicking the right mouse button in a mail buffer pops up a menu of the above commands,
for easy access.
Turning on Mail mode (which C-x m does automatically) calls the value of text-modehook, if it is not void or nil, and then calls the value of mail-mode-hook if that is not void
or nil.
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27 Reading Mail
XEmacs provides three separate mail-reading packages. Each one comes with its own
manual, which is included standard with the XEmacs distribution.
The recommended mail-reading package for new users is VM. VM works with standard
Unix-mail-format folders and was designed as a replacement for the older Rmail.
XEmacs also provides a sophisticated and comfortable front-end to the MH mailprocessing system, called ‘mh-e’. Unlike in other mail programs, folders in MH are stored
as file-system directories, with each message occupying one (numbered) file. This facilitates
working with mail using shell commands, and many other features of MH are also designed
to integrate well with the shell and with shell scripts. Keep in mind, however, that in order
to use mh-e you must have the MH mail-processing system installed on your computer.
Finally, XEmacs provides the Rmail package. Rmail is (currently) the only mail reading
package distributed with FSF GNU Emacs, and is powerful in its own right. However, it
stores mail folders in a special format called ‘Babyl’, that is incompatible with all other
frequently-used mail programs. A utility program is provided for converting Babyl folders to
standard Unix-mail format; however, unless you already have mail in Babyl-format folders,
you should consider using VM or mh-e instead. (If at times you have to use FSF Emacs, it
is not hard to obtain and install VM for that editor.)
27.4 Calendar Mode and the Diary
Emacs provides the functions of a desk calendar, with a diary of planned or past events.
To enter the calendar, type M-x calendar; this displays a three-month calendar centered
on the current month, with point on the current date. With a numeric argument, as in C-u
M-x calendar, it prompts you for the month and year to be the center of the three-month
calendar. The calendar uses its own buffer, whose major mode is Calendar mode.
Button2 in the calendar brings up a menu of operations on a particular date; Buttons3
brings up a menu of commonly used calendar features that are independent of any particular
date. To exit the calendar, type q. See section “Calendar” in The XEmacs Lisp Reference
Manual, for customization information about the calendar and diary.
27.4.1 Movement in the Calendar
Calendar mode lets you move through the calendar in logical units of time such as days,
weeks, months, and years. If you move outside the three months originally displayed, the
calendar display “scrolls” automatically through time to make the selected date visible.
Moving to a date lets you view its holidays or diary entries, or convert it to other calendars;
moving longer time periods is also useful simply to scroll the calendar.
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27.4.1.1 Motion by Integral Days, Weeks, Months, Years
The commands for movement in the calendar buffer parallel the commands for movement
in text. You can move forward and backward by days, weeks, months, and years.
C-f
Move point one day forward (calendar-forward-day).
C-b
Move point one day backward (calendar-backward-day).
C-n
Move point one week forward (calendar-forward-week).
C-p
Move point one week backward (calendar-backward-week).
M-}
Move point one month forward (calendar-forward-month).
M-{
Move point one month backward (calendar-backward-month).
C-x ]
Move point one year forward (calendar-forward-year).
C-x [
Move point one year backward (calendar-backward-year).
The day and week commands are natural analogues of the usual Emacs commands for
moving by characters and by lines. Just as C-n usually moves to the same column in the
following line, in Calendar mode it moves to the same day in the following week. And C-p
moves to the same day in the previous week.
The arrow keys are equivalent to C-f, C-b, C-n and C-p, just as they normally are in
other modes.
The commands for motion by months and years work like those for weeks, but move a
larger distance. The month commands M-} and M-{ move forward or backward by an entire
month’s time. The year commands C-x ] and C-x [ move forward or backward a whole
year.
The easiest way to remember these commands is to consider months and years analogous
to paragraphs and pages of text, respectively. But the commands themselves are not quite
analogous. The ordinary Emacs paragraph commands move to the beginning or end of a
paragraph, whereas these month and year commands move by an entire month or an entire
year, which usually involves skipping across the end of a month or year.
All these commands accept a numeric argument as a repeat count. For convenience, the
digit keys and the minus sign specify numeric arguments in Calendar mode even without
the Meta modifier. For example, 100 C-f moves point 100 days forward from its present
location.
27.4.1.2 Beginning or End of Week, Month or Year
A week (or month, or year) is not just a quantity of days; we think of weeks (months,
years) as starting on particular dates. So Calendar mode provides commands to move to
the beginning or end of a week, month or year:
C-a
Move point to start of week (calendar-beginning-of-week).
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C-e
Move point to end of week (calendar-end-of-week).
M-a
Move point to start of month (calendar-beginning-of-month).
M-e
Move point to end of month (calendar-end-of-month).
M-<
Move point to start of year (calendar-beginning-of-year).
M->
Move point to end of year (calendar-end-of-year).
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These commands also take numeric arguments as repeat counts, with the repeat count
indicating how many weeks, months, or years to move backward or forward.
By default, weeks begin on Sunday. To make them begin on Monday instead, set the
variable calendar-week-start-day to 1.
27.4.1.3 Particular Dates
Calendar mode provides commands for moving to a particular date specified in various
ways.
gd
Move point to specified date (calendar-goto-date).
o
Center calendar around specified month (calendar-other-month).
.
Move point to today’s date (calendar-goto-today).
g d (calendar-goto-date) prompts for a year, a month, and a day of the month, and
then moves to that date. Because the calendar includes all dates from the beginning of the
current era, you must type the year in its entirety; that is, type ‘1990’, not ‘90’.
o (calendar-other-month) prompts for a month and year, then centers the three-month
calendar around that month.
You can return to today’s date with . (calendar-goto-today).
27.4.2 Scrolling the Calendar through Time
The calendar display scrolls automatically through time when you move out of the visible
portion. You can also scroll it manually. Imagine that the calendar window contains a long
strip of paper with the months on it. Scrolling it means moving the strip so that new
months become visible in the window.
C-x <
Scroll calendar one month forward (scroll-calendar-left).
C-x >
Scroll calendar one month backward (scroll-calendar-right).
C-v
hNEXTi
Scroll calendar three months forward (scroll-calendar-left-three-months).
M-v
hPRIORi
Scroll calendar three months backward (scroll-calendar-right-threemonths).
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The most basic calendar scroll commands scroll by one month at a time. This means
that there are two months of overlap between the display before the command and the
display after. C-x < scrolls the calendar contents one month to the left; that is, it moves
the display forward in time. C-x > scrolls the contents to the right, which moves backwards
in time.
The commands C-v and M-v scroll the calendar by an entire “screenful”—three months—
in analogy with the usual meaning of these commands. C-v makes later dates visible and
M-v makes earlier dates visible. These commands take a numeric argument as a repeat
count; in particular, since C-u multiplies the next command by four, typing C-u C-v scrolls
the calendar forward by a year and typing C-u M-v scrolls the calendar backward by a year.
The function keys hNEXTi and hPRIORi are equivalent to C-v and M-v, just as they are in
other modes.
27.4.3 The Mark and the Region
The concept of the mark applies to the calendar just as to any other buffer, but it marks
a date, not a position in the buffer. The region consists of the days between the mark and
point (including the starting and stopping dates).
C-SPC
Set the mark to today’s date (calendar-set-mark).
C-@
The same.
C-x C-x
Interchange mark and point (calendar-exchange-point-and-mark).
M-=
Display the number of days in the current region (calendar-count-daysregion).
You set the mark in the calendar, as in any other buffer, by using C-@ or C-SPC
(calendar-set-mark). You return to the marked date with the command C-x C-x
(calendar-exchange-point-and-mark) which puts the mark where point was and point
where mark was. The calendar is scrolled as necessary, if the marked date was not visible
on the screen. This does not change the extent of the region.
To determine the number of days in the region, type M-= (calendar-count-daysregion). The numbers of days printed is inclusive; that is, it includes the days specified by
mark and point.
The main use of the mark in the calendar is to remember dates that you may want to
go back to. To make this feature more useful, the mark ring (see Section 9.1.4 [Mark Ring],
page 75) operates exactly as in other buffers: Emacs remembers 16 previous locations of
the mark. To return to a marked date, type C-u C-SPC (or C-u C-@); this is the command
calendar-set-mark given a numeric argument. It moves point to where the mark was,
restores the mark from the ring of former marks, and stores the previous point at the end
of the mark ring. So, repeated use of this command moves point through all the old marks
on the ring, one by one.
27.4.4 Miscellaneous Calendar Commands
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pd
Display day-in-year (calendar-print-day-of-year).
?
Briefly describe calendar commands (describe-calendar-mode).
C-c C-l
Regenerate the calendar window (redraw-calendar).
SPC
Scroll the next window (scroll-other-window).
q
Exit from calendar (exit-calendar).
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If you want to know how many days have elapsed since the start of the year, or the
number of days remaining in the year, type the p d command (calendar-print-day-ofyear). This displays both of those numbers in the echo area.
To display a brief description of the calendar commands, type ? (describe-calendarmode). For a fuller description, type C-h m.
You can use SPC (scroll-other-window) to scroll the other window. This is handy
when you display a list of holidays or diary entries in another window.
If the calendar window text gets corrupted, type C-c C-l (redraw-calendar) to redraw
it. (This can only happen if you use non-Calendar-mode editing commands.)
In Calendar mode, you can use SPC (scroll-other-window) to scroll the other window.
This is handy when you display a list of holidays or diary entries in another window.
To exit from the calendar, type q (exit-calendar). This buries all buffers related to the
calendar, selecting other buffers. (If a frame contains a dedicated calendar window, exiting
from the calendar iconifies that frame.)
27.5 LaTeX Calendar
The Calendar LaTEX commands produce a buffer of LaTEX code that prints as a calendar. Depending on the command you use, the printed calendar covers the day, week, month
or year that point is in.
tm
Generate a one-month calendar (cal-tex-cursor-month).
tM
Generate a sideways-printing one-month calendar (cal-tex-cursor-monthlandscape).
td
Generate a one-day calendar (cal-tex-cursor-day).
tw1
Generate a one-page calendar for one week (cal-tex-cursor-week).
tw2
Generate a two-page calendar for one week (cal-tex-cursor-week2).
tw3
Generate an ISO-style calendar for one week (cal-tex-cursor-week-iso).
tw4
Generate a calendar for one Monday-starting week (cal-tex-cursor-weekmonday).
tfw
Generate a Filofax-style two-weeks-at-a-glance calendar (cal-tex-cursorfilofax-2week).
tfW
Generate a Filofax-style one-week-at-a-glance calendar (cal-tex-cursorfilofax-week).
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ty
Generate a calendar for one year (cal-tex-cursor-year).
tY
Generate a sideways-printing calendar for one year (cal-tex-cursor-yearlandscape).
tfy
Generate a Filofax-style calendar for one year (cal-tex-cursor-filofaxyear).
Some of these commands print the calendar sideways (in “landscape mode”), so it can
be wider than it is long. Some of them use Filofax paper size (3.75in x 6.75in). All of these
commands accept a prefix argument which specifies how many days, weeks, months or years
to print (starting always with the selected one).
If the variable cal-tex-holidays is non-nil (the default), then the printed calendars
show the holidays in calendar-holidays. If the variable cal-tex-diary is non-nil (the
default is nil), diary entries are included also (in weekly and monthly calendars only).
27.5.1 Holidays
The Emacs calendar knows about all major and many minor holidays, and can display
them.
h
Display holidays for the selected date (calendar-cursor-holidays).
Button2 Holidays
Display any holidays for the date you click on.
x
Mark holidays in the calendar window (mark-calendar-holidays).
u
Unmark calendar window (calendar-unmark).
a
List all holidays for the displayed three months in another window (listcalendar-holidays).
M-x holidays
List all holidays for three months around today’s date in another window.
M-x list-holidays
List holidays in another window for a specified range of years.
To see if any holidays fall on a given date, position point on that date in the calendar
window and use the h command. Alternatively, click on that date with Button2 and then
choose Holidays from the menu that appears. Either way, this displays the holidays for
that date, in the echo area if they fit there, otherwise in a separate window.
To view the distribution of holidays for all the dates shown in the calendar, use the x
command. This displays the dates that are holidays in a different face (or places a ‘*’ after
these dates, if display with multiple faces is not available). The command applies both
to the currently visible months and to other months that subsequently become visible by
scrolling. To turn marking off and erase the current marks, type u, which also erases any
diary marks (see Section 27.8.2 [Diary], page 261).
To get even more detailed information, use the a command, which displays a separate
buffer containing a list of all holidays in the current three-month range. You can use hSPCi
in the calendar window to scroll that list.
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The command M-x holidays displays the list of holidays for the current month and the
preceding and succeeding months; this works even if you don’t have a calendar window.
If you want the list of holidays centered around a different month, use C-u M-x holidays,
which prompts for the month and year.
The holidays known to Emacs include United States holidays and the major Christian,
Jewish, and Islamic holidays; also the solstices and equinoxes.
The command M-x list-holidays displays the list of holidays for a range of years.
This function asks you for the starting and stopping years, and allows you to choose all the
holidays or one of several categories of holidays. You can use this command even if you
don’t have a calendar window.
The dates used by Emacs for holidays are based on current practice, not historical fact.
Historically, for instance, the start of daylight savings time and even its existence have
varied from year to year, but present United States law mandates that daylight savings
time begins on the first Sunday in April. When the daylight savings rules are set up for the
United States, Emacs always uses the present definition, even though it is wrong for some
prior years.
27.5.2 Times of Sunrise and Sunset
Special calendar commands can tell you, to within a minute or two, the times of sunrise
and sunset for any date.
S
Display times of sunrise and sunset for the selected date (calendar-sunrisesunset).
Button2 Sunrise/Sunset
Display times of sunrise and sunset for the date you click on.
M-x sunrise-sunset
Display times of sunrise and sunset for today’s date.
C-u M-x sunrise-sunset
Display times of sunrise and sunset for a specified date.
Within the calendar, to display the local times of sunrise and sunset in the echo area,
move point to the date you want, and type S. Alternatively, click Button2 on the date, then
choose Sunrise/Sunset from the menu that appears. The command M-x sunrise-sunset
is available outside the calendar to display this information for today’s date or a specified
date. To specify a date other than today, use C-u M-x sunrise-sunset, which prompts for
the year, month, and day.
You can display the times of sunrise and sunset for any location and any date with
C-u C-u M-x sunrise-sunset. This asks you for a longitude, latitude, number of minutes
difference from Coordinated Universal Time, and date, and then tells you the times of
sunrise and sunset for that location on that date.
Because the times of sunrise and sunset depend on the location on earth, you need to
tell Emacs your latitude, longitude, and location name before using these commands. Here
is an example of what to set:
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(setq calendar-latitude 40.1)
(setq calendar-longitude -88.2)
(setq calendar-location-name "Urbana, IL")
Use one decimal place in the values of calendar-latitude and calendar-longitude.
Your time zone also affects the local time of sunrise and sunset. Emacs usually gets
time zone information from the operating system, but if these values are not what you want
(or if the operating system does not supply them), you must set them yourself. Here is an
example:
(setq calendar-time-zone -360)
(setq calendar-standard-time-zone-name "CST")
(setq calendar-daylight-time-zone-name "CDT")
The value of calendar-time-zone is the number of minutes difference between your local
standard time and Coordinated Universal Time (Greenwich time). The values of calendarstandard-time-zone-name and calendar-daylight-time-zone-name are the abbreviations used in your time zone. Emacs displays the times of sunrise and sunset corrected for
daylight savings time. See Section 27.8.8.5 [Daylight Savings], page 271, for how daylight
savings time is determined.
As a user, you might find it convenient to set the calendar location variables for your
usual physical location in your init file. And when you install Emacs on a machine, you can
create a ‘default.el’ file which sets them properly for the typical location of most users
of that machine. See Section 29.6 [Init File], page 311.
27.5.3 Phases of the Moon
These calendar commands display the dates and times of the phases of the moon (new
moon, first quarter, full moon, last quarter). This feature is useful for debugging problems
that “depend on the phase of the moon.”
M
Display the dates and times for all the quarters of the moon for the three-month
period shown (calendar-phases-of-moon).
M-x phases-of-moon
Display dates and times of the quarters of the moon for three months around
today’s date.
Within the calendar, use the M command to display a separate buffer of the phases of
the moon for the current three-month range. The dates and times listed are accurate to
within a few minutes.
Outside the calendar, use the command M-x phases-of-moon to display the list of the
phases of the moon for the current month and the preceding and succeeding months. For
information about a different month, use C-u M-x phases-of-moon, which prompts for the
month and year.
The dates and times given for the phases of the moon are given in local time (corrected for daylight savings, when appropriate); but if the variable calendar-time-zone is
void, Coordinated Universal Time (the Greenwich time zone) is used. See Section 27.8.8.5
[Daylight Savings], page 271.
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27.5.4 Conversion To and From Other Calendars
The Emacs calendar displayed is always the Gregorian calendar, sometimes called the
“new style” calendar, which is used in most of the world today. However, this calendar
did not exist before the sixteenth century and was not widely used before the eighteenth
century; it did not fully displace the Julian calendar and gain universal acceptance until the
early twentieth century. The Emacs calendar can display any month since January, year 1
of the current era, but the calendar displayed is the Gregorian, even for a date at which the
Gregorian calendar did not exist.
While Emacs cannot display other calendars, it can convert dates to and from several
other calendars.
If you are interested in these calendars, you can convert dates one at a time. Put point
on the desired date of the Gregorian calendar and press the appropriate keys. The p is a
mnemonic for “print” since Emacs “prints’ the equivalent date in the echo area.
27.6 Supported Calendar Systems
The ISO commercial calendar is used largely in Europe.
The Julian calendar, named after Julius Caesar, was the one used in Europe throughout
medieval times, and in many countries up until the nineteenth century.
Astronomers use a simple counting of days elapsed since noon, Monday, January 1, 4713
B.C. on the Julian calendar. The number of days elapsed is called the Julian day number
or the Astronomical day number.
The Hebrew calendar is used by tradition in the Jewish religion. The Emacs calendar
program uses the Hebrew calendar to determine the dates of Jewish holidays. Hebrew
calendar dates begin and end at sunset.
The Islamic calendar is used in many predominantly Islamic countries. Emacs uses it
to determine the dates of Islamic holidays. There is no universal agreement in the Islamic
world about the calendar; Emacs uses a widely accepted version, but the precise dates of
Islamic holidays often depend on proclamation by religious authorities, not on calculations.
As a consequence, the actual dates of observance can vary slightly from the dates computed
by Emacs. Islamic calendar dates begin and end at sunset.
The French Revolutionary calendar was created by the Jacobins after the 1789 revolution,
to represent a more secular and nature-based view of the annual cycle, and to install a 10day week in a rationalization measure similar to the metric system. The French government
officially abandoned this calendar at the end of 1805.
The Maya of Central America used three separate, overlapping calendar systems, the long
count, the tzolkin, and the haab. Emacs knows about all three of these calendars. Experts
dispute the exact correlation between the Mayan calendar and our calendar; Emacs uses
the Goodman-Martinez-Thompson correlation in its calculations.
The Copts use a calendar based on the ancient Egyptian solar calendar. Their calendar
consists of twelve 30-day months followed by an extra five-day period. Once every fourth
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year they add a leap day to this extra period to make it six days. The Ethiopic calendar is
identical in structure, but has different year numbers and month names.
The Persians use a solar calendar based on a design of Omar Khayyam. Their calendar
consists of twelve months of which the first six have 31 days, the next five have 30 days, and
the last has 29 in ordinary years and 30 in leap years. Leap years occur in a complicated
pattern every four or five years.
The Chinese calendar is a complicated system of lunar months arranged into solar years.
The years go in cycles of sixty, each year containing either twelve months in an ordinary
year or thirteen months in a leap year; each month has either 29 or 30 days. Years, ordinary
months, and days are named by combining one of ten “celestial stems” with one of twelve
“terrestrial branches” for a total of sixty names that are repeated in a cycle of sixty.
27.7 Converting To Other Calendars
The following commands describe the selected date (the date at point) in various other
calendar systems:
Button2 Other Calendars
Display the date that you click on, expressed in various other calendars.
pc
Display ISO commercial calendar equivalent for selected day (calendar-printiso-date).
pj
Display Julian date for selected day (calendar-print-julian-date).
pa
Display astronomical (Julian) day number for selected day (calendar-printastro-day-number).
ph
Display Hebrew date for selected day (calendar-print-hebrew-date).
pi
Display Islamic date for selected day (calendar-print-islamic-date).
pf
Display French Revolutionary date for selected day (calendar-print-frenchdate).
pC
Display Chinese date for selected day (calendar-print-chinese-date).
pk
Display Coptic date for selected day (calendar-print-coptic-date).
pe
Display Ethiopic date for selected day (calendar-print-ethiopic-date).
pp
Display Persian date for selected day (calendar-print-persian-date).
pm
Display Mayan date for selected day (calendar-print-mayan-date).
If you are using X, the easiest way to translate a date into other calendars is to click on
it with Button2, then choose Other Calendars from the menu that appears. This displays
the equivalent forms of the date in all the calendars Emacs understands, in the form of a
menu. (Choosing an alternative from this menu doesn’t actually do anything—the menu is
used only for display.)
Put point on the desired date of the Gregorian calendar, then type the appropriate keys.
The p is a mnemonic for “print” since Emacs “prints” the equivalent date in the echo area.
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27.8 Converting From Other Calendars
You can use the other supported calendars to specify a date to move to. This section
describes the commands for doing this using calendars other than Mayan; for the Mayan
calendar, see the following section.
gc
Move to a date specified in the ISO commercial calendar (calendar-goto-isodate).
gj
Move to a date specified in the Julian calendar (calendar-goto-julian-date).
ga
Move to a date specified in astronomical (Julian) day number (calendar-gotoastro-day-number).
gh
Move to a date specified in the Hebrew calendar (calendar-goto-hebrewdate).
gi
Move to a date specified in the Islamic calendar (calendar-goto-islamicdate).
gf
Move to a date specified in the French Revolutionary calendar (calendar-gotofrench-date).
gC
Move to a date specified in the Chinese calendar (calendar-goto-chinesedate).
gp
Move to a date specified in the Persian calendar (calendar-goto-persiandate).
gk
Move to a date specified in the Coptic calendar (calendar-goto-coptic-date).
ge
Move to a date specified in the Ethiopic calendar (calendar-goto-ethiopicdate).
These commands ask you for a date on the other calendar, move point to the Gregorian
calendar date equivalent to that date, and display the other calendar’s date in the echo area.
Emacs uses strict completion (see Section 6.3 [Completion], page 59) whenever it asks you
to type a month name, so you don’t have to worry about the spelling of Hebrew, Islamic,
or French names.
One common question concerning the Hebrew calendar is the computation of the anniversary of a date of death, called a “yahrzeit.” The Emacs calendar includes a facility
for such calculations. If you are in the calendar, the command M-x list-yahrzeit-dates
asks you for a range of years and then displays a list of the yahrzeit dates for those years
for the date given by point. If you are not in the calendar, this command first asks you for
the date of death and the range of years, and then displays the list of yahrzeit dates.
27.8.1 Converting from the Mayan Calendar
Here are the commands to select dates based on the Mayan calendar:
gml
Move to a date specified by the long count calendar (calendar-goto-mayanlong-count-date).
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gmnt
Move to the next occurrence of a place in the tzolkin calendar (calendar-nexttzolkin-date).
gmpt
Move to the previous occurrence of a place in the tzolkin calendar (calendarprevious-tzolkin-date).
gmnh
Move to the next occurrence of a place in the haab calendar (calendar-nexthaab-date).
gmph
Move to the previous occurrence of a place in the haab calendar (calendarprevious-haab-date).
gmnc
Move to the next occurrence of a place in the calendar round (calendar-nextcalendar-round-date).
gmpc
Move to the previous occurrence of a place in the calendar round (calendarprevious-calendar-round-date).
To understand these commands, you need to understand the Mayan calendars. The long
count is a counting of days with these units:
1 kin = 1 day 1 uinal = 20 kin 1 tun = 18 uinal
1 katun = 20 tun 1 baktun = 20 katun
Thus, the long count date 12.16.11.16.6 means 12 baktun, 16 katun, 11 tun, 16 uinal, and 6
kin. The Emacs calendar can handle Mayan long count dates as early as 7.17.18.13.1, but
no earlier. When you use the g m l command, type the Mayan long count date with the
baktun, katun, tun, uinal, and kin separated by periods.
The Mayan tzolkin calendar is a cycle of 260 days formed by a pair of independent cycles
of 13 and 20 days. Since this cycle repeats endlessly, Emacs provides commands to move
backward and forward to the previous or next point in the cycle. Type g m p t to go to the
previous tzolkin date; Emacs asks you for a tzolkin date and moves point to the previous
occurrence of that date. Similarly, type g m n t to go to the next occurrence of a tzolkin
date.
The Mayan haab calendar is a cycle of 365 days arranged as 18 months of 20 days each,
followed a 5-day monthless period. Like the tzolkin cycle, this cycle repeats endlessly, and
there are commands to move backward and forward to the previous or next point in the
cycle. Type g m p h to go to the previous haab date; Emacs asks you for a haab date and
moves point to the previous occurrence of that date. Similarly, type g m n h to go to the
next occurrence of a haab date.
The Maya also used the combination of the tzolkin date and the haab date. This combination is a cycle of about 52 years called a calendar round. If you type g m p c, Emacs asks
you for both a haab and a tzolkin date and then moves point to the previous occurrence
of that combination. Use g m n c to move point to the next occurrence of a combination.
These commands signal an error if the haab/tzolkin date combination you have typed is
impossible.
Emacs uses strict completion (see Section 6.3 [Completion], page 59) whenever it asks
you to type a Mayan name, so you don’t have to worry about spelling.
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27.8.2 The Diary
The Emacs diary keeps track of appointments or other events on a daily basis, in conjunction with the calendar. To use the diary feature, you must first create a diary file
containing a list of events and their dates. Then Emacs can automatically pick out and
display the events for today, for the immediate future, or for any specified date.
By default, Emacs uses ‘~/diary’ as the diary file. This is the same file that the calendar
utility uses. A sample ‘~/diary’ file is:
12/22/1988 Twentieth wedding anniversary!!
&1/1. Happy New Year!
10/22 Ruth’s birthday.
* 21, *: Payday
Tuesday--weekly meeting with grad students at 10am
Supowit, Shen, Bitner, and Kapoor to attend.
1/13/89 Friday the thirteenth!!
&thu 4pm squash game with Lloyd.
mar 16 Dad’s birthday
April 15, 1989 Income tax due.
&* 15 time cards due.
This example uses extra spaces to align the event descriptions of most of the entries. Such
formatting is purely a matter of taste.
Although you probably will start by creating a diary manually, Emacs provides a number
of commands to let you view, add, and change diary entries. You can also share diary entries
with other users (see Section 27.8.8.9 [Included Diary Files], page 275).
27.8.3 Commands Displaying Diary Entries
Once you have created a ‘~/diary’ file, you can use the calendar to view it. You can
also view today’s events outside of Calendar mode.
d
Display all diary entries for the selected date (view-diary-entries).
Button2 Diary
Display all diary entries for the date you click on.
s
Display the entire diary file (show-all-diary-entries).
m
Mark all visible dates that have diary entries (mark-diary-entries).
u
Unmark the calendar window (calendar-unmark).
M-x print-diary-entries
Print hard copy of the diary display as it appears.
M-x diary Display all diary entries for today’s date.
M-x diary-mail-entries
Mail yourself email reminders about upcoming diary entries.
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Displaying the diary entries with d shows in a separate window the diary entries for the
selected date in the calendar. The mode line of the new window shows the date of the diary
entries and any holidays that fall on that date. If you specify a numeric argument with d, it
shows all the diary entries for that many successive days. Thus, 2 d displays all the entries
for the selected date and for the following day.
Another way to display the diary entries for a date is to click Button2 on the date, and
then choose Diary from the menu that appears.
To get a broader view of which days are mentioned in the diary, use the m command.
This displays the dates that have diary entries in a different face (or places a ‘+’ after these
dates, if display with multiple faces is not available). The command applies both to the
currently visible months and to other months that subsequently become visible by scrolling.
To turn marking off and erase the current marks, type u, which also turns off holiday marks
(see Section 27.5.1 [Holidays], page 254).
To see the full diary file, rather than just some of the entries, use the s command.
Display of selected diary entries uses the selective display feature to hide entries that
don’t apply.
The diary buffer as you see it is an illusion, so simply printing the buffer does not
print what you see on your screen. There is a special command to print hard copy of the
diary buffer as it appears; this command is M-x print-diary-entries. It sends the data
directly to the printer. You can customize it like lpr-region (see Section 28.4 [Hardcopy],
page 285).
The command M-x diary displays the diary entries for the current date, independently
of the calendar display, and optionally for the next few days as well; the variable numberof-diary-entries specifies how many days to include (see Chapter 29 [Customization],
page 291).
If you put (diary) in your init file, this automatically displays a window with the day’s
diary entries, when you enter Emacs. See Section 29.6 [Init File], page 311. The mode line
of the displayed window shows the date and any holidays that fall on that date.
Many users like to receive notice of events in their diary as email. To send such mail
to yourself, use the command M-x diary-mail-entries. A prefix argument specifies how
many days (starting with today) to check; otherwise, the variable diary-mail-days says
how many days.
27.8.4 The Diary File
Your diary file is a file that records events associated with particular dates. The name
of the diary file is specified by the variable diary-file; ‘~/diary’ is the default. The
calendar utility program supports a subset of the format allowed by the Emacs diary
facilities, so you can use that utility to view the diary file, with reasonable results aside
from the entries it cannot understand.
Each entry in the diary file describes one event and consists of one or more lines. An
entry always begins with a date specification at the left margin. The rest of the entry is
simply text to describe the event. If the entry has more than one line, then the lines after
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the first must begin with whitespace to indicate they continue a previous entry. Lines that
do not begin with valid dates and do not continue a preceding entry are ignored.
You can inhibit the marking of certain diary entries in the calendar window; to do this,
insert an ampersand (‘&’) at the beginning of the entry, before the date. This has no effect
on display of the entry in the diary window; it affects only marks on dates in the calendar
window. Nonmarking entries are especially useful for generic entries that would otherwise
mark many different dates.
If the first line of a diary entry consists only of the date or day name with no following
blanks or punctuation, then the diary window display doesn’t include that line; only the
continuation lines appear. For example, this entry:
02/11/1989
Bill B. visits Princeton today
2pm Cognitive Studies Committee meeting
2:30-5:30 Liz at Lawrenceville
4:00pm Dentist appt
7:30pm Dinner at George’s
8:00-10:00pm concert
appears in the diary window without the date line at the beginning. This style of entry
looks neater when you display just a single day’s entries, but can cause confusion if you ask
for more than one day’s entries.
You can edit the diary entries as they appear in the window, but it is important to
remember that the buffer displayed contains the entire diary file, with portions of it concealed from view. This means, for instance, that the C-f (forward-char) command can
put point at what appears to be the end of the line, but what is in reality the middle of
some concealed line.
Be careful when editing the diary entries! Inserting additional lines or adding/deleting
characters in the middle of a visible line cannot cause problems, but editing at the end of
a line may not do what you expect. Deleting a line may delete other invisible entries that
follow it. Before editing the diary, it is best to display the entire file with s (show-alldiary-entries).
27.8.5 Date Formats
Here are some sample diary entries, illustrating different ways of formatting a date. The
examples all show dates in American order (month, day, year), but Calendar mode supports
European order (day, month, year) as an option.
4/20/93 Switch-over to new tabulation system
apr. 25 Start tabulating annual results
4/30 Results for April are due
*/25 Monthly cycle finishes
Friday Don’t leave without backing up files
The first entry appears only once, on April 20, 1993. The second and third appear every
year on the specified dates, and the fourth uses a wildcard (asterisk) for the month, so it
appears on the 25th of every month. The final entry appears every week on Friday.
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You can use just numbers to express a date, as in ‘month/day’ or ‘month/day/year’.
This must be followed by a nondigit. In the date itself, month and day are numbers of one
or two digits. The optional year is also a number, and may be abbreviated to the last two
digits; that is, you can use ‘11/12/1989’ or ‘11/12/89’.
Dates can also have the form ‘monthname day’ or ‘monthname day, year’, where the
month’s name can be spelled in full or abbreviated to three characters (with or without a
period). Case is not significant.
A date may be generic; that is, partially unspecified. Then the entry applies to all dates
that match the specification. If the date does not contain a year, it is generic and applies
to any year. Alternatively, month, day, or year can be a ‘*’; this matches any month, day,
or year, respectively. Thus, a diary entry ‘3/*/*’ matches any day in March of any year;
so does ‘march *’.
If you prefer the European style of writing dates—in which the day comes before the
month—type M-x european-calendar while in the calendar, or set the variable europeancalendar-style to t before using any calendar or diary command. This mode interprets
all dates in the diary in the European manner, and also uses European style for displaying
diary dates. (Note that there is no comma after the monthname in the European style.)
To go back to the (default) American style of writing dates, type M-x american-calendar.
You can use the name of a day of the week as a generic date which applies to any date
falling on that day of the week. You can abbreviate the day of the week to three letters
(with or without a period) or spell it in full; case is not significant.
27.8.6 Commands to Add to the Diary
While in the calendar, there are several commands to create diary entries:
id
Add a diary entry for the selected date (insert-diary-entry).
iw
Add a diary entry for the selected day of the week (insert-weekly-diaryentry).
im
Add a diary entry for the selected day of the month (insert-monthly-diaryentry).
iy
Add a diary entry for the selected day of the year (insert-yearly-diaryentry).
You can make a diary entry for a specific date by selecting that date in the calendar
window and typing the i d command. This command displays the end of your diary file in
another window and inserts the date; you can then type the rest of the diary entry.
If you want to make a diary entry that applies to a specific day of the week, select that
day of the week (any occurrence will do) and type i w. This inserts the day-of-week as a
generic date; you can then type the rest of the diary entry. You can make a monthly diary
entry in the same fashion. Select the day of the month, use the i m command, and type
rest of the entry. Similarly, you can insert a yearly diary entry with the i y command.
All of the above commands make marking diary entries by default. To make a nonmarking diary entry, give a numeric argument to the command. For example, C-u i w makes a
nonmarking weekly diary entry.
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When you modify the diary file, be sure to save the file before exiting Emacs.
27.8.7 Special Diary Entries
In addition to entries based on calendar dates, the diary file can contain sexp entries for
regular events such as anniversaries. These entries are based on Lisp expressions (sexps)
that Emacs evaluates as it scans the diary file. Instead of a date, a sexp entry contains
‘%%’ followed by a Lisp expression which must begin and end with parentheses. The Lisp
expression determines which dates the entry applies to.
Calendar mode provides commands to insert certain commonly used sexp entries:
ia
Add an anniversary diary entry for the selected date (insert-anniversarydiary-entry).
ib
Add a block diary entry for the current region (insert-block-diary-entry).
ic
Add a cyclic diary entry starting at the date (insert-cyclic-diary-entry).
If you want to make a diary entry that applies to the anniversary of a specific date, move
point to that date and use the i a command. This displays the end of your diary file in
another window and inserts the anniversary description; you can then type the rest of the
diary entry. The entry looks like this:
The effect of i a is to add a diary-anniversary sexp to your diary file. You can also
add one manually, for instance:
%%(diary-anniversary 10 31 1948) Arthur’s birthday
This entry applies to October 31 in any year after 1948; ‘10 31 1948’ specifies the date.
(If you are using the European calendar style, the month and day are interchanged.) The
reason this expression requires a beginning year is that advanced diary functions can use it
to calculate the number of elapsed years.
A block diary entry applies to a specified range of consecutive dates. Here is a block
diary entry that applies to all dates from June 24, 1990 through July 10, 1990:
%%(diary-block 6 24 1990 7 10 1990) Vacation
The ‘6 24 1990’ indicates the starting date and the ‘7 10 1990’ indicates the stopping date.
(Again, if you are using the European calendar style, the month and day are interchanged.)
To insert a block entry, place point and the mark on the two dates that begin and end the
range, and type i b. This command displays the end of your diary file in another window
and inserts the block description; you can then type the diary entry.
Cyclic diary entries repeat after a fixed interval of days. To create one, select the
starting date and use the i c command. The command prompts for the length of interval,
then inserts the entry, which looks like this:
%%(diary-cyclic 50 3 1 1990) Renew medication
This entry applies to March 1, 1990 and every 50th day following; ‘3 1 1990’ specifies
the starting date. (If you are using the European calendar style, the month and day are
interchanged.)
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All three of these commands make marking diary entries. To insert a nonmarking entry,
give a numeric argument to the command. For example, C-u i a makes a nonmarking
anniversary diary entry.
Marking sexp diary entries in the calendar is extremely time-consuming, since every date
visible in the calendar window must be individually checked. So it’s a good idea to make
sexp diary entries nonmarking (with ‘&’) when possible.
Another sophisticated kind of sexp entry, a floating diary entry, specifies a regularly
occurring event by offsets specified in days, weeks, and months. It is comparable to a
crontab entry interpreted by the cron utility. Here is a nonmarking, floating diary entry
that applies to the last Thursday in November:
&%%(diary-float 11 4 -1) American Thanksgiving
The 11 specifies November (the eleventh month), the 4 specifies Thursday (the fourth day
of the week, where Sunday is numbered zero), and the −1 specifies “last” (1 would mean
“first”, 2 would mean “second”, −2 would mean “second-to-last”, and so on). The month
can be a single month or a list of months. Thus you could change the 11 above to ‘’(1 2
3)’ and have the entry apply to the last Thursday of January, February, and March. If the
month is t, the entry applies to all months of the year.
The sexp feature of the diary allows you to specify diary entries based on any Emacs
Lisp expression. You can use the library of built-in functions or you can write your own
functions. The built-in functions include the ones shown in this section, plus a few others
(see Section 27.8.8.10 [Sexp Diary Entries], page 275).
The generality of sexps lets you specify any diary entry that you can describe algorithmically. Suppose you get paid on the 21st of the month if it is a weekday, and to the Friday
before if the 21st is on a weekend. The diary entry
&%%(let ((dayname (calendar-day-of-week date))
(day (car (cdr date))))
(or (and (= day 21) (memq dayname ’(1 2 3 4 5)))
(and (memq day ’(19 20)) (= dayname 5)))
) Pay check deposited
to just those dates. This example illustrates how the sexp can depend on the variable date;
this variable is a list (month day year) that gives the Gregorian date for which the diary
entries are being found. If the value of the sexp is t, the entry applies to that date. If the
sexp evaluates to nil, the entry does not apply to that date.
27.8.8 Customizing the Calendar and Diary
There are many customizations that you can use to make the calendar and diary suit
your personal tastes.
27.8.8.1 Customizing the Calendar
If you set the variable view-diary-entries-initially to t, calling up the calendar
automatically displays the diary entries for the current date as well. The diary dates appear
only if the current date is visible. If you add both of the following lines to your init file:
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(setq view-diary-entries-initially t)
(calendar)
this displays both the calendar and diary windows whenever you start Emacs. See Section 29.6 [Init File], page 311.
Similarly, if you set the variable view-calendar-holidays-initially to t, entering
the calendar automatically displays a list of holidays for the current three-month period.
The holiday list appears in a separate window.
You can set the variable mark-diary-entries-in-calendar to t in order to mark any
dates with diary entries. This takes effect whenever the calendar window contents are
recomputed. There are two ways of marking these dates: by changing the face (see Section 29.8 [Faces], page 315), if the display supports that, or by placing a plus sign (‘+’)
beside the date otherwise.
Similarly, setting the variable mark-holidays-in-calendar to t marks holiday dates,
either with a change of face or with an asterisk (‘*’).
The variable calendar-holiday-marker specifies how to mark a date as being a holiday.
Its value may be a character to insert next to the date, or a face name to use for displaying
the date. Likewise, the variable diary-entry-marker specifies how to mark a date that has
diary entries. The calendar creates faces named holiday-face and diary-face for these
purposes; those symbols are the default values of these variables, when Emacs supports
multiple faces on your terminal.
The variable calendar-load-hook is a normal hook run when the calendar package is
first loaded (before actually starting to display the calendar).
Starting the calendar runs the normal hook initial-calendar-window-hook. Recomputation of the calendar display does not run this hook. But if you leave the calendar with
the q command and reenter it, the hook runs again.
The variable today-visible-calendar-hook is a normal hook run after the calendar
buffer has been prepared with the calendar when the current date is visible in the window.
One use of this hook is to replace today’s date with asterisks; to do that, use the hook
function calendar-star-date.
(add-hook ’today-visible-calendar-hook ’calendar-star-date)
Another standard hook function marks the current date, either by changing its face or by
adding an asterisk. Here’s how to use it:
(add-hook ’today-visible-calendar-hook ’calendar-mark-today)
The variable calendar-today-marker specifies how to mark today’s date. Its value should
be a character to insert next to the date or a face name to use for displaying the date. A
face named calendar-today-face is provided for this purpose; that symbol is the default
for this variable when Emacs supports multiple faces on your terminal.
A similar normal hook, today-invisible-calendar-hook is run if the current date is not
visible in the window.
27.8.8.2 Customizing the Holidays
Emacs knows about holidays defined by entries on one of several lists. You can customize these lists of holidays to your own needs, adding or deleting holidays. The lists
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of holidays that Emacs uses are for general holidays (general-holidays), local holidays
(local-holidays), Christian holidays (christian-holidays), Hebrew (Jewish) holidays
(hebrew-holidays), Islamic (Moslem) holidays (islamic-holidays), and other holidays
(other-holidays).
The general holidays are, by default, holidays common throughout the United States.
To eliminate these holidays, set general-holidays to nil.
There are no default local holidays (but sites may supply some). You can set the variable
local-holidays to any list of holidays, as described below.
By default, Emacs does not include all the holidays of the religions that it knows, only
those commonly found in secular calendars. For a more extensive collection of religious
holidays, you can set any (or all) of the variables all-christian-calendar-holidays,
all-hebrew-calendar-holidays, or all-islamic-calendar-holidays to t. If you want
to eliminate the religious holidays, set any or all of the corresponding variables christianholidays, hebrew-holidays, and islamic-holidays to nil.
You can set the variable other-holidays to any list of holidays. This list, normally
empty, is intended for individual use.
Each of the lists (general-holidays, local-holidays, christian-holidays, hebrewholidays, islamic-holidays, and other-holidays) is a list of holiday forms, each holiday
form describing a holiday (or sometimes a list of holidays).
Here is a table of the possible kinds of holiday form. Day numbers and month numbers
count starting from 1, but “dayname” numbers count Sunday as 0. The element string is
always the name of the holiday, as a string.
(holiday-fixed month day string)
A fixed date on the Gregorian calendar. month and day are numbers, string is
the name of the holiday.
(holiday-float month dayname k string)
The kth dayname in month on the Gregorian calendar (dayname=0 for Sunday,
and so on); negative k means count back from the end of the month. string is
the name of the holiday.
(holiday-hebrew month day string)
A fixed date on the Hebrew calendar. month and day are numbers, string is
the name of the holiday.
(holiday-islamic month day string)
A fixed date on the Islamic calendar. month and day are numbers, string is
the name of the holiday.
(holiday-julian month day string)
A fixed date on the Julian calendar. month and day are numbers, string is the
name of the holiday.
(holiday-sexp sexp string)
A date calculated by the Lisp expression sexp. The expression should use the
variable year to compute and return the date of a holiday, or nil if the holiday
doesn’t happen this year. The value of sexp must represent the date as a list
of the form (month day year). string is the name of the holiday.
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(if condition holiday-form &optional holiday-form)
A holiday that happens only if condition is true.
(function [args])
A list of dates calculated by the function function, called with arguments args.
For example, suppose you want to add Bastille Day, celebrated in France on July 14.
You can do this by adding the following line to your init file:
(setq other-holidays ’((holiday-fixed 7 14 "Bastille Day")))
See Section 29.6 [Init File], page 311.
The holiday form (holiday-fixed 7 14 "Bastille Day") specifies the fourteenth day of
the seventh month (July).
Many holidays occur on a specific day of the week, at a specific time of month. Here is
a holiday form describing Hurricane Supplication Day, celebrated in the Virgin Islands on
the fourth Monday in August:
(holiday-float 8 1 4 "Hurricane Supplication Day")
Here the 8 specifies August, the 1 specifies Monday (Sunday is 0, Tuesday is 2, and so on),
and the 4 specifies the fourth occurrence in the month (1 specifies the first occurrence, 2 the
second occurrence, −1 the last occurrence, −2 the second-to-last occurrence, and so on).
You can specify holidays that occur on fixed days of the Hebrew, Islamic, and Julian
calendars too. For example,
(setq other-holidays
’((holiday-hebrew 10 2 "Last day of Hanukkah")
(holiday-islamic 3 12 "Mohammed’s Birthday")
(holiday-julian 4 2 "Jefferson’s Birthday")))
adds the last day of Hanukkah (since the Hebrew months are numbered with 1 starting
from Nisan), the Islamic feast celebrating Mohammed’s birthday (since the Islamic months
are numbered from 1 starting with Muharram), and Thomas Jefferson’s birthday, which is
2 April 1743 on the Julian calendar.
To include a holiday conditionally, use either Emacs Lisp’s if or the holiday-sexp
form. For example, American presidential elections occur on the first Tuesday after the
first Monday in November of years divisible by 4:
(holiday-sexp (if (= 0 (% year 4))
(calendar-gregorian-from-absolute
(1+ (calendar-dayname-on-or-before
1 (+ 6 (calendar-absolute-from-gregorian
(list 11 1 year))))))
"US Presidential Election"))
or
(if (= 0 (% displayed-year 4))
(fixed 11
(extract-calendar-day
(calendar-gregorian-from-absolute
(1+ (calendar-dayname-on-or-before
1 (+ 6 (calendar-absolute-from-gregorian
(list 11 1 displayed-year)))))))
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"US Presidential Election"))
Some holidays just don’t fit into any of these forms because special calculations are
involved in their determination. In such cases you must write a Lisp function to do the
calculation. To include eclipses, for example, add (eclipses) to other-holidays and
write an Emacs Lisp function eclipses that returns a (possibly empty) list of the relevant
Gregorian dates among the range visible in the calendar window, with descriptive strings,
like this:
(((6 27 1991) "Lunar Eclipse") ((7 11 1991) "Solar Eclipse") ... )
27.8.8.3 Date Display Format
You can customize the manner of displaying dates in the diary, in mode lines, and in
messages by setting calendar-date-display-form. This variable holds a list of expressions
that can involve the variables month, day, and year, which are all numbers in string form,
and monthname and dayname, which are both alphabetic strings. In the American style, the
default value of this list is as follows:
((if dayname (concat dayname ", ")) monthname " " day ", " year)
while in the European style this value is the default:
((if dayname (concat dayname ", ")) day " " monthname " " year)
+The ISO standard date representation is this:
(year "-" month "-" day)
This specifies a typical American format:
(month "/" day "/" (substring year -2))
27.8.8.4 Time Display Format
The calendar and diary by default display times of day in the conventional American
style with the hours from 1 through 12, minutes, and either ‘am’ or ‘pm’. If you prefer the
European style, also known in the US as military, in which the hours go from 00 to 23, you
can alter the variable calendar-time-display-form. This variable is a list of expressions
that can involve the variables 12-hours, 24-hours, and minutes, which are all numbers
in string form, and am-pm and time-zone, which are both alphabetic strings. The default
value of calendar-time-display-form is as follows:
(12-hours ":" minutes am-pm
(if time-zone " (") time-zone (if time-zone ")"))
Here is a value that provides European style times:
(24-hours ":" minutes
(if time-zone " (") time-zone (if time-zone ")"))
gives military-style times like ‘21:07 (UT)’ if time zone names are defined, and times like
‘21:07’ if they are not.
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27.8.8.5 Daylight Savings Time
Emacs understands the difference between standard time and daylight savings time—the
times given for sunrise, sunset, solstices, equinoxes, and the phases of the moon take that
into account. The rules for daylight savings time vary from place to place and have also
varied historically from year to year. To do the job properly, Emacs needs to know which
rules to use.
Some operating systems keep track of the rules that apply to the place where you are;
on these systems, Emacs gets the information it needs from the system automatically. If
some or all of this information is missing, Emacs fills in the gaps with the rules currently
used in Cambridge, Massachusetts. If the resulting rules are not what you want, you can
tell Emacs the rules to use by setting certain variables.
If the default choice of rules is not appropriate for your location, you can tell Emacs the
rules to use by setting the variables calendar-daylight-savings-starts and calendardaylight-savings-ends. Their values should be Lisp expressions that refer to the variable
year, and evaluate to the Gregorian date on which daylight savings time starts or (respectively) ends, in the form of a list (month day year). The values should be nil if your area
does not use daylight savings time.
Emacs uses these expressions to determine the starting date of daylight savings time for
the holiday list and for correcting times of day in the solar and lunar calculations.
The values for Cambridge, Massachusetts are as follows:
(calendar-nth-named-day 1 0 4 year)
(calendar-nth-named-day -1 0 10 year)
That is, the first 0th day (Sunday) of the fourth month (April) in the year specified by year,
and the last Sunday of the tenth month (October) of that year. If daylight savings time
were changed to start on October 1, you would set calendar-daylight-savings-starts
to this:
(list 10 1 year)
For a more complex example, suppose daylight savings time begins on the first of Nisan
on the Hebrew calendar. You should set calendar-daylight-savings-starts to this
value:
(calendar-gregorian-from-absolute
(calendar-absolute-from-hebrew
(list 1 1 (+ year 3760))))
because Nisan is the first month in the Hebrew calendar and the Hebrew year differs from
the Gregorian year by 3760 at Nisan.
If there is no daylight savings time at your location, or if you want all times in standard
time, set calendar-daylight-savings-starts and calendar-daylight-savings-ends
to nil.
The variable calendar-daylight-time-offset specifies the difference between daylight savings time and standard time, measured in minutes. The value for Cambridge,
Massachusetts is 60.
The two variables calendar-daylight-savings-starts-time and calendar-daylightsavings-ends-time specify the number of minutes after midnight local time when the
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transition to and from daylight savings time should occur. For Cambridge, Massachusetts
both variables’ values are 120.
27.8.8.6 Customizing the Diary
Ordinarily, the mode line of the diary buffer window indicates any holidays that fall on
the date of the diary entries. The process of checking for holidays can take several seconds,
so including holiday information delays the display of the diary buffer noticeably. If you’d
prefer to have a faster display of the diary buffer but without the holiday information, set
the variable holidays-in-diary-buffer to nil.
The variable number-of-diary-entries controls the number of days of diary entries
to be displayed at one time. It affects the initial display when view-diary-entriesinitially is t, as well as the command M-x diary. For example, the default value is
1, which says to display only the current day’s diary entries. If the value is 2, both the
current day’s and the next day’s entries are displayed. The value can also be a vector of
seven elements: for example, if the value is [0 2 2 2 2 4 1] then no diary entries appear
on Sunday, the current date’s and the next day’s diary entries appear Monday through
Thursday, Friday through Monday’s entries appear on Friday, while on Saturday only that
day’s entries appear.
The variable print-diary-entries-hook is a normal hook run after preparation of
a temporary buffer containing just the diary entries currently visible in the diary buffer.
(The other, irrelevant diary entries are really absent from the temporary buffer; in the diary
buffer, they are merely hidden.) The default value of this hook does the printing with the
command lpr-buffer. If you want to use a different command to do the printing, just
change the value of this hook. Other uses might include, for example, rearranging the lines
into order by day and time.
You can customize the form of dates in your diary file, if neither the standard American
nor European styles suits your needs, by setting the variable diary-date-forms. This
variable is a list of patterns for recognizing a date. Each date pattern is a list whose
elements may be regular expressions (see Section 13.5 [Regexps], page 101) or the symbols
month, day, year, monthname, and dayname. All these elements serve as patterns that
match certain kinds of text in the diary file. In order for the date pattern, as a whole, to
match, all of its elements must match consecutively.
A regular expression in a date pattern matches in its usual fashion, using the standard
syntax table altered so that ‘*’ is a word constituent.
The symbols month, day, year, monthname, and dayname match the month number,
day number, year number, month name, and day name of the date being considered. The
symbols that match numbers allow leading zeros; those that match names allow three-letter
abbreviations and capitalization. All the symbols can match ‘*’; since ‘*’ in a diary entry
means “any day”, “any month”, and so on, it should match regardless of the date being
considered.
The default value of diary-date-forms in the American style is this:
((month "/" day "[^/0-9]")
(month "/" day "/" year "[^0-9]")
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(monthname " *" day "[^,0-9]")
(monthname " *" day ", *" year "[^0-9]")
(dayname "\\W"))
Emacs matches of the diary entries with the date forms is done with the standard syntax
table from Fundamental mode (see section “Syntax Tables” in XEmacs Lisp Reference
Manual), but with the ‘*’ changed so that it is a word constituent.
The date patterns in the list must be mutually exclusive and must not match any portion
of the diary entry itself, just the date and one character of whitespace. If, to be mutually
exclusive, the pattern must match a portion of the diary entry text—beyond the whitespace
that ends the date—then the first element of the date pattern must be backup. This causes
the date recognizer to back up to the beginning of the current word of the diary entry, after
finishing the match. Even if you use backup, the date pattern must absolutely not match
more than a portion of the first word of the diary entry. The default value of diary-dateforms in the European style is this list:
((day "/" month "[^/0-9]")
(day "/" month "/" year "[^0-9]")
(backup day " *" monthname "\\W+\\<[^*0-9]")
(day " *" monthname " *" year "[^0-9]")
(dayname "\\W"))
Notice the use of backup in the third pattern, because it needs to match part of a word
beyond the date itself to distinguish it from the fourth pattern.
27.8.8.7 Hebrew- and Islamic-Date Diary Entries
Your diary file can have entries based on Hebrew or Islamic dates, as well as entries based
on the world-standard Gregorian calendar. However, because recognition of such entries is
time-consuming and most people don’t use them, you must explicitly enable their use. If
you want the diary to recognize Hebrew-date diary entries, for example, you must do this:
(add-hook ’nongregorian-diary-listing-hook ’list-hebrew-diary-entries)
(add-hook ’nongregorian-diary-marking-hook ’mark-hebrew-diary-entries)
If you want Islamic-date entries, do this:
(add-hook ’nongregorian-diary-listing-hook ’list-islamic-diary-entries)
(add-hook ’nongregorian-diary-marking-hook ’mark-islamic-diary-entries)
Hebrew- and Islamic-date diary entries have the same formats as Gregorian-date diary
entries, except that ‘H’ precedes a Hebrew date and ‘I’ precedes an Islamic date. Moreover,
because the Hebrew and Islamic month names are not uniquely specified by the first three
letters, you may not abbreviate them. For example, a diary entry for the Hebrew date
Heshvan 25 could look like this:
HHeshvan 25 Happy Hebrew birthday!
and would appear in the diary for any date that corresponds to Heshvan 25 on the Hebrew
calendar. And here is Islamic-date diary entry that matches Dhu al-Qada 25:
IDhu al-Qada 25 Happy Islamic birthday!
and would appear in the diary for any date that corresponds to Dhu al-Qada 25 on the
Islamic calendar.
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As with Gregorian-date diary entries, Hebrew- and Islamic-date entries are nonmarking
if they are preceded with an ampersand (‘&’).
Here is a table of commands used in the calendar to create diary entries that match the
selected date and other dates that are similar in the Hebrew or Islamic calendar:
ihd
Add a diary entry for the Hebrew date corresponding to the selected date
(insert-hebrew-diary-entry).
ihm
Add a diary entry for the day of the Hebrew month corresponding to the selected
date (insert-monthly-hebrew-diary-entry). This diary entry matches any
date that has the same Hebrew day-within-month as the selected date.
ihy
Add a diary entry for the day of the Hebrew year corresponding to the selected
date (insert-yearly-hebrew-diary-entry). This diary entry matches any
date which has the same Hebrew month and day-within-month as the selected
date.
iid
Add a diary entry for the Islamic date corresponding to the selected date
(insert-islamic-diary-entry).
iim
Add a diary entry for the day of the Islamic month corresponding to the selected
date (insert-monthly-islamic-diary-entry).
iiy
Add a diary entry for the day of the Islamic year corresponding to the selected
date (insert-yearly-islamic-diary-entry).
These commands work much like the corresponding commands for ordinary diary entries:
they apply to the date that point is on in the calendar window, and what they do is insert
just the date portion of a diary entry at the end of your diary file. You must then insert
the rest of the diary entry.
27.8.8.8 Fancy Diary Display
Diary display works by preparing the diary buffer and then running the hook diarydisplay-hook. The default value of this hook (simple-diary-display) hides the irrelevant
diary entries and then displays the buffer. However, if you specify the hook as follows,
(add-hook ’diary-display-hook ’fancy-diary-display)
this enables fancy diary display. It displays diary entries and holidays by copying them
into a special buffer that exists only for the sake of display. Copying to a separate buffer
provides an opportunity to change the displayed text to make it prettier—for example, to
sort the entries by the dates they apply to.
As with simple diary display, you can print a hard copy of the buffer with print-diaryentries. To print a hard copy of a day-by-day diary for a week by positioning point
on Sunday of that week, type 7 d and then do M-x print-diary-entries. As usual, the
inclusion of the holidays slows down the display slightly; you can speed things up by setting
the variable holidays-in-diary-buffer to nil.
Ordinarily, the fancy diary buffer does not show days for which there are no diary entries,
even if that day is a holiday. If you want such days to be shown in the fancy diary buffer,
set the variable diary-list-include-blanks to t.
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If you use the fancy diary display, you can use the normal hook list-diary-entrieshook to sort each day’s diary entries by their time of day. Add this line to your init file:
(add-hook ’list-diary-entries-hook ’sort-diary-entries t)
See Section 29.6 [Init File], page 311.
For each day, this sorts diary entries that begin with a recognizable time of day according
to their times. Diary entries without times come first within each day.
27.8.8.9 Included Diary Files
Fancy diary display also has the ability to process included diary files. This permits a
group of people to share a diary file for events that apply to all of them. Lines in the diary
file of this form:
#include "filename"
includes the diary entries from the file filename in the fancy diary buffer. The include
mechanism is recursive, so that included files can include other files, and so on; you must
be careful not to have a cycle of inclusions, of course. Here is how to enable the include
facility:
(add-hook ’list-diary-entries-hook ’include-other-diary-files)
(add-hook ’mark-diary-entries-hook ’mark-included-diary-files)
The include mechanism works only with the fancy diary display, because ordinary diary
display shows the entries directly from your diary file.
27.8.8.10 Sexp Entries and the Fancy Diary Display
Sexp diary entries allow you to do more than just have complicated conditions under
which a diary entry applies. If you use the fancy diary display, sexp entries can generate
the text of the entry depending on the date itself. For example, an anniversary diary entry
can insert the number of years since the anniversary date into the text of the diary entry.
Thus the ‘%d’ in this dairy entry:
%%(diary-anniversary 10 31 1948) Arthur’s birthday (%d years old)
gets replaced by the age, so on October 31, 1990 the entry appears in the fancy diary buffer
like this:
Arthur’s birthday (42 years old)
If the diary file instead contains this entry:
%%(diary-anniversary 10 31 1948) Arthur’s %d%s birthday
the entry in the fancy diary buffer for October 31, 1990 appears like this:
Arthur’s 42nd birthday
Similarly, cyclic diary entries can interpolate the number of repetitions that have occurred:
%%(diary-cyclic 50 1 1 1990) Renew medication (%d%s time)
looks like this:
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Renew medication (5th time)
in the fancy diary display on September 8, 1990.
The generality of sexp diary entries lets you specify any diary entry that you can describe
algorithmically. A sexp diary entry contains an expression that computes whether the entry
applies to any given date. If its value is non-nil, the entry applies to that date; otherwise,
it does not. The expression can use the variable date to find the date being considered; its
value is a list (month day year) that refers to the Gregorian calendar.
Suppose you get paid on the 21st of the month if it is a weekday, and on the Friday
before if the 21st is on a weekend. Here is how to write a sexp diary entry that matches
those dates:
&%%(let ((dayname (calendar-day-of-week date))
(day (car (cdr date))))
(or (and (= day 21) (memq dayname ’(1 2 3 4 5)))
(and (memq day ’(19 20)) (= dayname 5)))
) Pay check deposited
applies to just those dates. This example illustrates how the sexp can depend on the variable
date; this variable is a list (month day year) that gives the Gregorian date for which the
diary entries are being found. If the value of the expression is t, the entry applies to that
date. If the expression evaluates to nil, the entry does not apply to that date.
The following sexp diary entries take advantage of the ability (in the fancy diary display)
to concoct diary entries whose text varies based on the date:
%%(diary-sunrise-sunset)
Make a diary entry for the local times of today’s sunrise and sunset.
%%(diary-phases-of-moon)
Make a diary entry for the phases (quarters) of the moon.
%%(diary-day-of-year)
Make a diary entry with today’s day number in the current year and the number
of days remaining in the current year.
%%(diary-iso-date)
Make a diary entry with today’s equivalent ISO commercial date.
%%(diary-julian-date)
Make a diary entry with today’s equivalent date on the Julian calendar.
%%(diary-astro-day-number)
Make a diary entry with today’s equivalent astronomical (Julian) day number.
%%(diary-hebrew-date)
Make a diary entry with today’s equivalent date on the Hebrew calendar.
%%(diary-islamic-date)
Make a diary entry with today’s equivalent date on the Islamic calendar.
%%(diary-french-date)
Make a diary entry with today’s equivalent date on the French Revolutionary
calendar.
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%%(diary-mayan-date)
Make a diary entry with today’s equivalent date on the Mayan calendar.
Thus including the diary entry
&%%(diary-hebrew-date)
causes every day’s diary display to contain the equivalent date on the Hebrew calendar, if you are using the fancy diary display. (With simple diary display, the line
‘&%%(diary-hebrew-date)’ appears in the diary for any date, but does nothing particularly
useful.)
These functions can be used to construct sexp diary entries based on the Hebrew calendar
in certain standard ways:
%%(diary-rosh-hodesh)
Make a diary entry that tells the occurrence and ritual announcement of each
new Hebrew month.
%%(diary-parasha)
Make a Saturday diary entry that tells the weekly synagogue scripture reading.
%%(diary-sabbath-candles)
Make a Friday diary entry that tells the local time of Sabbath candle lighting.
%%(diary-omer)
Make a diary entry that gives the omer count, when appropriate.
%%(diary-yahrzeit month day year) name
Make a diary entry marking the anniversary of a date of death. The date is the
Gregorian (civil) date of death. The diary entry appears on the proper Hebrew
calendar anniversary and on the day before. (In the European style, the order
of the parameters is changed to day, month, year.)
27.8.8.11 Customizing Appointment Reminders
You can specify exactly how Emacs reminds you of an appointment, and how far in
advance it begins doing so, by setting these variables:
appt-message-warning-time
The time in minutes before an appointment that the reminder begins. The
default is 10 minutes.
appt-audible
If this is t (the default), Emacs rings the terminal bell for appointment reminders.
appt-visible
If this is t (the default), Emacs displays the appointment message in echo area.
appt-display-mode-line
If this is t (the default), Emacs displays the number of minutes to the appointment on the mode line.
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appt-msg-window
If this is t (the default), Emacs displays the appointment message in another
window.
appt-display-duration
The number of seconds an appointment message is displayed. The default is 5
seconds.
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28 Miscellaneous Commands
This chapter contains several brief topics that do not fit anywhere else.
28.1 Sorting Text
XEmacs provides several commands for sorting text in a buffer. All operate on the
contents of the region (the text between point and the mark). They divide the text of the
region into many sort records, identify a sort key for each record, and then reorder the
records using the order determined by the sort keys. The records are ordered so that their
keys are in alphabetical order, or, for numerical sorting, in numerical order. In alphabetical
sorting, all upper-case letters ‘A’ through ‘Z’ come before lower-case ‘a’, in accordance with
the ASCII character sequence.
The sort commands differ in how they divide the text into sort records and in which part
of each record they use as the sort key. Most of the commands make each line a separate
sort record, but some commands use paragraphs or pages as sort records. Most of the sort
commands use each entire sort record as its own sort key, but some use only a portion of
the record as the sort key.
M-x sort-lines
Divide the region into lines and sort by comparing the entire text of a line. A
prefix argument means sort in descending order.
M-x sort-paragraphs
Divide the region into paragraphs and sort by comparing the entire text of a
paragraph (except for leading blank lines). A prefix argument means sort in
descending order.
M-x sort-pages
Divide the region into pages and sort by comparing the entire text of a page
(except for leading blank lines). A prefix argument means sort in descending
order.
M-x sort-fields
Divide the region into lines and sort by comparing the contents of one field
in each line. Fields are defined as separated by whitespace, so the first run of
consecutive non-whitespace characters in a line constitutes field 1, the second
such run constitutes field 2, etc.
You specify which field to sort by with a numeric argument: 1 to sort by field
1, etc. A negative argument means sort in descending order. Thus, minus 2
means sort by field 2 in reverse-alphabetical order.
M-x sort-numeric-fields
Like M-x sort-fields, except the specified field is converted to a number for
each line and the numbers are compared. ‘10’ comes before ‘2’ when considered
as text, but after it when considered as a number.
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M-x sort-columns
Like M-x sort-fields, except that the text within each line used for comparison comes from a fixed range of columns. An explanation is given below.
For example, if the buffer contains:
On systems where clash detection (locking of files being edited) is
implemented, XEmacs also checks the first time you modify a buffer
whether the file has changed on disk since it was last visited or
saved. If it has, you are asked to confirm that you want to change
the buffer.
then if you apply M-x sort-lines to the entire buffer you get:
On systems where clash detection (locking of files being edited) is
implemented, XEmacs also checks the first time you modify a buffer
saved. If it has, you are asked to confirm that you want to change
the buffer.
whether the file has changed on disk since it was last visited or
where the upper case ‘O’ comes before all lower case letters. If you apply instead C-u 2 M-x
sort-fields you get:
saved. If it has, you are asked to confirm that you want to change
implemented, XEmacs also checks the first time you modify a buffer
the buffer.
On systems where clash detection (locking of files being edited) is
whether the file has changed on disk since it was last visited or
where the sort keys were ‘If’, ‘XEmacs’, ‘buffer’, ‘systems’, and ‘the’.
M-x sort-columns requires more explanation. You specify the columns by putting point
at one of the columns and the mark at the other column. Because this means you cannot
put point or the mark at the beginning of the first line to sort, this command uses an
unusual definition of ‘region’: all of the line point is in is considered part of the region, and
so is all of the line the mark is in.
For example, to sort a table by information found in columns 10 to 15, you could put
the mark on column 10 in the first line of the table, and point on column 15 in the last line
of the table, and then use this command. Or you could put the mark on column 15 in the
first line and point on column 10 in the last line.
This can be thought of as sorting the rectangle specified by point and the mark, except
that the text on each line to the left or right of the rectangle moves along with the text
inside the rectangle. See Section 10.5 [Rectangles], page 87.
28.2 Running Shell Commands from XEmacs
XEmacs has commands for passing single command lines to inferior shell processes; it
can also run a shell interactively with input and output to an XEmacs buffer ‘*shell*’.
M-!
Run a specified shell command line and display the output (shell-command).
M-|
Run a specified shell command line with region contents as input; optionally
replace the region with the output (shell-command-on-region).
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M-x shell Run a subshell with input and output through an XEmacs buffer. You can then
give commands interactively.
M-x term
Run a subshell with input and output through an XEmacs buffer. You can then
give commands interactively. Full terminal emulation is available.
28.2.1 Single Shell Commands
M-! (shell-command) reads a line of text using the minibuffer and creates an inferior
shell to execute the line as a command. Standard input from the command comes from
the null device. If the shell command produces any output, the output goes to an XEmacs
buffer named ‘*Shell Command Output*’, which is displayed in another window but not
selected. A numeric argument, as in M-1 M-!, directs this command to insert any output
into the current buffer. In that case, point is left before the output and the mark is set
after the output.
M-| (shell-command-on-region) is like M-! but passes the contents of the region as
input to the shell command, instead of no input. If a numeric argument is used to direct
output to the current buffer, then the old region is deleted first and the output replaces it
as the contents of the region.
Both M-! and M-| use shell-file-name to specify the shell to use. This variable is
initialized based on your SHELL environment variable when you start XEmacs. If the file
name does not specify a directory, the directories in the list exec-path are searched; this
list is initialized based on the PATH environment variable when you start XEmacs. You can
override either or both of these default initializations in your init file. See Section 29.6 [Init
File], page 311.
When you use M-! and M-|, XEmacs has to wait until the shell command completes.
You can quit with C-g; that terminates the shell command.
28.2.2 Interactive Inferior Shell
To run a subshell interactively with its typescript in an XEmacs buffer, use M-x shell.
This creates (or reuses) a buffer named ‘*shell*’ and runs a subshell with input coming
from and output going to that buffer. That is to say, any “terminal output” from the
subshell will go into the buffer, advancing point, and any “terminal input” for the subshell
comes from text in the buffer. To give input to the subshell, go to the end of the buffer and
type the input, terminated by hRETi.
XEmacs does not wait for the subshell to do anything. You can switch windows or buffers
and edit them while the shell is waiting, or while it is running a command. Output from
the subshell waits until XEmacs has time to process it; this happens whenever XEmacs is
waiting for keyboard input or for time to elapse.
To get multiple subshells, change the name of buffer ‘*shell*’ to something different by
using M-x rename-buffer. The next use of M-x shell creates a new buffer ‘*shell*’ with
its own subshell. By renaming this buffer as well you can create a third one, and so on. All
the subshells run independently and in parallel.
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The file name used to load the subshell is the value of the variable explicit-shellfile-name, if that is non-nil. Otherwise, the environment variable ESHELL is used, or the
environment variable SHELL if there is no ESHELL. If the file name specified is relative, the
directories in the list exec-path are searched (see Section 28.2.1 [Single Shell], page 281).
As soon as the subshell is started, it is sent as input the contents of the file ‘~/.emacs_shellname’,
if that file exists, where shellname is the name of the file that the shell was loaded from.
For example, if you use csh, the file sent to it is ‘~/.emacs_csh’.
cd, pushd, and popd commands given to the inferior shell are watched by XEmacs so it
can keep the ‘*shell*’ buffer’s default directory the same as the shell’s working directory.
These commands are recognized syntactically by examining lines of input that are sent.
If you use aliases for these commands, you can tell XEmacs to recognize them also. For
example, if the value of the variable shell-pushd-regexp matches the beginning of a shell
command line, that line is regarded as a pushd command. Change this variable when you
add aliases for ‘pushd’. Likewise, shell-popd-regexp and shell-cd-regexp are used to
recognize commands with the meaning of ‘popd’ and ‘cd’.
M-x shell-resync-dirs queries the shell and resynchronizes XEmacs’ idea of what the
current directory stack is. M-x shell-dirtrack-toggle turns directory tracking on and
off.
XEmacs keeps a history of the most recent commands you have typed in the ‘*shell*’
buffer. If you are at the beginning of a shell command line and type hM-pi, the previous
shell input is inserted into the buffer before point. Immediately typing hM-pi again deletes
that input and inserts the one before it. By repeating hM-pi you can move backward through
your commands until you find one you want to repeat. You may then edit the command
before typing hRETi if you wish. hM-ni moves forward through the command history, in case
you moved backward past the one you wanted while using hM-pi. If you type the first few
characters of a previous command and then type hM-pi, the most recent shell input starting
with those characters is inserted. This can be very convenient when you are repeating a
sequence of shell commands. The variable input-ring-size controls how many commands
are saved in your input history. The default is 30.
28.2.3 Shell Mode
The shell buffer uses Shell mode, which defines several special keys attached to the C-c
prefix. They are chosen to resemble the usual editing and job control characters present in
shells that are not under XEmacs, except that you must type C-c first. Here is a list of the
special key bindings of Shell mode:
hRETi
At end of buffer send line as input; otherwise, copy current line to end of
buffer and send it (send-shell-input). When a line is copied, any text at the
beginning of the line that matches the variable shell-prompt-pattern is left
out; this variable’s value should be a regexp string that matches the prompts
that you use in your subshell.
C-c C-d
Send end-of-file as input, probably causing the shell or its current subjob to
finish (shell-send-eof).
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C-d
If point is not at the end of the buffer, delete the next character just like most
other modes. If point is at the end of the buffer, send end-of-file as input, instead
of generating an error as in other modes (comint-delchar-or-maybe-eof).
C-c C-u
Kill all text that has yet to be sent as input (kill-shell-input).
C-c C-w
Kill a word before point (backward-kill-word).
C-c C-c
Interrupt the shell or its current subjob if any (interrupt-shell-subjob).
C-c C-z
Stop the shell or its current subjob if any (stop-shell-subjob).
C-c C-\
Send quit signal to the shell or its current subjob if any (quit-shell-subjob).
C-c C-o
Delete last batch of output from shell (kill-output-from-shell).
C-c C-r
Scroll top of last batch of output to top of window (show-output-from-shell).
C-c C-y
Copy the previous bunch of shell input and insert it into the buffer before point
(copy-last-shell-input). No final newline is inserted, and the input copied
is not resubmitted until you type hRETi.
M-p
Move backward through the input history. Search for a matching command if
you have typed the beginning of a command (comint-previous-input).
M-n
Move forward through the input history. Useful when you are using hM-pi quickly
and go past the desired command (comint-next-input).
hTABi
Complete the file name preceding point (comint-dynamic-complete).
28.2.4 Interactive Inferior Shell with Terminal Emulator
To run a subshell in a terminal emulator, putting its typescript in an XEmacs buffer,
use M-x term. This creates (or reuses) a buffer named ‘*term*’ and runs a subshell with
input coming from your keyboard and output going to that buffer.
All the normal keys that you type are sent without any interpretation by XEmacs directly
to the subshell, as “terminal input.” Any “echo” of your input is the responsibility of the
subshell. (The exception is the terminal escape character, which by default is C-c. see
Section 28.2.5 [Term Mode], page 284.) Any “terminal output” from the subshell goes into
the buffer, advancing point.
Some programs (such as XEmacs itself) need to control the appearance on the terminal
screen in detail. They do this by sending special control codes. The exact control codes
needed vary from terminal to terminal, but nowadays most terminals and terminal emulators
(including xterm) understand the so-called "ANSI escape sequences" (first popularized by
the Digital’s VT100 family of terminal). The term mode also understands these escape
sequences, and for each control code does the appropriate thing to change the buffer so that
the appearance of the window will match what it would be on a real terminal. Thus you
can actually run XEmacs inside an XEmacs Term window!
XEmacs does not wait for the subshell to do anything. You can switch windows or buffers
and edit them while the shell is waiting, or while it is running a command. Output from
the subshell waits until XEmacs has time to process it; this happens whenever XEmacs is
waiting for keyboard input or for time to elapse.
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To make multiple terminal emulators, rename the buffer ‘*term*’ to something different
using M-x rename-uniquely, just as with Shell mode.
The file name used to load the subshell is determined the same way as for Shell mode.
Unlike Shell mode, Term mode does not track the current directory by examining your
input. Instead, if you use a programmable shell, you can have it tell Term what the current
directory is. This is done automatically by bash for version 1.15 and later.
28.2.5 Term Mode
Term uses Term mode, which has two input modes: In line mode, Term basically acts
like Shell mode. See Section 28.2.3 [Shell Mode], page 282. In Char mode, each character
is sent directly to the inferior subshell, except for the Term escape character, normally C-c.
To switch between line and char mode, use these commands:
findex term-char-mode
C-c C-j
Switch to line mode. Do nothing if already in line mode.
C-c C-k
Switch to char mode. Do nothing if already in char mode.
The following commands are only available in Char mode:
C-c C-c
Send a literal hC-ci to the sub-shell.
C-c C-x
A prefix command to conveniently access the global hC-xi commands. For
example, C-c C-x o invokes the global binding of C-x o, which is normally
‘other-window’.
28.2.6 Paging in the terminal emulator
Term mode has a pager feature. When the pager is enabled, term mode will pause at
the end of each screenful.
C-c C-q
Toggles the pager feature: Disables the pager if it is enabled, and vice versa.
This works in both line and char modes. If the pager enabled, the mode-line
contains the word ‘page’.
If the pager is enabled, and Term receives more than a screenful of output since your last
input, Term will enter More break mode. This is indicated by ‘**MORE**’ in the mode-line.
Type a Space to display the next screenful of output. Type ? to see your other options.
The interface is similar to the Unix ‘more’ program.
28.3 Narrowing
Narrowing means focusing in on some portion of the buffer, making the rest temporarily
invisible and inaccessible. Cancelling the narrowing and making the entire buffer once again
visible is called widening. The amount of narrowing in effect in a buffer at any time is called
the buffer’s restriction.
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C-x n n
Narrow down to between point and mark (narrow-to-region).
C-x n w
Widen to make the entire buffer visible again (widen).
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Narrowing sometimes makes it easier to concentrate on a single subroutine or paragraph
by eliminating clutter. It can also be used to restrict the range of operation of a replace
command or repeating keyboard macro. The word ‘Narrow’ appears in the mode line
whenever narrowing is in effect. When you have narrowed to a part of the buffer, that part
appears to be all there is. You can’t see the rest, can’t move into it (motion commands
won’t go outside the visible part), and can’t change it in any way. However, the invisible
text is not gone; if you save the file, it will be saved.
The primary narrowing command is C-x n n (narrow-to-region). It sets the current
buffer’s restrictions so that the text in the current region remains visible but all text before
the region or after the region is invisible. Point and mark do not change.
Because narrowing can easily confuse users who do not understand it, narrow-to-region
is normally a disabled command. Attempting to use this command asks for confirmation
and gives you the option of enabling it; once you enable the command, confirmation will no
longer be required. See Section 29.4.3 [Disabling], page 308.
To undo narrowing, use C-x n w (widen). This makes all text in the buffer accessible
again.
Use the C-x = command to get information on what part of the buffer you narrowed
down. See Section 4.8 [Position Info], page 52.
28.4 Hardcopy Output
The XEmacs commands for making hardcopy derive their names from the Unix commands ‘print’ and ‘lpr’.
M-x print-buffer
Print hardcopy of current buffer using Unix command ‘print’
(‘lpr -p’). This command adds page headings containing the file name and
page number.
M-x lpr-buffer
Print hardcopy of current buffer using Unix command ‘lpr’. This command
does not add page headings.
M-x print-region
Like print-buffer, but prints only the current region.
M-x lpr-region
Like lpr-buffer, but prints only the current region.
All the hardcopy commands pass extra switches to the lpr program based on the value
of the variable lpr-switches. Its value should be a list of strings, each string a switch
starting with ‘-’. For example, the value could be ("-Pfoo") to print on printer ‘foo’.
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28.5 Recursive Editing Levels
A recursive edit is a situation in which you are using XEmacs commands to perform
arbitrary editing while in the middle of another XEmacs command. For example, when you
type C-r inside a query-replace, you enter a recursive edit in which you can change the
current buffer. When you exit from the recursive edit, you go back to the query-replace.
Exiting a recursive edit means returning to the unfinished command, which continues
execution. For example, exiting the recursive edit requested by C-r in query-replace
causes query replacing to resume. Exiting is done with C-M-c (exit-recursive-edit).
You can also abort a recursive edit. This is like exiting, but also quits the unfinished
command immediately. Use the command C-] (abort-recursive-edit) for this. See
Section 30.1 [Quitting], page 325.
The mode line shows you when you are in a recursive edit by displaying square brackets
around the parentheses that always surround the major and minor mode names. Every
window’s mode line shows the square brackets, since XEmacs as a whole, rather than any
particular buffer, is in a recursive edit.
It is possible to be in recursive edits within recursive edits. For example, after typing
C-r in a query-replace, you might type a command that entered the debugger. In such
a case, two or more sets of square brackets appear in the mode line(s). Exiting the inner
recursive edit (here with the debugger c command) resumes the query-replace command
where it called the debugger. After the end of the query-replace command, you would be
able to exit the first recursive edit. Aborting exits only one level of recursive edit; it returns
to the command level of the previous recursive edit. You can then abort that one as well.
The command M-x top-level aborts all levels of recursive edits, returning immediately
to the top level command reader.
The text you edit inside the recursive edit need not be the same text that you were
editing at top level. If the command that invokes the recursive edit selects a different buffer
first, that is the buffer you will edit recursively. You can switch buffers within the recursive
edit in the normal manner (as long as the buffer-switching keys have not been rebound).
While you could theoretically do the rest of your editing inside the recursive edit, including
visiting files, this could have surprising effects (such as stack overflow) from time to time.
It is best if you always exit or abort a recursive edit when you no longer need it.
In general, XEmacs tries to avoid using recursive edits. It is usually preferable to allow
users to switch among the possible editing modes in any order they like. With recursive
edits, the only way to get to another state is to go “back” to the state that the recursive
edit was invoked from.
28.6 Dissociated Press
M-x dissociated-press is a command for scrambling a file of text either word by word
or character by character. Starting from a buffer of straight English, it produces extremely
amusing output. The input comes from the current XEmacs buffer. Dissociated Press writes
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its output in a buffer named ‘*Dissociation*’, and redisplays that buffer after every couple
of lines (approximately) to facilitate reading it.
dissociated-press asks every so often whether to continue operating. Answer n to
stop it. You can also stop at any time by typing C-g. The dissociation output remains in
the ‘*Dissociation*’ buffer for you to copy elsewhere if you wish.
Dissociated Press operates by jumping at random from one point in the buffer to another.
In order to produce plausible output rather than gibberish, it insists on a certain amount of
overlap between the end of one run of consecutive words or characters and the start of the
next. That is, if it has just printed out ‘president’ and then decides to jump to a different
point in the file, it might spot the ‘ent’ in ‘pentagon’ and continue from there, producing
‘presidentagon’. Long sample texts produce the best results.
A positive argument to M-x dissociated-press tells it to operate character by character, and specifies the number of overlap characters. A negative argument tells it to operate
word by word and specifies the number of overlap words. In this mode, whole words are
treated as the elements to be permuted, rather than characters. No argument is equivalent to an argument of two. For your againformation, the output goes only into the buffer
‘*Dissociation*’. The buffer you start with is not changed.
Dissociated Press produces nearly the same results as a Markov chain based on a frequency table constructed from the sample text. It is, however, an independent, ignoriginal
invention. Dissociated Press techniquitously copies several consecutive characters from the
sample between random choices, whereas a Markov chain would choose randomly for each
word or character. This makes for more plausible sounding results and runs faster.
It is a mustatement that too much use of Dissociated Press can be a developediment
to your real work. Sometimes to the point of outragedy. And keep dissociwords out of
your documentation, if you want it to be well userenced and properbose. Have fun. Your
buggestions are welcome.
28.7 CONX
Besides producing a file of scrambled text with Dissociated Press, you can generate
random sentences by using CONX.
M-x conx
Generate random sentences in the *conx* buffer.
M-x conx-buffer
Absorb the text in the current buffer into the conx database.
M-x conx-init
Forget the current word-frequency tree.
M-x conx-load
Load a conx database that has been previously saved with M-x conx-save.
M-x conx-region
Absorb the text in the current buffer into the conx database.
M-x conx-save
Save the current conx database to a file for future retrieval.
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Copy text from a buffer using M-x conx-buffer or M-x conx-region and then type
M-x conx. Output is continuously generated until you type h^Gi. You can save the conx
database to a file with M-x conx-save, which you can retrieve with M-x conx-load. To
clear the database, use M-x conx-init.
28.8 Other Amusements
If you are a little bit bored, you can try M-x hanoi. If you are considerably bored, give
it a numeric argument. If you are very, very bored, try an argument of 9. Sit back and
watch.
When you are frustrated, try the famous Eliza program. Just do M-x doctor. End each
input by typing RET twice.
When you are feeling strange, type M-x yow.
28.9 Emulation
XEmacs can be programmed to emulate (more or less) most other editors. Standard
facilities can emulate these:
Viper (a vi emulator)
In XEmacs, Viper is the preferred emulation of vi within XEmacs. Viper is
designed to allow you to take advantage of the best features of XEmacs while
still doing your basic editing in a familiar, vi-like fashion. Viper provides various different levels of vi emulation, from a quite complete emulation that allows
almost no access to native XEmacs commands, to an “expert” mode that combines the most useful vi commands with the most useful XEmacs commands.
To start Viper, put the command
(viper-mode)
in your init file. See Section 29.6 [Init File], page 311.
Viper comes with a separate manual that is provided standard with the XEmacs
distribution.
EDT (DEC VMS editor)
Turn on EDT emulation with M-x edt-emulation-on. M-x
edt-emulation-off restores normal Emacs command bindings.
Most of the EDT emulation commands are keypad keys, and most standard
Emacs key bindings are still available. The EDT emulation rebindings are done
in the global keymap, so there is no problem switching buffers or major modes
while in EDT emulation.
Gosling Emacs
Turn on emulation of Gosling Emacs (aka Unipress Emacs) with M-x setgosmacs-bindings. This redefines many keys, mostly on the C-x and ESC
prefixes, to work as they do in Gosmacs. M-x set-gnu-bindings returns to
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normal XEmacs by rebinding the same keys to the definitions they had at the
time M-x set-gosmacs-bindings was done.
It is also possible to run Mocklisp code written for Gosling Emacs. See Section 23.3.3 [Mocklisp], page 213.
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29 Customization
This chapter talks about various topics relevant to adapting the behavior of Emacs in
minor ways.
All kinds of customization affect only the particular Emacs job that you do them in. They
are completely lost when you kill the Emacs job, and have no effect on other Emacs jobs you
may run at the same time or later. The only way an Emacs job can affect anything outside
of it is by writing a file; in particular, the only way to make a customization ‘permanent’ is
to put something in your init file or other appropriate file to do the customization in each
session. See Section 29.6 [Init File], page 311.
29.1 Minor Modes
Minor modes are options which you can use or not. For example, Auto Fill mode is a
minor mode in which hSPCi breaks lines between words as you type. All the minor modes
are independent of each other and of the selected major mode. Most minor modes inform
you in the mode line when they are on; for example, ‘Fill’ in the mode line means that
Auto Fill mode is on.
Append -mode to the name of a minor mode to get the name of a command function
that turns the mode on or off. Thus, the command to enable or disable Auto Fill mode is
called M-x auto-fill-mode. These commands are usually invoked with M-x, but you can
bind keys to them if you wish. With no argument, the function turns the mode on if it was
off and off if it was on. This is known as toggling. A positive argument always turns the
mode on, and an explicit zero argument or a negative argument always turns it off.
Auto Fill mode allows you to enter filled text without breaking lines explicitly. Emacs
inserts newlines as necessary to prevent lines from becoming too long. See Section 21.6
[Filling], page 177.
Overwrite mode causes ordinary printing characters to replace existing text instead of
moving it to the right. For example, if point is in front of the ‘B’ in ‘FOOBAR’, and you type
a G in Overwrite mode, it changes to ‘FOOGAR’, instead of ‘FOOGBAR’.
Abbrev mode allows you to define abbreviations that automatically expand as you type
them. For example, ‘amd’ might expand to ‘abbrev mode’. See Chapter 24 [Abbrevs],
page 233, for full information.
29.2 Variables
A variable is a Lisp symbol which has a value. Variable names can contain any characters, but by convention they are words separated by hyphens. A variable can also have a
documentation string, which describes what kind of value it should have and how the value
will be used.
Lisp allows any variable to have any kind of value, but most variables that Emacs uses
require a value of a certain type. Often the value has to be a string or a number. Sometimes
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we say that a certain feature is turned on if a variable is “non-nil,” meaning that if the
variable’s value is nil, the feature is off, but the feature is on for any other value. The
conventional value to turn on the feature—since you have to pick one particular value when
you set the variable—is t.
Emacs uses many Lisp variables for internal recordkeeping, as any Lisp program must,
but the most interesting variables for you are the ones that exist for the sake of customization. Emacs does not (usually) change the values of these variables; instead, you set the
values, and thereby alter and control the behavior of certain Emacs commands. These
variables are called options. Most options are documented in this manual and appear in
the Variable Index (see [Variable Index], page 375).
One example of a variable which is an option is fill-column, which specifies the position
of the right margin (as a number of characters from the left margin) to be used by the fill
commands (see Section 21.6 [Filling], page 177).
29.2.1 Examining and Setting Variables
C-h v
M-x describe-variable
Print the value and documentation of a variable.
M-x set-variable
Change the value of a variable.
To examine the value of a single variable, use C-h v (describe-variable), which reads
a variable name using the minibuffer, with completion. It prints both the value and the
documentation of the variable.
C-h v fill-column hRETi
prints something like:
fill-column’s value is 75
Documentation:
*Column beyond which automatic line-wrapping should happen.
Automatically becomes local when set in any fashion.
The star at the beginning of the documentation indicates that this variable is an option.
C-h v is not restricted to options; it allows any variable name.
If you know which option you want to set, you can use M-x set-variable to set it. This
prompts for the variable name in the minibuffer (with completion), and then prompts for a
Lisp expression for the new value using the minibuffer a second time. For example,
M-x set-variable hRETi fill-column hRETi 75 hRETi
sets fill-column to 75, as if you had executed the Lisp expression (setq fill-column
75).
Setting variables in this way, like all means of customizing Emacs except where explicitly
stated, affects only the current Emacs session.
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29.2.2 Easy Customization Interface
A convenient way to find the user option variables that you want to change, and then
change them, is with M-x customize (or use a keyboard shortcut, C-h C. This command
creates a customization buffer with which you can browse through the Emacs user options
in a logically organized structure, then edit and set their values. You can also use the
customization buffer to save settings permanently. (Not all Emacs user options are included
in this structure as of yet, but we are adding the rest.)
29.2.2.1 Customization Groups
For customization purposes, user options are organized into groups to help you find
them. Groups are collected into bigger groups, all the way up to a master group called
Emacs.
M-x customize (or C-h C) creates a customization buffer that shows the top-level Emacs
group and the second-level groups immediately under it. It looks like this, in part:
/- Emacs group: ---------------------------------------------------\
[State]: visible group members are all at standard settings.
Customization of the One True Editor.
See also [Manual].
[Open] Editing group
Basic text editing facilities.
[Open] External group
Interfacing to external utilities.
more second-level groups
\- Emacs group end ------------------------------------------------/
This says that the buffer displays the contents of the Emacs group. The other groups are
listed because they are its contents. But they are listed differently, without indentation and
dashes, because their contents are not included. Each group has a single-line documentation
string; the Emacs group also has a ‘[State]’ line.
Most of the text in the customization buffer is read-only, but it typically includes some
editable fields that you can edit. There are also active fields; this means a field that does
something when you invoke it. To invoke an active field, either click on it with Mouse-1, or
move point to it and type hRETi.
For example, the phrase ‘[Open]’ that appears in a second-level group is an active field.
Invoking the ‘[Open]’ field for a group opens up a new customization buffer, which shows
that group and its contents. This field is a kind of hypertext link to another group.
The Emacs group does not include any user options itself, but other groups do. By
examining various groups, you will eventually find the options and faces that belong to the
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feature you are interested in customizing. Then you can use the customization buffer to set
them.
You can view the structure of customization groups on a larger scale with M-x
customize-browse. This command creates a special kind of customization buffer which
shows only the names of the groups (and options and faces), and their structure.
In this buffer, you can show the contents of a group by invoking ‘[+]’. When the group
contents are visible, this button changes to ‘[-]’; invoking that hides the group contents.
Each group, option or face name in this buffer has an active field which says ‘[Group]’,
‘[Option]’ or ‘[Face]’. Invoking that active field creates an ordinary customization buffer
showing just that group and its contents, just that option, or just that face. This is the
way to set values in it.
29.2.2.2 Changing an Option
Here is an example of what a user option looks like in the customization buffer:
Kill Ring Max: [Hide] 30
[State]: this option is unchanged from its standard setting.
Maximum length of kill ring before oldest elements are thrown away.
The text following ‘[Hide]’, ‘30’ in this case, indicates the current value of the option.
If you see ‘[Show]’ instead of ‘[Hide]’, it means that the value is hidden; the customization
buffer initially hides values that take up several lines. Invoke ‘[Show]’ to show the value.
The line after the option name indicates the customization state of the option: in the
example above, it says you have not changed the option yet. The word ‘[State]’ at the
beginning of this line is active; you can get a menu of various operations by invoking it with
Mouse-1 or hRETi. These operations are essential for customizing the variable.
The line after the ‘[State]’ line displays the beginning of the option’s documentation
string. If there are more lines of documentation, this line ends with ‘[More]’; invoke this
to show the full documentation string.
To enter a new value for ‘Kill Ring Max’, move point to the value and edit it textually.
For example, you can type M-d, then insert another number.
When you begin to alter the text, you will see the ‘[State]’ line change to say that you
have edited the value:
[State]: you have edited the value as text, but not set the option.
Editing the value does not actually set the option variable. To do that, you must set
the option. To do this, invoke the word ‘[State]’ and choose ‘Set for Current Session’.
The state of the option changes visibly when you set it:
[State]: you have set this option, but not saved it for future sessions.
You don’t have to worry about specifying a value that is not valid; setting the option
checks for validity and will not really install an unacceptable value.
While editing a value or field that is a file name, directory name, command name, or
anything else for which completion is defined, you can type M-hTABi (widget-complete) to
do completion.
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Some options have a small fixed set of possible legitimate values. These options don’t
let you edit the value textually. Instead, an active field ‘[Value Menu]’ appears before the
value; invoke this field to edit the value. For a boolean “on or off” value, the active field
says ‘[Toggle]’, and it changes to the other value. ‘[Value Menu]’ and ‘[Toggle]’ edit the
buffer; the changes take effect when you use the ‘Set for Current Session’ operation.
Some options have values with complex structure. For example, the value of load-path
is a list of directories. Here is how it appears in the customization buffer:
Load Path:
[INS] [DEL] [Current dir?]: /usr/local/share/emacs/19.34.94/site-lisp
[INS] [DEL] [Current dir?]: /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp
[INS] [DEL] [Current dir?]: /usr/local/share/emacs/19.34.94/leim
[INS] [DEL] [Current dir?]: /usr/local/share/emacs/19.34.94/lisp
[INS] [DEL] [Current dir?]: /build/emacs/e19/lisp
[INS] [DEL] [Current dir?]: /build/emacs/e19/lisp/gnus
[INS]
[State]: this item has been changed outside the customization buffer.
List of directories to search for files to load....
Each directory in the list appears on a separate line, and each line has several editable or
active fields.
You can edit any of the directory names. To delete a directory from the list, invoke
‘[DEL]’ on that line. To insert a new directory in the list, invoke ‘[INS]’ at the point where
you want to insert it.
You can also invoke ‘[Current dir?]’ to switch between including a specific named
directory in the path, and including nil in the path. (nil in a search path means “try the
current directory.”)
Two special commands, hTABi and S-hTABi, are useful for moving through the customization buffer. hTABi (widget-forward) moves forward to the next active or editable field;
S-hTABi (widget-backward) moves backward to the previous active or editable field.
Typing hRETi on an editable field also moves forward, just like hTABi. The reason for this
is that people have a tendency to type hRETi when they are finished editing a field. If you
have occasion to insert a newline in an editable field, use C-o or C-q C-j,
Setting the option changes its value in the current Emacs session; saving the value
changes it for future sessions as well. This works by writing code into your init file so as
to set the option variable again each time you start Emacs. See Section 29.6 [Init File],
page 311. To save the option, invoke ‘[State]’ and select the ‘Save for Future Sessions’
operation.
You can also restore the option to its standard value by invoking ‘[State]’ and selecting
the ‘Reset’ operation. There are actually three reset operations:
‘Reset to Current’
If you have made some modifications and not yet set the option, this restores
the text in the customization buffer to match the actual value.
‘Reset to Saved’
This restores the value of the option to the last saved value, and updates the
text accordingly.
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‘Reset to Standard Settings’
This sets the option to its standard value, and updates the text accordingly.
This also eliminates any saved value for the option, so that you will get the
standard value in future Emacs sessions.
The state of a group indicates whether anything in that group has been edited, set or
saved. You can select ‘Set for Current Session’, ‘Save for Future Sessions’ and the
various kinds of ‘Reset’ operation for the group; these operations on the group apply to all
options in the group and its subgroups.
Near the top of the customization buffer there are two lines containing several active
fields:
[Set] [Save] [Reset] [Done]
Invoking ‘[Done]’ buries this customization buffer. Each of the other fields performs an
operation—set, save or reset—on each of the items in the buffer that could meaningfully be
set, saved or reset.
29.2.2.3 Customizing Faces
In addition to user options, some customization groups also include faces. When you
show the contents of a group, both the user options and the faces in the group appear in
the customization buffer. Here is an example of how a face looks:
Custom Changed Face: (sample)
[State]: this face is unchanged from its standard setting.
Face used when the customize item has been changed.
Parent groups: [Custom Magic Faces]
Attributes: [ ] Bold: [Toggle] off (nil)
[ ] Italic: [Toggle] off (nil)
[ ] Underline: [Toggle] off (nil)
[ ] Foreground: white
(sample)
[ ] Background: blue
(sample)
[ ] Inverse: [Toggle] off (nil)
[ ] Stipple:
[ ] Font Family:
[ ] Size:
[ ] Strikethru: off
Each face attribute has its own line. The ‘[x]’ field before the attribute name indicates
whether the attribute is enabled; ‘X’ means that it is. You can enable or disable the attribute
by invoking that field. When the attribute is enabled, you can change the attribute value
in the usual ways.
Setting, saving and resetting a face work like the same operations for options (see Section 29.2.2.2 [Changing an Option], page 294).
A face can specify different appearances for different types of display. For example, a
face can make text red on a color display, but use a bold font on a monochrome display. To
specify multiple appearances for a face, select ‘Show Display Types’ in the menu you get
from invoking ‘[State]’.
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29.2.2.4 Customizing Specific Items
Instead of finding the options you want to change by moving down through the structure
of groups, you can specify the particular option, face or group that you want to customize.
M-x customize-option hRETi option hRETi
Set up a customization buffer with just one option, option.
M-x customize-face hRETi face hRETi
Set up a customization buffer with just one face, face.
M-x customize-group hRETi group hRETi
Set up a customization buffer with just one group, group.
M-x customize-apropos hRETi regexp hRETi
Set up a customization buffer with all the options, faces and groups that match
regexp.
M-x customize-saved
Set up a customization buffer containing all options and faces that you have
saved with customization buffers.
M-x customize-customized
Set up a customization buffer containing all options and faces that you have
customized but not saved.
If you want to alter a particular user option variable with the customization buffer,
and you know its name, you can use the command M-x customize-option and specify the
option name. This sets up the customization buffer with just one option—the one that you
asked for. Editing, setting and saving the value work as described above, but only for the
specified option.
Likewise, you can modify a specific face, chosen by name, using M-x customize-face.
You can also set up the customization buffer with a specific group, using M-x customizegroup. The immediate contents of the chosen group, including option variables, faces, and
other groups, all appear as well. However, these subgroups’ own contents start out hidden.
You can show their contents in the usual way, by invoking ‘[Show]’.
To control more precisely what to customize, you can use M-x customize-apropos. You
specify a regular expression as argument; then all options, faces and groups whose names
match this regular expression are set up in the customization buffer. If you specify an empty
regular expression, this includes all groups, options and faces in the customization buffer
(but that takes a long time).
If you change option values and then decide the change was a mistake, you can use two
special commands to revisit your previous changes. Use customize-saved to look at the
options and faces that you have saved. Use M-x customize-customized to look at the
options and faces that you have set but not saved.
29.2.3 Editing Variable Values
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M-x list-options
Display a buffer listing names, values, and documentation of all options.
M-x edit-options
Change option values by editing a list of options.
M-x list-options displays a list of all Emacs option variables in an Emacs buffer named
‘*List Options*’. Each option is shown with its documentation and its current value. Here
is what a portion of it might look like:
;; exec-path:
("." "/usr/local/bin" "/usr/ucb" "/bin" "/usr/bin" "/u2/emacs/etc")
*List of directories to search programs to run in subprocesses.
Each element is a string (directory name)
or nil (try the default directory).
;;
;; fill-column:
75
*Column beyond which automatic line-wrapping should happen.
Automatically becomes local when set in any fashion.
;;
M-x edit-options goes one step further and immediately selects the ‘*List Options*’
buffer; this buffer uses the major mode Options mode, which provides commands that allow
you to point at an option and change its value:
s
Set the variable point is in or near to a new value read using the minibuffer.
x
Toggle the variable point is in or near: if the value was nil, it becomes t;
otherwise it becomes nil.
1
Set the variable point is in or near to t.
0
Set the variable point is in or near to nil.
n
p
Move to the next or previous variable.
29.2.4 Local Variables
M-x make-local-variable
Make a variable have a local value in the current buffer.
M-x kill-local-variable
Make a variable use its global value in the current buffer.
M-x make-variable-buffer-local
Mark a variable so that setting it will make it local to the buffer that is current
at that time.
You can make any variable local to a specific Emacs buffer. This means that the variable’s value in that buffer is independent of its value in other buffers. A few variables are
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always local in every buffer. All other Emacs variables have a global value which is in effect
in all buffers that have not made the variable local.
Major modes always make the variables they set local to the buffer. This is why changing
major modes in one buffer has no effect on other buffers.
M-x make-local-variable reads the name of a variable and makes it local to the current
buffer. Further changes in this buffer will not affect others, and changes in the global value
will not affect this buffer.
M-x make-variable-buffer-local reads the name of a variable and changes the future
behavior of the variable so that it automatically becomes local when it is set. More precisely, once you have marked a variable in this way, the usual ways of setting the variable
will automatically invoke make-local-variable first. We call such variables per-buffer
variables.
Some important variables have been marked per-buffer already. They include abbrevmode, auto-fill-function, case-fold-search, comment-column, ctl-arrow, fillcolumn, fill-prefix, indent-tabs-mode, left-margin,
mode-line-format, overwrite-mode, selective-display-ellipses,
selective-display, tab-width, and truncate-lines. Some other variables are always
local in every buffer, but they are used for internal purposes.
Note: the variable auto-fill-function was formerly named auto-fill-hook.
If you want a variable to cease to be local to the current buffer, call M-x kill-localvariable and provide the name of a variable to the prompt. The global value of the variable
is again in effect in this buffer. Setting the major mode kills all the local variables of the
buffer.
To set the global value of a variable, regardless of whether the variable has a local value
in the current buffer, you can use the Lisp function setq-default. It works like setq. If
there is a local value in the current buffer, the local value is not affected by setq-default;
thus, the new global value may not be visible until you switch to another buffer, as in the
case of:
(setq-default fill-column 75)
setq-default is the only way to set the global value of a variable that has been marked
with make-variable-buffer-local.
Programs can look at a variable’s default value with default-value. This function
takes a symbol as an argument and returns its default value. The argument is evaluated;
usually you must quote it explicitly, as in the case of:
(default-value ’fill-column)
29.2.5 Local Variables in Files
A file can contain a local variables list, which specifies the values to use for certain Emacs
variables when that file is edited. Visiting the file checks for a local variables list and makes
each variable in the list local to the buffer in which the file is visited, with the value specified
in the file.
A local variables list goes near the end of the file, in the last page. (It is often best to
put it on a page by itself.) The local variables list starts with a line containing the string
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‘Local Variables:’, and ends with a line containing the string ‘End:’. In between come
the variable names and values, one set per line, as ‘variable: value’. The values are not
evaluated; they are used literally.
The line which starts the local variables list does not have to say just ‘Local Variables:’.
If there is other text before ‘Local Variables:’, that text is called the prefix, and if there
is other text after, that is called the suffix. If a prefix or suffix are present, each entry in
the local variables list should have the prefix before it and the suffix after it. This includes
the ‘End:’ line. The prefix and suffix are included to disguise the local variables list as a
comment so the compiler or text formatter will ignore it. If you do not need to disguise the
local variables list as a comment in this way, there is no need to include a prefix or a suffix.
Two “variable” names are special in a local variables list: a value for the variable mode
sets the major mode, and a value for the variable eval is simply evaluated as an expression
and the value is ignored. These are not real variables; setting them in any other context
does not have the same effect. If mode is used in a local variables list, it should be the first
entry in the list.
Here is an example of a local variables list:
;;; Local Variables: ***
;;; mode:lisp ***
;;; comment-column:0 ***
;;; comment-start: ";;; " ***
;;; comment-end:"***" ***
;;; End: ***
Note that the prefix is ‘;;; ’ and the suffix is ‘ ***’. Note also that comments in the file
begin with and end with the same strings. Presumably the file contains code in a language
which is enough like Lisp for Lisp mode to be useful but in which comments start and end
differently. The prefix and suffix are used in the local variables list to make the list look
like several lines of comments when the compiler or interpreter for that language reads the
file.
The start of the local variables list must be no more than 3000 characters from the end
of the file, and must be in the last page if the file is divided into pages. Otherwise, Emacs
will not notice it is there. The purpose is twofold: a stray ‘Local Variables:’ not in the
last page does not confuse Emacs, and Emacs never needs to search a long file that contains
no page markers and has no local variables list.
You may be tempted to turn on Auto Fill mode with a local variable list. That is
inappropriate. Whether you use Auto Fill mode or not is a matter of personal taste, not a
matter of the contents of particular files. If you want to use Auto Fill, set up major mode
hooks with your init file to turn it on (when appropriate) for you alone (see Section 29.6
[Init File], page 311). Don’t try to use a local variable list that would impose your taste on
everyone working with the file.
XEmacs allows you to specify local variables in the first line of a file, in addition to
specifying them in the Local Variables section at the end of a file.
If the first line of a file contains two occurrences of ‘-*-’, XEmacs uses the information
between them to determine what the major mode and variable settings should be. For
example, these are all legal:
;;; -*- mode: emacs-lisp -*-
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;;; -*- mode: postscript; version-control: never -*;;; -*- tags-file-name: "/foo/bar/TAGS" -*For historical reasons, the syntax ‘-*- modename -*-’ is allowed as well; for example,
you can use:
;;; -*- emacs-lisp -*The variable enable-local-variables controls the use of local variables lists in files
you visit. The value can be t, nil, or something else. A value of t means local variables
lists are obeyed; nil means they are ignored; anything else means query.
The command M-x normal-mode always obeys local variables lists and ignores this variable.
29.3 Keyboard Macros
A keyboard macro is a command defined by the user to abbreviate a sequence of keys.
For example, if you discover that you are about to type C-n C-d forty times, you can speed
your work by defining a keyboard macro to invoke C-n C-d and calling it with a repeat
count of forty.
C-x (
Start defining a keyboard macro (start-kbd-macro).
C-x )
End the definition of a keyboard macro (end-kbd-macro).
C-x e
Execute the most recent keyboard macro (call-last-kbd-macro).
C-u C-x ( Re-execute last keyboard macro, then add more keys to its definition.
C-x q
When this point is reached during macro execution, ask for confirmation (kbdmacro-query).
M-x name-last-kbd-macro
Give a command name (for the duration of the session) to the most recently
defined keyboard macro.
M-x insert-kbd-macro
Insert in the buffer a keyboard macro’s definition, as Lisp code.
Keyboard macros differ from other Emacs commands in that they are written in the
Emacs command language rather than in Lisp. This makes it easier for the novice to
write them and makes them more convenient as temporary hacks. However, the Emacs
command language is not powerful enough as a programming language to be useful for
writing anything general or complex. For such things, Lisp must be used.
You define a keyboard macro by executing the commands which are its definition. Put
differently, as you are defining a keyboard macro, the definition is being executed for the
first time. This way, you see what the effects of your commands are, and don’t have to
figure them out in your head. When you are finished, the keyboard macro is defined and
also has been executed once. You can then execute the same set of commands again by
invoking the macro.
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29.3.1 Basic Use
To start defining a keyboard macro, type C-x ( (start-kbd-macro). From then on,
anything you type continues to be executed, but also becomes part of the definition of the
macro. ‘Def’ appears in the mode line to remind you of what is going on. When you are
finished, the C-x ) command (end-kbd-macro) terminates the definition, without becoming
part of it.
For example,
C-x ( M-f foo C-x )
defines a macro to move forward a word and then insert ‘foo’.
You can give C-x ) a repeat count as an argument, in which case it repeats the macro
that many times right after defining it, but defining the macro counts as the first repetition
(since it is executed as you define it). If you give C-x ) an argument of 4, it executes the
macro immediately 3 additional times. An argument of zero to C-x e or C-x ) means repeat
the macro indefinitely (until it gets an error or you type C-g).
Once you have defined a macro, you can invoke it again with the C-x e command (calllast-kbd-macro). You can give the command a repeat count numeric argument to execute
the macro many times.
To repeat an operation at regularly spaced places in the text, define a macro and include
as part of the macro the commands to move to the next place you want to use it. For
example, if you want to change each line, you should position point at the start of a line,
and define a macro to change that line and leave point at the start of the next line. Repeating
the macro will then operate on successive lines.
After you have terminated the definition of a keyboard macro, you can add to the end
of its definition by typing C-u C-x (. This is equivalent to plain C-x ( followed by retyping
the whole definition so far. As a consequence it re-executes the macro as previously defined.
29.3.2 Naming and Saving Keyboard Macros
To save a keyboard macro for longer than until you define the next one, you must give
it a name using M-x name-last-kbd-macro. This reads a name as an argument using the
minibuffer and defines that name to execute the macro. The macro name is a Lisp symbol,
and defining it in this way makes it a valid command name for calling with M-x or for
binding a key to with global-set-key (see Section 29.4.1 [Keymaps], page 303). If you
specify a name that has a prior definition other than another keyboard macro, Emacs prints
an error message and nothing is changed.
Once a macro has a command name, you can save its definition in a file. You can then
use it in another editing session. First visit the file you want to save the definition in. Then
use the command:
M-x insert-kbd-macro hRETi macroname hRETi
This inserts some Lisp code that, when executed later, will define the same macro with
the same definition it has now. You need not understand Lisp code to do this, because
insert-kbd-macro writes the Lisp code for you. Then save the file. You can load the file
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with load-file (see Section 23.3 [Lisp Libraries], page 211). If the file you save in is your
initialization file (see Section 29.6 [Init File], page 311), then the macro will be defined each
time you run Emacs.
If you give insert-kbd-macro a prefix argument, it creates additional Lisp code to
record the keys (if any) that you have bound to the keyboard macro, so that the macro is
reassigned the same keys when you load the file.
29.3.3 Executing Macros With Variations
You can use C-x q (kbd-macro-query), to get an effect similar to that of query-replace.
The macro asks you each time whether to make a change. When you are defining the macro,
type C-x q at the point where you want the query to occur. During macro definition, the
C-x q does nothing, but when you invoke the macro, C-x q reads a character from the
terminal to decide whether to continue.
The special answers to a C-x q query are hSPCi, hDELi, C-d, C-l, and C-r. Any other
character terminates execution of the keyboard macro and is then read as a command.
hSPCi means to continue. hDELi means to skip the remainder of this repetition of the macro,
starting again from the beginning in the next repetition. C-d means to skip the remainder
of this repetition and cancel further repetition. C-l redraws the frame and asks you again
for a character to specify what to do. C-r enters a recursive editing level, in which you
can perform editing that is not part of the macro. When you exit the recursive edit using
C-M-c, you are asked again how to continue with the keyboard macro. If you type a hSPCi
at this time, the rest of the macro definition is executed. It is up to you to leave point and
the text in a state such that the rest of the macro will do what you want.
C-u C-x q, which is C-x q with a numeric argument, performs a different function. It
enters a recursive edit reading input from the keyboard, both when you type it during the
definition of the macro and when it is executed from the macro. During definition, the
editing you do inside the recursive edit does not become part of the macro. During macro
execution, the recursive edit gives you a chance to do some particularized editing. See
Section 28.5 [Recursive Edit], page 286.
29.4 Customizing Key Bindings
This section deals with the keymaps that define the bindings between keys and functions,
and shows how you can customize these bindings.
A command is a Lisp function whose definition provides for interactive use. Like every
Lisp function, a command has a function name, which is a Lisp symbol whose name usually
consists of lower case letters and hyphens.
29.4.1 Keymaps
The bindings between characters and command functions are recorded in data structures
called keymaps. Emacs has many of these. One, the global keymap, defines the meanings
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of the single-character keys that are defined regardless of major mode. It is the value of the
variable global-map.
Each major mode has another keymap, its local keymap, which contains overriding
definitions for the single-character keys that are redefined in that mode. Each buffer records
which local keymap is installed for it at any time, and the current buffer’s local keymap is
the only one that directly affects command execution. The local keymaps for Lisp mode,
C mode, and many other major modes always exist even when not in use. They are the
values of the variables lisp-mode-map, c-mode-map, and so on. For less frequently used
major modes, the local keymap is sometimes constructed only when the mode is used for
the first time in a session, to save space.
There are local keymaps for the minibuffer, too; they contain various completion and
exit commands.
• minibuffer-local-map is used for ordinary input (no completion).
• minibuffer-local-ns-map is similar, except that hSPCi exits just like hRETi. This is
used mainly for Mocklisp compatibility.
• minibuffer-local-completion-map is for permissive completion.
• minibuffer-local-must-match-map is for strict completion and for cautious completion.
• repeat-complex-command-map is for use in C-x hESCi hESCi.
• isearch-mode-map contains the bindings of the special keys which are bound in the
pseudo-mode entered with C-s and C-r.
Finally, each prefix key has a keymap which defines the key sequences that start with it.
For example, ctl-x-map is the keymap used for characters following a C-x.
• ctl-x-map is the variable name for the map used for characters that follow C-x.
• help-map is used for characters that follow C-h.
• esc-map is for characters that follow hESCi. All Meta characters are actually defined by
this map.
• ctl-x-4-map is for characters that follow C-x 4.
• mode-specific-map is for characters that follow C-c.
The definition of a prefix key is the keymap to use for looking up the following character.
Sometimes the definition is actually a Lisp symbol whose function definition is the following
character keymap. The effect is the same, but it provides a command name for the prefix
key that you can use as a description of what the prefix key is for. Thus the binding of C-x
is the symbol Ctl-X-Prefix, whose function definition is the keymap for C-x commands,
the value of ctl-x-map.
Prefix key definitions can appear in either the global map or a local map. The definitions
of C-c, C-x, C-h, and hESCi as prefix keys appear in the global map, so these prefix keys are
always available. Major modes can locally redefine a key as a prefix by putting a prefix key
definition for it in the local map.
A mode can also put a prefix definition of a global prefix character such as C-x into
its local map. This is how major modes override the definitions of certain keys that start
with C-x. This case is special, because the local definition does not entirely replace the
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global one. When both the global and local definitions of a key are other keymaps, the
next character is looked up in both keymaps, with the local definition overriding the global
one. The character after the C-x is looked up in both the major mode’s own keymap for
redefined C-x commands and in ctl-x-map. If the major mode’s own keymap for C-x
commands contains nil, the definition from the global keymap for C-x commands is used.
29.4.2 Changing Key Bindings
You can redefine an Emacs key by changing its entry in a keymap. You can change the
global keymap, in which case the change is effective in all major modes except those that
have their own overriding local definitions for the same key. Or you can change the current
buffer’s local map, which affects all buffers using the same major mode.
29.4.2.1 Changing Key Bindings Interactively
M-x global-set-key hRETi key cmd hRETi
Defines key globally to run cmd.
M-x local-set-key hRETi keys cmd hRETi
Defines key locally (in the major mode now in effect) to run cmd.
M-x local-unset-key hRETi keys hRETi
Removes the local binding of key.
cmd is a symbol naming an interactively-callable function.
When called interactively, key is the next complete key sequence that you type. When
called as a function, key is a string, a vector of events, or a vector of key-description lists as
described in the define-key function description. The binding goes in the current buffer’s
local map, which is shared with other buffers in the same major mode.
The following example:
M-x global-set-key hRETi C-f next-line hRETi
redefines C-f to move down a line. The fact that cmd is read second makes it serve as a
kind of confirmation for key.
These functions offer no way to specify a particular prefix keymap as the one to redefine
in, but that is not necessary, as you can include prefixes in key. key is read by reading
characters one by one until they amount to a complete key (that is, not a prefix key). Thus,
if you type C-f for key, Emacs enters the minibuffer immediately to read cmd. But if you
type C-x, another character is read; if that character is 4, another character is read, and so
on. For example,
M-x global-set-key hRETi C-x 4 $ spell-other-window hRETi
redefines C-x 4 $ to run the (fictitious) command spell-other-window.
The most general way to modify a keymap is the function define-key, used in Lisp
code (such as your init file). define-key takes three arguments: the keymap, the key to
modify in it, and the new definition. See Section 29.6 [Init File], page 311, for an example.
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substitute-key-definition is used similarly; it takes three arguments, an old definition,
a new definition, and a keymap, and redefines in that keymap all keys that were previously
defined with the old definition to have the new definition instead.
29.4.2.2 Changing Key Bindings Programmatically
You can use the functions global-set-key and define-key to rebind keys under program control.
(global-set-key keys cmd)
Defines keys globally to run cmd.
(define-key keymap keys def )
Defines keys to run def in the keymap keymap.
keymap is a keymap object.
keys is the sequence of keystrokes to bind.
def is anything that can be a key’s definition:
• nil, meaning key is undefined in this keymap
• A command, that is, a Lisp function suitable for interactive calling
• A string or key sequence vector, which is treated as a keyboard macro
• A keymap to define a prefix key
• A symbol so that when the key is looked up, the symbol stands for its function definition, which should at that time be one of the above, or another symbol whose function
definition is used, and so on
• A cons, (string . defn), meaning that defn is the definition (defn should be a valid
definition in its own right)
• A cons, (keymap . char), meaning use the definition of char in map keymap
For backward compatibility, XEmacs allows you to specify key sequences as strings.
However, the preferred method is to use the representations of key sequences as vectors of
keystrokes. See Chapter 2 [Keystrokes], page 23, for more information about the rules for
constructing key sequences.
Emacs allows you to abbreviate representations for key sequences in most places where
there is no ambiguity. Here are some rules for abbreviation:
• The keysym by itself is equivalent to a list of just that keysym, i.e., f1 is equivalent to
(f1).
• A keystroke by itself is equivalent to a vector containing just that keystroke, i.e.,
(control a) is equivalent to [(control a)].
• You can use ASCII codes for keysyms that have them. i.e., 65 is equivalent to A. (This
is not so much an abbreviation as an alternate representation.)
Here are some examples of programmatically binding keys:
;;; Bind my-command to hf1i
(global-set-key ’f1 ’my-command)
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;;; Bind my-command to Shift-f1
(global-set-key ’(shift f1) ’my-command)
;;; Bind my-command to C-c Shift-f1
(global-set-key ’[(control c) (shift f1)] ’my-command)
;;; Bind my-command to the middle mouse button.
(global-set-key ’button2 ’my-command)
;;; Bind my-command to hMETAi hCTLi hRight Mouse Buttoni
;;; in the keymap that is in force when you are running dired.
(define-key dired-mode-map ’(meta control button3) ’my-command)
29.4.2.3 Using Strings for Changing Key Bindings
For backward compatibility, you can still use strings to represent key sequences. Thus
you can use commands like the following:
;;; Bind end-of-line to C-f
(global-set-key "\C-f" ’end-of-line)
Note, however, that in some cases you may be binding more than one key sequence by
using a single command. This situation can arise because in ASCII, C-i and hTABi have the
same representation. Therefore, when Emacs sees:
(global-set-key "\C-i" ’end-of-line)
it is unclear whether the user intended to bind C-i or hTABi. The solution XEmacs
adopts is to bind both of these key sequences.
After binding a command to two key sequences with a form like:
(define-key global-map "\^X\^I" ’command-1)
it is possible to redefine only one of those sequences like so:
(define-key global-map [(control x) (control i)] ’command-2)
(define-key global-map [(control x) tab] ’command-3)
This applies only when running under a window system. If you are talking to Emacs
through an ASCII-only channel, you do not get any of these features.
Here is a table of pairs of key sequences that behave in a similar fashion:
control
control
control
control
control
control
control
h
l
i
m
j
[
@
backspace
clear
tab
return
linefeed
escape
control space
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29.4.3 Disabling Commands
Disabling a command marks it as requiring confirmation before it can be executed. The
purpose of disabling a command is to prevent beginning users from executing it by accident
and being confused.
The direct mechanism for disabling a command is to have a non-nil disabled property
on the Lisp symbol for the command. These properties are normally set by the user’s init
file with Lisp expressions such as:
(put ’delete-region ’disabled t)
See Section 29.6 [Init File], page 311.
If the value of the disabled property is a string, that string is included in the message
printed when the command is used:
(put ’delete-region ’disabled
"Text deleted this way cannot be yanked back!\n")
You can disable a command either by editing the init file directly or with the command
M-x disable-command, which edits the init file for you. See Section 29.6 [Init File], page 311.
When you attempt to invoke a disabled command interactively in Emacs, a window is
displayed containing the command’s name, its documentation, and some instructions on
what to do next; then Emacs asks for input saying whether to execute the command as
requested, enable it and execute, or cancel it. If you decide to enable the command, you are
asked whether to do this permanently or just for the current session. Enabling permanently
works by automatically editing your init file. You can use M-x enable-command at any time
to enable any command permanently.
Whether a command is disabled is independent of what key is used to invoke it; it also
applies if the command is invoked using M-x. Disabling a command has no effect on calling
it as a function from Lisp programs.
29.5 The Syntax Table
All the Emacs commands which parse words or balance parentheses are controlled by
the syntax table. The syntax table specifies which characters are opening delimiters, which
are parts of words, which are string quotes, and so on. Actually, each major mode has
its own syntax table (though sometimes related major modes use the same one) which it
installs in each buffer that uses that major mode. The syntax table installed in the current
buffer is the one that all commands use, so we call it “the” syntax table. A syntax table is
a Lisp object, a vector of length 256 whose elements are numbers.
29.5.1 Information About Each Character
The syntax table entry for a character is a number that encodes six pieces of information:
• The syntactic class of the character, represented as a small integer
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• The matching delimiter, for delimiter characters only (the matching delimiter of ‘(’ is
‘)’, and vice versa)
• A flag saying whether the character is the first character of a two-character comment
starting sequence
• A flag saying whether the character is the second character of a two-character comment
starting sequence
• A flag saying whether the character is the first character of a two-character comment
ending sequence
• A flag saying whether the character is the second character of a two-character comment
ending sequence
The syntactic classes are stored internally as small integers, but are usually described
to or by the user with characters. For example, ‘(’ is used to specify the syntactic class
of opening delimiters. Here is a table of syntactic classes, with the characters that specify
them.
‘-’
The class of whitespace characters. Please don’t use the formerly advertised ,
which is not supported by GNU Emacs.
‘w’
The class of word-constituent characters.
‘_’
The class of characters that are part of symbol names but not words. This class
is represented by ‘_’ because the character ‘_’ has this class in both C and Lisp.
‘.’
The class of punctuation characters that do not fit into any other special class.
‘(’
The class of opening delimiters.
‘)’
The class of closing delimiters.
‘’’
The class of expression-adhering characters. These characters are part of a
symbol if found within or adjacent to one, and are part of a following expression if immediately preceding one, but are like whitespace if surrounded by
whitespace.
‘"’
The class of string-quote characters. They match each other in pairs, and the
characters within the pair all lose their syntactic significance except for the ‘\’
and ‘/’ classes of escape characters, which can be used to include a string-quote
inside the string.
‘$’
The class of self-matching delimiters. This is intended for TEX’s ‘$’, which is
used both to enter and leave math mode. Thus, a pair of matching ‘$’ characters
surround each piece of math mode TEX input. A pair of adjacent ‘$’ characters
act like a single one for purposes of matching.
‘/’
The class of escape characters that always just deny the following character its
special syntactic significance. The character after one of these escapes is always
treated as alphabetic.
‘\’
The class of C-style escape characters. In practice, these are treated just like
‘/’-class characters, because the extra possibilities for C escapes (such as being
followed by digits) have no effect on where the containing expression ends.
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‘<’
The class of comment-starting characters. Only single-character comment
starters (such as ‘;’ in Lisp mode) are represented this way.
‘>’
The class of comment-ending characters. Newline has this syntax in Lisp mode.
The characters flagged as part of two-character comment delimiters can have other syntactic functions most of the time. For example, ‘/’ and ‘*’ in C code, when found separately,
have nothing to do with comments. The comment-delimiter significance overrides when the
pair of characters occur together in the proper order. Only the list and sexp commands
use the syntax table to find comments; the commands specifically for comments have other
variables that tell them where to find comments. Moreover, the list and sexp commands
notice comments only if parse-sexp-ignore-comments is non-nil. This variable is set to
nil in modes where comment-terminator sequences are liable to appear where there is no
comment, for example, in Lisp mode where the comment terminator is a newline but not
every newline ends a comment.
29.5.2 Altering Syntax Information
It is possible to alter a character’s syntax table entry by storing a new number in the
appropriate element of the syntax table, but it would be hard to determine what number to
use. Emacs therefore provides a command that allows you to specify the syntactic properties
of a character in a convenient way.
M-x modify-syntax-entry is the command to change a character’s syntax. It can be
used interactively and is also used by major modes to initialize their own syntax tables. Its
first argument is the character to change. The second argument is a string that specifies
the new syntax. When called from Lisp code, there is a third, optional argument, which
specifies the syntax table in which to make the change. If not supplied, or if this command
is called interactively, the third argument defaults to the current buffer’s syntax table.
1. The first character in the string specifies the syntactic class. It is one of the characters
in the previous table (see Section 29.5.1 [Syntax Entry], page 308).
2. The second character is the matching delimiter. For a character that is not an opening or closing delimiter, this should be a space, and may be omitted if no following
characters are needed.
3. The remaining characters are flags. The flag characters allowed are:
‘1’
Flag this character as the first of a two-character comment starting sequence.
‘2’
Flag this character as the second of a two-character comment starting
sequence.
‘3’
Flag this character as the first of a two-character comment ending sequence.
‘4’
Flag this character as the second of a two-character comment ending sequence.
Use C-h s (describe-syntax) to display a description of the contents of the current
syntax table. The description of each character includes both the string you have to pass
to modify-syntax-entry to set up that character’s current syntax, and some English to
explain that string if necessary.
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29.6 The Init File
When you start Emacs, it normally loads either ‘.xemacs/init.el’ or the file ‘.emacs’
(whichever comes first) in your home directory. This file, if it exists, should contain Lisp
code. It is called your initialization file or init file. Use the command line switch ‘-q’ to
tell Emacs whether to load an init file (see Chapter 3 [Entering Emacs], page 37). Use the
command line switch ‘-user-init-file’ (see Section 3.2 [Command Switches], page 39)
to tell Emacs to load a different file instead of ‘~/.xemacs/init.el’/‘~/.emacs’.
When the init file is read, the variable user-init-file says which init file was loaded.
At some sites there is a default init file, which is the library named ‘default.el’, found
via the standard search path for libraries. The Emacs distribution contains no such library;
your site may create one for local customizations. If this library exists, it is loaded whenever
you start Emacs. But your init file, if any, is loaded first; if it sets inhibit-default-init
non-nil, then ‘default’ is not loaded.
If you have a large amount of code in your init file, you should byte-compile it to
‘~/.xemacs/init.elc’ or ‘~/.emacs.elc’.
29.6.1 Init File Syntax
The init file contains one or more Lisp function call expressions. Each consists of a
function name followed by arguments, all surrounded by parentheses. For example, (setq
fill-column 60) represents a call to the function setq which is used to set the variable
fill-column (see Section 21.6 [Filling], page 177) to 60.
The second argument to setq is an expression for the new value of the variable. This
can be a constant, a variable, or a function call expression. In the init file, constants are
used most of the time. They can be:
Numbers
Integers are written in decimal, with an optional initial minus sign.
If a sequence of digits is followed by a period and another sequence of digits, it
is interpreted as a floating point number.
The number prefixes ‘#b’, ‘#o’, and ‘#x’ are supported to represent numbers in
binary, octal, and hexadecimal notation (or radix).
Strings
Lisp string syntax is the same as C string syntax with a few extra features. Use
a double-quote character to begin and end a string constant.
Newlines and special characters may be present literally in strings. They can
also be represented as backslash sequences: ‘\n’ for newline, ‘\b’ for backspace,
‘\r’ for return, ‘\t’ for tab, ‘\f’ for formfeed (control-l), ‘\e’ for escape, ‘\\’ for
a backslash, ‘\"’ for a double-quote, or ‘\ooo’ for the character whose octal code
is ooo. Backslash and double-quote are the only characters for which backslash
sequences are mandatory.
You can use ‘\C-’ as a prefix for a control character, as in ‘\C-s’ for ASCII
Control-S, and ‘\M-’ as a prefix for a Meta character, as in ‘\M-a’ for Meta-A
or ‘\M-\C-a’ for Control-Meta-A.
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Characters
Lisp character constant syntax consists of a ‘?’ followed by either a character or
an escape sequence starting with ‘\’. Examples: ?x, ?\n, ?\", ?\). Note that
strings and characters are not interchangeable in Lisp; some contexts require
one and some contexts require the other.
True
t stands for ‘true’.
False
nil stands for ‘false’.
Other Lisp objects
Write a single-quote (’) followed by the Lisp object you want.
29.6.2 Init File Examples
Here are some examples of doing certain commonly desired things with Lisp expressions:
• Make hTABi in C mode just insert a tab if point is in the middle of a line.
(setq c-tab-always-indent nil)
Here we have a variable whose value is normally t for ‘true’ and the alternative is nil
for ‘false’.
• Make searches case sensitive by default (in all buffers that do not override this).
(setq-default case-fold-search nil)
This sets the default value, which is effective in all buffers that do not have local values
for the variable. Setting case-fold-search with setq affects only the current buffer’s
local value, which is probably not what you want to do in an init file.
• Make Text mode the default mode for new buffers.
(setq default-major-mode ’text-mode)
Note that text-mode is used because it is the command for entering the mode we want.
A single-quote is written before it to make a symbol constant; otherwise, text-mode
would be treated as a variable name.
• Turn on Auto Fill mode automatically in Text mode and related modes.
(setq text-mode-hook
’(lambda () (auto-fill-mode 1)))
Here we have a variable whose value should be a Lisp function. The function we supply
is a list starting with lambda, and a single quote is written in front of it to make it (for
the purpose of this setq) a list constant rather than an expression. Lisp functions are
not explained here; for mode hooks it is enough to know that (auto-fill-mode 1) is
an expression that will be executed when Text mode is entered. You could replace it
with any other expression that you like, or with several expressions in a row.
(setq text-mode-hook ’turn-on-auto-fill)
This is another way to accomplish the same result. turn-on-auto-fill is a symbol
whose function definition is (lambda () (auto-fill-mode 1)).
• Load the installed Lisp library named ‘foo’ (actually a file ‘foo.elc’ or ‘foo.el’ in a
standard Emacs directory).
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•
•
•
•
•
•
•
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(load "foo")
When the argument to load is a relative pathname, not starting with ‘/’ or ‘~’, load
searches the directories in load-path (see Section 23.3.1 [Loading], page 211).
Load the compiled Lisp file ‘foo.elc’ from your home directory.
(load "~/foo.elc")
Here an absolute file name is used, so no searching is done.
Rebind the key C-x l to run the function make-symbolic-link.
(global-set-key "\C-xl" ’make-symbolic-link)
or
(define-key global-map "\C-xl" ’make-symbolic-link)
Note once again the single-quote used to refer to the symbol make-symbolic-link
instead of its value as a variable.
Do the same thing for C mode only.
(define-key c-mode-map "\C-xl" ’make-symbolic-link)
Bind the function key hF1i to a command in C mode. Note that the names of function
keys must be lower case.
(define-key c-mode-map ’f1 ’make-symbolic-link)
Bind the shifted version of hF1i to a command.
(define-key c-mode-map ’(shift f1) ’make-symbolic-link)
Redefine all keys which now run next-line in Fundamental mode to run forward-line
instead.
(substitute-key-definition ’next-line ’forward-line
global-map)
Make C-x C-v undefined.
(global-unset-key "\C-x\C-v")
One reason to undefine a key is so that you can make it a prefix. Simply defining
C-x C-v anything would make C-x C-v a prefix, but C-x C-v must be freed of any
non-prefix definition first.
Make ‘$’ have the syntax of punctuation in Text mode. Note the use of a character
constant for ‘$’.
(modify-syntax-entry ?\$ "." text-mode-syntax-table)
Enable the use of the command eval-expression without confirmation.
(put ’eval-expression ’disabled nil)
29.6.3 Terminal-Specific Initialization
Each terminal type can have a Lisp library to be loaded into Emacs when it is run on that
type of terminal. For a terminal type named termtype, the library is called ‘term/termtype’
and it is found by searching the directories load-path as usual and trying the suffixes ‘.elc’
and ‘.el’. Normally it appears in the subdirectory ‘term’ of the directory where most Emacs
libraries are kept.
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The usual purpose of the terminal-specific library is to define the escape sequences used
by the terminal’s function keys using the library ‘keypad.el’. See the file ‘term/vt100.el’
for an example of how this is done.
When the terminal type contains a hyphen, only the part of the name before the first
hyphen is significant in choosing the library name. Thus, terminal types ‘aaa-48’ and
‘aaa-30-rv’ both use the library ‘term/aaa’. The code in the library can use (getenv
"TERM") to find the full terminal type name.
The library’s name is constructed by concatenating the value of the variable term-fileprefix and the terminal type. Your init file can prevent the loading of the terminal-specific
library by setting term-file-prefix to nil. See Section 29.6 [Init File], page 311.
The value of the variable term-setup-hook, if not nil, is called as a function of no
arguments at the end of Emacs initialization, after both your init file and any terminalspecific library have been read. See Section 29.6 [Init File], page 311. You can set the
value in the init file to override part of any of the terminal-specific libraries and to define
initializations for terminals that do not have a library.
29.7 Changing the Bell Sound
You can now change how the audible bell sounds using the variable sound-alist.
sound-alist’s value is an list associating symbols with, among other things, strings of
audio-data. When ding is called with one of the symbols, the associated sound data is
played instead of the standard beep. This only works if you are logged in on the console of
a machine with audio hardware. To listen to a sound of the provided type, call the function
play-sound with the argument sound. You can also set the volume of the sound with the
optional argument volume.
Each element of sound-alist is a list describing a sound. The first element of the list
is the name of the sound being defined. Subsequent elements of the list are alternating
keyword/value pairs:
sound
A string of raw sound data, or the name of another sound to play. The symbol
t here means use the default X beep.
volume
An integer from 0-100, defaulting to bell-volume.
pitch
If using the default X beep, the pitch (Hz) to generate.
duration
If using the default X beep, the duration (milliseconds).
For compatibility, elements of ‘sound-alist’ may also be of the form:
( sound-name . <sound> )
( sound-name <volume> <sound> )
You should probably add things to this list by calling the function load-sound-file.
Note that you can only play audio data if running on the console screen of a machine with
audio hardware which emacs understands, which at this time means a Sun SparcStation,
SGI, or HP9000s700.
Also note that the pitch, duration, and volume options are available everywhere, but
most X servers ignore the ‘pitch’ option.
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The variable bell-volume should be an integer from 0 to 100, with 100 being loudest,
which controls how loud the sounds emacs makes should be. Elements of the sound-alist
may override this value. This variable applies to the standard X bell sound as well as sound
files.
If the symbol t is in place of a sound-string, Emacs uses the default X beep. This allows
you to define beep-types of different volumes even when not running on the console.
You can add things to this list by calling the function load-sound-file, which reads in
an audio-file and adds its data to the sound-alist. You can specify the sound with the soundname argument and the file into which the sounds are loaded with the filename argument.
The optional volume argument sets the volume.
load-sound-file (filename sound-name &optional volume)
To load and install some sound files as beep-types, use the function load-defaultsounds (note that this only works if you are on display 0 of a machine with audio hardware).
The following beep-types are used by Emacs itself. Other Lisp packages may use other
beep types, but these are the ones that the C kernel of Emacs uses.
auto-save-error
An auto-save does not succeed
command-error
The Emacs command loop catches an error
undefined-key
You type a key that is undefined
undefined-click
You use an undefined mouse-click combination
no-completion
Completion was not possible
y-or-n-p
You type something other than the required y or n
yes-or-no-p
You type something other than yes or no
29.8 Faces
XEmacs has objects called extents and faces. An extent is a region of text and a face
is a collection of textual attributes, such as fonts and colors. Every extent is displayed in
some face; therefore, changing the properties of a face immediately updates the display of
all associated extents. Faces can be frame-local: you can have a region of text that displays
with completely different attributes when its buffer is viewed from a different X window.
The display attributes of faces may be specified either in Lisp or through the X resource
manager.
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29.8.1 Customizing Faces
You can change the face of an extent with the functions in this section. All the functions
prompt for a face as an argument; use completion for a list of possible values.
M-x invert-face
Swap the foreground and background colors of the given face.
M-x make-face-bold
Make the font of the given face bold. When called from a program, returns nil
if this is not possible.
M-x make-face-bold-italic
Make the font of the given face bold italic. When called from a program, returns
nil if not possible.
M-x make-face-italic
Make the font of the given face italic. When called from a program, returns
nil if not possible.
M-x make-face-unbold
Make the font of the given face non-bold. When called from a program, returns
nil if not possible.
M-x make-face-unitalic
Make the font of the given face non-italic. When called from a program, returns
nil if not possible.
M-x make-face-larger
Make the font of the given face a little larger. When called from a program,
returns nil if not possible.
M-x make-face-smaller
Make the font of the given face a little smaller. When called from a program,
returns nil if not possible.
M-x set-face-background
Change the background color of the given face.
M-x set-face-background-pixmap
Change the background pixmap of the given face.
M-x set-face-font
Change the font of the given face.
M-x set-face-foreground
Change the foreground color of the given face.
M-x set-face-underline-p
Change whether the given face is underlined.
You can exchange the foreground and background color of the selected face with the
function invert-face. If the face does not specify both foreground and background, then
its foreground and background are set to the background and foreground of the default face.
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When calling this from a program, you can supply the optional argument frame to specify
which frame is affected; otherwise, all frames are affected.
You can set the background color of the specified face with the function set-facebackground. The argument color should be a string, the name of a color. When called
from a program, if the optional frame argument is provided, the face is changed only in
that frame; otherwise, it is changed in all frames.
You can set the background pixmap of the specified face with the function set-facebackground-pixmap. The pixmap argument name should be a string, the name of a file of
pixmap data. The directories listed in the x-bitmap-file-path variable are searched. The
bitmap may also be a list of the form (width height data), where width and height are the
size in pixels, and data is a string containing the raw bits of the bitmap. If the optional
frame argument is provided, the face is changed only in that frame; otherwise, it is changed
in all frames.
The variable x-bitmap-file-path takes as a value a list of the directories in which
X bitmap files may be found. If the value is nil, the list is initialized from the
*bitmapFilePath resource.
If the environment variable XBMLANGPATH is set, then it is consulted before the
x-bitmap-file-path variable.
You can set the font of the specified face with the function set-face-font. The font
argument should be a string, the name of a font. When called from a program, if the
optional frame argument is provided, the face is changed only in that frame; otherwise, it
is changed in all frames.
You can set the foreground color of the specified face with the function set-faceforeground. The argument color should be a string, the name of a color. If the optional
frame argument is provided, the face is changed only in that frame; otherwise, it is changed
in all frames.
You can set underline the specified face with the function set-face-underline-p. The
argument underline-p can be used to make underlining an attribute of the face or not. If
the optional frame argument is provided, the face is changed only in that frame; otherwise,
it is changed in all frames.
29.9 Frame Components
You can control the presence and position of most frame components, such as the
menubar, toolbars, and gutters.
This section is not written yet. Try the Lisp Reference Manual: hundefinedi [Menubar],
page hundefinedi, hundefinedi [Toolbar Intro], page hundefinedi, and hundefinedi [Gutter
Intro], page hundefinedi.
29.10 X Resources
Historically, XEmacs has used the X resource application class ‘Emacs’ for its resources.
Unfortunately, GNU Emacs uses the same application class, and resources are not compat-
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ible between the two Emacsen. This sharing of the application class often leads to trouble
if you want to run both variants.
Starting with XEmacs 21, XEmacs uses the class ‘XEmacs’ if it finds any XEmacs resources in the resource database when the X connection is initialized. Otherwise, it will use
the class ‘Emacs’ for backwards compatibility. The variable x-emacs-application-class may
be consulted to determine the application class being used.
The examples in this section assume the application class is ‘Emacs’.
The Emacs resources are generally set per-frame. Each Emacs frame can have its own
name or the same name as another, depending on the name passed to the make-frame
function.
You can specify resources for all frames with the syntax:
Emacs*parameter: value
or
Emacs*EmacsFrame.parameter:value
You can specify resources for a particular frame with the syntax:
Emacs*FRAME-NAME.parameter: value
29.10.1 Geometry Resources
To make the default size of all Emacs frames be 80 columns by 55 lines, do this:
Emacs*EmacsFrame.geometry: 80x55
To set the geometry of a particular frame named ‘fred’, do this:
Emacs*fred.geometry: 80x55
Important! Do not use the following syntax:
Emacs*geometry: 80x55
You should never use *geometry with any X application. It does not say "make the
geometry of Emacs be 80 columns by 55 lines." It really says, "make Emacs and all subwindows thereof be 80x55 in whatever units they care to measure in." In particular, that is
both telling the Emacs text pane to be 80x55 in characters, and telling the menubar pane
to be 80x55 pixels, which is surely not what you want.
As a special case, this geometry specification also works (and sets the default size of all
Emacs frames to 80 columns by 55 lines):
Emacs.geometry: 80x55
since that is the syntax used with most other applications (since most other applications
have only one top-level window, unlike Emacs). In general, however, the top-level shell (the
unmapped ApplicationShell widget named ‘Emacs’ that is the parent of the shell widgets
that actually manage the individual frames) does not have any interesting resources on it,
and you should set the resources on the frames instead.
The -geometry command-line argument sets only the geometry of the initial frame
created by Emacs.
A more complete explanation of geometry-handling is
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• The -geometry command-line option sets the Emacs.geometry resource, that is, the
geometry of the ApplicationShell.
• For the first frame created, the size of the frame is taken from the ApplicationShell if
it is specified, otherwise from the geometry of the frame.
• For subsequent frames, the order is reversed: First the frame, and then the ApplicationShell.
• For the first frame created, the position of the frame is taken from the ApplicationShell
(Emacs.geometry) if it is specified, otherwise from the geometry of the frame.
• For subsequent frames, the position is taken only from the frame, and never from the
ApplicationShell.
This is rather complicated, but it does seem to provide the most intuitive behavior with
respect to the default sizes and positions of frames created in various ways.
29.10.2 Iconic Resources
Analogous to -geometry, the -iconic command-line option sets the iconic flag of the
ApplicationShell (Emacs.iconic) and always applies to the first frame created regardless
of its name. However, it is possible to set the iconic flag on particular frames (by name) by
using the Emacs*FRAME-NAME.iconic resource.
29.10.3 Resource List
Emacs frames accept the following resources:
geometry (class Geometry): string
Initial geometry for the frame. See Section 29.10.1 [Geometry Resources],
page 318, for a complete discussion of how this works.
iconic (class Iconic): boolean
Whether this frame should appear in the iconified state.
internalBorderWidth (class InternalBorderWidth): int
How many blank pixels to leave between the text and the edge of the window.
interline (class Interline): int
How many pixels to leave between each line (may not be implemented).
menubar (class Menubar): boolean
Whether newly-created frames should initially have a menubar. Set to true by
default.
initiallyUnmapped (class InitiallyUnmapped): boolean
Whether XEmacs should leave the initial frame unmapped when it starts up.
This is useful if you are starting XEmacs as a server (e.g. in conjunction with
gnuserv or the external client widget). You can also control this with the unmapped command-line option.
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barCursor (class BarColor): boolean
Whether the cursor should be displayed as a bar, or the traditional box.
cursorColor (class CursorColor): color-name
The color of the text cursor.
scrollBarWidth (class ScrollBarWidth): integer
How wide the vertical scrollbars should be, in pixels; 0 means no vertical scrollbars. You can also use a resource specification of the form *scrollbar.width,
or the usual toolkit scrollbar resources: *XmScrollBar.width (Motif), *XlwScrollBar.width
(Lucid), or *Scrollbar.thickness (Athena). We don’t recommend that you
use the toolkit resources, though, because they’re dependent on how exactly
your particular build of XEmacs was configured.
scrollBarHeight (class ScrollBarHeight): integer
How high the horizontal scrollbars should be, in pixels; 0 means no horizontal scrollbars. You can also use a resource specification of the form
*scrollbar.height, or the usual toolkit scrollbar resources: *XmScrollBar.height
(Motif), *XlwScrollBar.height (Lucid), or *Scrollbar.thickness (Athena).
We don’t recommend that you use the toolkit resources, though, because they’re
dependent on how exactly your particular build of XEmacs was configured.
scrollBarPlacement (class ScrollBarPlacement): string
Where the horizontal and vertical scrollbars should be positioned. This should
be one of the four strings ‘BOTTOM_LEFT’, ‘BOTTOM_RIGHT’, ‘TOP_LEFT’, and
‘TOP_RIGHT’. Default is ‘BOTTOM_RIGHT’ for the Motif and Lucid scrollbars and
‘BOTTOM_LEFT’ for the Athena scrollbars.
topToolBarHeight (class TopToolBarHeight): integer
bottomToolBarHeight (class BottomToolBarHeight): integer
leftToolBarWidth (class LeftToolBarWidth): integer
rightToolBarWidth (class RightToolBarWidth): integer
Height and width of the four possible toolbars.
topToolBarShadowColor (class TopToolBarShadowColor): color-name
bottomToolBarShadowColor (class BottomToolBarShadowColor): color-name
Color of the top and bottom shadows for the toolbars. NOTE: These resources
do not have anything to do with the top and bottom toolbars (i.e. the toolbars
at the top and bottom of the frame)! Rather, they affect the top and bottom
shadows around the edges of all four kinds of toolbars.
topToolBarShadowPixmap (class TopToolBarShadowPixmap): pixmap-name
bottomToolBarShadowPixmap (class BottomToolBarShadowPixmap): pixmap-name
Pixmap of the top and bottom shadows for the toolbars. If set, these resources
override the corresponding color resources. NOTE: These resources do not have
anything to do with the top and bottom toolbars (i.e. the toolbars at the top
and bottom of the frame)! Rather, they affect the top and bottom shadows
around the edges of all four kinds of toolbars.
toolBarShadowThickness (class ToolBarShadowThickness): integer
Thickness of the shadows around the toolbars, in pixels.
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visualBell (class VisualBell): boolean
Whether XEmacs should flash the screen rather than making an audible beep.
bellVolume (class BellVolume): integer
Volume of the audible beep.
useBackingStore (class UseBackingStore): boolean
Whether XEmacs should set the backing-store attribute of the X windows it
creates. This increases the memory usage of the X server but decreases the
amount of X traffic necessary to update the screen, and is useful when the
connection to the X server goes over a low-bandwidth line such as a modem
connection.
Emacs devices accept the following resources:
textPointer (class Cursor): cursor-name
The cursor to use when the mouse is over text. This resource is used to initialize
the variable x-pointer-shape.
selectionPointer (class Cursor): cursor-name
The cursor to use when the mouse is over a selectable text region (an extent with
the ‘highlight’ property; for example, an Info cross-reference). This resource
is used to initialize the variable x-selection-pointer-shape.
spacePointer (class Cursor): cursor-name
The cursor to use when the mouse is over a blank space in a buffer (that is,
after the end of a line or after the end-of-file). This resource is used to initialize
the variable x-nontext-pointer-shape.
modeLinePointer (class Cursor): cursor-name
The cursor to use when the mouse is over a modeline. This resource is used to
initialize the variable x-mode-pointer-shape.
gcPointer (class Cursor): cursor-name
The cursor to display when a garbage-collection is in progress. This resource is
used to initialize the variable x-gc-pointer-shape.
scrollbarPointer (class Cursor): cursor-name
The cursor to use when the mouse is over the scrollbar. This resource is used
to initialize the variable x-scrollbar-pointer-shape.
pointerColor (class Foreground): color-name
pointerBackground (class Background): color-name
The foreground and background colors of the mouse cursor. These resources are
used to initialize the variables x-pointer-foreground-color and x-pointerbackground-color.
29.10.4 Face Resources
The attributes of faces are also per-frame. They can be specified as:
Emacs.FACE_NAME.parameter: value
or
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Emacs*FRAME_NAME.FACE_NAME.parameter: value
Faces accept the following resources:
attributeFont (class AttributeFont): font-name
The font of this face.
attributeForeground (class AttributeForeground): color-name
attributeBackground (class AttributeBackground): color-name
The foreground and background colors of this face.
attributeBackgroundPixmap (class AttributeBackgroundPixmap): file-name
The name of an xbm file (or xpm file, if your version of Emacs supports xpm),
to use as a background stipple.
attributeUnderline (class AttributeUnderline): boolean
Whether text in this face should be underlined.
All text is displayed in some face, defaulting to the face named default. To set the font
of normal text, use Emacs*default.attributeFont. To set it in the frame named fred,
use Emacs*fred.default.attributeFont.
These are the names of the predefined faces:
default
Everything inherits from this.
bold
If this is not specified in the resource database, Emacs tries to find a bold
version of the font of the default face.
italic
If this is not specified in the resource database, Emacs tries to find an italic
version of the font of the default face.
bold-italic
If this is not specified in the resource database, Emacs tries to find a bold-italic
version of the font of the default face.
modeline
This is the face that the modeline is displayed in. If not specified in the resource
database, it is determined from the default face by reversing the foreground and
background colors.
highlight
This is the face that highlighted extents (for example, Info cross-references and
possible completions, when the mouse passes over them) are displayed in.
left-margin
right-margin
These are the faces that the left and right annotation margins are displayed in.
zmacs-region
This is the face that mouse selections are displayed in.
isearch
This is the face that the matched text being searched for is displayed in.
info-node
This is the face of info menu items. If unspecified, it is copied from bolditalic.
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info-xref
This is the face of info cross-references. If unspecified, it is copied from bold.
(Note that, when the mouse passes over a cross-reference, the cross-reference’s
face is determined from a combination of the info-xref and highlight faces.)
Other packages might define their own faces; to see a list of all faces, use any of the
interactive face-manipulation commands such as set-face-font and type ‘?’ when you are
prompted for the name of a face.
If the bold, italic, and bold-italic faces are not specified in the resource database,
then XEmacs attempts to derive them from the font of the default face. It can only succeed
at this if you have specified the default font using the XLFD (X Logical Font Description)
format, which looks like
*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-*-*
If you use any of the other, less strict font name formats, some of which look like
lucidasanstypewriter-12
fixed
9x13
then XEmacs won’t be able to guess the names of the bold and italic versions. All X
fonts can be referred to via XLFD-style names, so you should use those forms. See the man
pages for ‘X(1)’, ‘xlsfonts(1)’, and ‘xfontsel(1)’.
29.10.5 Widgets
There are several structural widgets between the terminal EmacsFrame widget and the
top level ApplicationShell; the exact names and types of these widgets change from release
to release (for example, they changed between 19.8 and 19.9, 19.9 and 19.10, and 19.10 and
19.12) and are subject to further change in the future, so you should avoid mentioning them
in your resource database. The above-mentioned syntaxes should be forward- compatible.
As of 19.13, the exact widget hierarchy is as follows:
INVOCATION-NAME
"shell"
"container"
FRAME-NAME
x-emacs-application-class "EmacsShell" "EmacsManager" "EmacsFrame"
where INVOCATION-NAME is the terminal component of the name of the XEmacs
executable (usually ‘xemacs’), and ‘x-emacs-application-class’ is generally ‘Emacs’.
29.10.6 Menubar Resources
As the menubar is implemented as a widget which is not a part of XEmacs proper, it
does not use the face mechanism for specifying fonts and colors: It uses whatever resources
are appropriate to the type of widget which is used to implement it.
If Emacs was compiled to use only the Lucid Motif-lookalike menu widgets, then one
way to specify the font of the menubar would be
Emacs*menubar*font: *-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-*-*
If both the Lucid Motif-lookalike menu widgets and X Font Sets are configured to allow
multilingual menubars, then one uses
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*menubar*FontSet:
-*-helvetica-bold-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*, \
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-120-*-jisx0208.1983-0
That would specify fonts for a Japanese menubar. Specifying only one XLFD is acceptable; specifying more than one for a given registry (language) is also allowed. When X
Font Sets are configured, some .font resources (eg, menubars) are ignored in favor of the
corresponding .fontSet resources.
If the Motif library is being used, then one would have to use
Emacs*menubar*fontList: *-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-*-*
because the Motif library uses the fontList resource name instead of font, which has
subtly different semantics.
The same is true of the scrollbars: They accept whichever resources are appropriate for
the toolkit in use.
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30 Correcting Mistakes (Yours or Emacs’s)
If you type an Emacs command you did not intend, the results are often mysterious. This
chapter discusses how you can undo your mistake or recover from a mysterious situation.
Emacs bugs and system crashes are also considered.
30.1 Quitting and Aborting
C-g
Quit. Cancel running or partially typed command.
C-]
Abort innermost recursive editing level and cancel the command which invoked
it (abort-recursive-edit).
M-x top-level
Abort all recursive editing levels that are currently executing.
C-x u
Cancel an already-executed command, usually (undo).
There are two ways of cancelling commands which are not finished executing: quitting
with C-g, and aborting with C-] or M-x top-level. Quitting is cancelling a partially typed
command or one which is already running. Aborting is getting out of a recursive editing
level and cancelling the command that invoked the recursive edit.
Quitting with C-g is used for getting rid of a partially typed command or a numeric
argument that you don’t want. It also stops a running command in the middle in a relatively
safe way, so you can use it if you accidentally start executing a command that takes a long
time. In particular, it is safe to quit out of killing; either your text will all still be there, or
it will all be in the kill ring (or maybe both). Quitting an incremental search does special
things documented under searching; in general, it may take two successive C-g characters
to get out of a search. C-g works by setting the variable quit-flag to t the instant C-g
is typed; Emacs Lisp checks this variable frequently and quits if it is non-nil. C-g is only
actually executed as a command if it is typed while Emacs is waiting for input.
If you quit twice in a row before the first C-g is recognized, you activate the “emergency
escape” feature and return to the shell. See Section 30.2.5 [Emergency Escape], page 327.
You can use C-] (abort-recursive-edit) to get out of a recursive editing level and
cancel the command which invoked it. Quitting with C-g does not do this, and could not
do this because it is used to cancel a partially typed command within the recursive editing
level. Both operations are useful. For example, if you are in the Emacs debugger (see
Section 23.5 [Lisp Debug], page 215) and have typed C-u 8 to enter a numeric argument,
you can cancel that argument with C-g and remain in the debugger.
The command M-x top-level is equivalent to “enough” C-] commands to get you out
of all the levels of recursive edits that you are in. C-] only gets you out one level at a time,
but M-x top-level goes out all levels at once. Both C-] and M-x top-level are like all
other commands and unlike C-g in that they are effective only when Emacs is ready for a
command. C-] is an ordinary key and has its meaning only because of its binding in the
keymap. See Section 28.5 [Recursive Edit], page 286.
C-x u (undo) is not strictly speaking a way of cancelling a command, but you can think
of it as cancelling a command already finished executing. See Chapter 5 [Undo], page 55.
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30.2 Dealing With Emacs Trouble
This section describes various conditions in which Emacs fails to work, and how to
recognize them and correct them.
30.2.1 Recursive Editing Levels
Recursive editing levels are important and useful features of Emacs, but they can seem
like malfunctions to the user who does not understand them.
If the mode line has square brackets ‘[...]’ around the parentheses that contain the
names of the major and minor modes, you have entered a recursive editing level. If you
did not do this on purpose, or if you don’t understand what that means, you should just
get out of the recursive editing level. To do so, type M-x top-level. This is called getting
back to top level. See Section 28.5 [Recursive Edit], page 286.
30.2.2 Garbage on the Screen
If the data on the screen looks wrong, the first thing to do is see whether the text is
actually wrong. Type C-l, to redisplay the entire screen. If the text appears correct after
this, the problem was entirely in the previous screen update.
Display updating problems often result from an incorrect termcap entry for the terminal
you are using. The file ‘etc/TERMS’ in the Emacs distribution gives the fixes for known
problems of this sort. ‘INSTALL’ contains general advice for these problems in one of its
sections. Very likely there is simply insufficient padding for certain display operations. To
investigate the possibility that you have this sort of problem, try Emacs on another terminal
made by a different manufacturer. If problems happen frequently on one kind of terminal
but not another kind, the real problem is likely to be a bad termcap entry, though it could
also be due to a bug in Emacs that appears for terminals that have or lack specific features.
30.2.3 Garbage in the Text
If C-l shows that the text is wrong, try undoing the changes to it using C-x u until it
gets back to a state you consider correct. Also try C-h l to find out what command you
typed to produce the observed results.
If a large portion of text appears to be missing at the beginning or end of the buffer,
check for the word ‘Narrow’ in the mode line. If it appears, the text is still present, but
marked off-limits. To make it visible again, type C-x n w. See Section 28.3 [Narrowing],
page 284.
30.2.4 Spontaneous Entry to Incremental Search
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If Emacs spontaneously displays ‘I-search:’ at the bottom of the screen, it means that
the terminal is sending C-s and C-q according to the poorly designed xon/xoff “flow control”
protocol. You should try to prevent this by putting the terminal in a mode where it will
not use flow control, or by giving it enough padding that it will never send a C-s. If that
cannot be done, you must tell Emacs to expect flow control to be used, until you can get a
properly designed terminal.
Information on how to do these things can be found in the file ‘INSTALL’ in the Emacs
distribution.
30.2.5 Emergency Escape
Because at times there have been bugs causing Emacs to loop without checking quitflag, a special feature causes Emacs to be suspended immediately if you type a second C-g
while the flag is already set, so you can always get out of XEmacs. Normally Emacs recognizes and clears quit-flag (and quits!) quickly enough to prevent this from happening.
When you resume Emacs after a suspension caused by multiple C-g, it asks two questions
before going back to what it had been doing:
Auto-save? (y or n)
Abort (and dump core)? (y or n)
Answer each one with y or n followed by hRETi.
Saying y to ‘Auto-save?’ causes immediate auto-saving of all modified buffers in which
auto-saving is enabled.
Saying y to ‘Abort (and dump core)?’ causes an illegal instruction to be executed, dumping core. This is to enable a wizard to figure out why Emacs was failing to quit in the first
place. Execution does not continue after a core dump. If you answer n, execution does
continue. With luck, Emacs will ultimately check quit-flag and quit normally. If not, and
you type another C-g, it is suspended again.
If Emacs is not really hung, but is just being slow, you may invoke the double C-g feature
without really meaning to. In that case, simply resume and answer n to both questions,
and you will arrive at your former state. Presumably the quit you requested will happen
soon.
The double-C-g feature may be turned off when Emacs is running under a window
system, since the window system always enables you to kill Emacs or to create another
window and run another program.
30.2.6 Help for Total Frustration
If using Emacs (or something else) becomes terribly frustrating and none of the techniques described above solve the problem, Emacs can still help you.
First, if the Emacs you are using is not responding to commands, type C-g C-g to get
out of it and then start a new one.
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Second, type M-x doctor hRETi.
The doctor will make you feel better. Each time you say something to the doctor, you
must end it by typing hRETi hRETi. This lets the doctor know you are finished.
30.3 Reporting Bugs
Sometimes you will encounter a bug in Emacs. Although we cannot promise we can or
will fix the bug, and we might not even agree that it is a bug, we want to hear about bugs
you encounter in case we do want to fix them.
To make it possible for us to fix a bug, you must report it. In order to do so effectively,
you must know when and how to do it.
30.3.1 When Is There a Bug
If Emacs executes an illegal instruction, or dies with an operating system error message
that indicates a problem in the program (as opposed to something like “disk full”), then it
is certainly a bug.
If Emacs updates the display in a way that does not correspond to what is in the buffer,
then it is certainly a bug. If a command seems to do the wrong thing but the problem
corrects itself if you type C-l, it is a case of incorrect display updating.
Taking forever to complete a command can be a bug, but you must make certain that
it was really Emacs’s fault. Some commands simply take a long time. Type C-g and then
C-h l to see whether the input Emacs received was what you intended to type; if the input
was such that you know it should have been processed quickly, report a bug. If you don’t
know whether the command should take a long time, find out by looking in the manual or
by asking for assistance.
If a command you are familiar with causes an Emacs error message in a case where its
usual definition ought to be reasonable, it is probably a bug.
If a command does the wrong thing, that is a bug. But be sure you know for certain
what it ought to have done. If you aren’t familiar with the command, or don’t know for
certain how the command is supposed to work, then it might actually be working right.
Rather than jumping to conclusions, show the problem to someone who knows for certain.
Finally, a command’s intended definition may not be best for editing with. This is a
very important sort of problem, but it is also a matter of judgment. Also, it is easy to come
to such a conclusion out of ignorance of some of the existing features. It is probably best
not to complain about such a problem until you have checked the documentation in the
usual ways, feel confident that you understand it, and know for certain that what you want
is not available. If you are not sure what the command is supposed to do after a careful
reading of the manual, check the index and glossary for any terms that may be unclear.
If you still do not understand, this indicates a bug in the manual. The manual’s job is to
make everything clear. It is just as important to report documentation bugs as program
bugs.
If the online documentation string of a function or variable disagrees with the manual,
one of them must be wrong, so report the bug.
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30.3.2 How to Report a Bug
When you decide that there is a bug, it is important to report it and to report it in a
way which is useful. What is most useful is an exact description of what commands you
type, starting with the shell command to run Emacs, until the problem happens. Always
include the version number of Emacs that you are using; type M-x emacs-version to print
this.
The most important principle in reporting a bug is to report facts, not hypotheses or
categorizations. It is always easier to report the facts, but people seem to prefer to strain to
posit explanations and report them instead. If the explanations are based on guesses about
how Emacs is implemented, they will be useless; we will have to try to figure out what the
facts must have been to lead to such speculations. Sometimes this is impossible. But in
any case, it is unnecessary work for us.
For example, suppose that you type C-x C-f /glorp/baz.ugh hRETi, visiting a file which
(you know) happens to be rather large, and Emacs prints out ‘I feel pretty today’. The
best way to report the bug is with a sentence like the preceding one, because it gives all the
facts and nothing but the facts.
Do not assume that the problem is due to the size of the file and say, “When I visit a
large file, Emacs prints out ‘I feel pretty today’.” This is what we mean by “guessing
explanations”. The problem is just as likely to be due to the fact that there is a ‘z’ in the
file name. If this is so, then when we got your report, we would try out the problem with
some “large file”, probably with no ‘z’ in its name, and not find anything wrong. There is
no way in the world that we could guess that we should try visiting a file with a ‘z’ in its
name.
Alternatively, the problem might be due to the fact that the file starts with exactly 25
spaces. For this reason, you should make sure that you inform us of the exact contents of
any file that is needed to reproduce the bug. What if the problem only occurs when you
have typed the C-x a l command previously? This is why we ask you to give the exact
sequence of characters you typed since starting to use Emacs.
You should not even say “visit a file” instead of C-x C-f unless you know that it makes
no difference which visiting command is used. Similarly, rather than saying “if I have three
characters on the line,” say “after I type hRETi A B C hRETi C-p,” if that is the way you
entered the text.
If you are not in Fundamental mode when the problem occurs, you should say what
mode you are in.
If the manifestation of the bug is an Emacs error message, it is important to report
not just the text of the error message but a backtrace showing how the Lisp program in
Emacs arrived at the error. To make the backtrace, you must execute the Lisp expression
(setq debug-on-error t) before the error happens (that is to say, you must execute that
expression and then make the bug happen). This causes the Lisp debugger to run (see
Section 23.5 [Lisp Debug], page 215). The debugger’s backtrace can be copied as text into
the bug report. This use of the debugger is possible only if you know how to make the bug
happen again. Do note the error message the first time the bug happens, so if you can’t
make it happen again, you can report at least that.
Check whether any programs you have loaded into the Lisp world, including your init
file, set any variables that may affect the functioning of Emacs. See Section 29.6 [Init
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File], page 311. Also, see whether the problem happens in a freshly started Emacs without
loading your init file (start Emacs with the -q switch to prevent loading the init file). If
the problem does not occur then, it is essential that we know the contents of any programs
that you must load into the Lisp world in order to cause the problem to occur.
If the problem does depend on an init file or other Lisp programs that are not part of
the standard Emacs system, then you should make sure it is not a bug in those programs
by complaining to their maintainers first. After they verify that they are using Emacs in a
way that is supposed to work, they should report the bug.
If you can tell us a way to cause the problem without visiting any files, please do so.
This makes it much easier to debug. If you do need files, make sure you arrange for us to
see their exact contents. For example, it can often matter whether there are spaces at the
ends of lines, or a newline after the last line in the buffer (nothing ought to care whether
the last line is terminated, but tell that to the bugs).
The easy way to record the input to Emacs precisely is to write a dribble file; execute
the Lisp expression:
(open-dribble-file "~/dribble")
using Meta-hESCi or from the ‘*scratch*’ buffer just after starting Emacs. From then on,
all Emacs input will be written in the specified dribble file until the Emacs process is killed.
For possible display bugs, it is important to report the terminal type (the value of environment variable TERM), the complete termcap entry for the terminal from ‘/etc/termcap’
(since that file is not identical on all machines), and the output that Emacs actually sent
to the terminal. The way to collect this output is to execute the Lisp expression:
(open-termscript "~/termscript")
using Meta-hESCi or from the ‘*scratch*’ buffer just after starting Emacs. From then on,
all output from Emacs to the terminal will be written in the specified termscript file as well,
until the Emacs process is killed. If the problem happens when Emacs starts up, put this
expression into your init file so that the termscript file will be open when Emacs displays
the screen for the first time. See Section 29.6 [Init File], page 311. Be warned: it is often
difficult, and sometimes impossible, to fix a terminal-dependent bug without access to a
terminal of the type that stimulates the bug.
The newsgroup ‘comp.emacs.xemacs’ may be used for bug reports, other discussions
and requests for assistance.
If you don’t have access to this newgroup, you can subscribe to the mailing list version:
the newsgroup is bidirectionally gatewayed into the mailing list ‘xemacs@xemacs.org’.
To be added or removed from this mailing list, send mail to ‘xemacs-request@xemacs.org’.
Do not send requests for addition to the mailing list itself.
The mailing lists and newsgroups are archived on our anonymous FTP server, ‘ftp.xemacs.org’,
and at various other archive sites around the net. You should also check the ‘FAQ’ in
‘/pub/xemacs’ on our anonymous FTP server. It provides some introductory information
and help for initial configuration problems.
XEmacs Features
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XEmacs Features
This section describes the difference between Emacs Version 18 and XEmacs.
General Changes
• XEmacs has a new vi emulation mode called “viper” mode. To start viper mode in
XEmacs, type the command M-x viper-mode. If you want XEmacs to automatically
put you in viper-mode all the time, include this line in your init file:
(viper-mode)
See Section 29.6 [Init File], page 311.
• Earlier versions of Emacs only allowed keybindings to ASCII character sequences.
XEmacs has greatly expanded this by allowing you to use a vector of key sequences
which are in turn composed of a modifier and a keysym. See Chapter 2 [Keystrokes],
page 23 for more information.
• The keymap data structure has been reimplemented to allow the use of a character
set larger than ASCII. Keymaps are no longer alists and/or vectors; they are a new
primary data type. Consequently, code which manipulated keymaps with list or array
manipulation functions will no longer work. It must use the functions define-key or
map-keymap and set-keymap-parent (the new keymap functions). See Section 29.4
[Key Bindings], page 303 for more information.
• Input and display of all ISO-8859-1 characters is supported.
• Multiple fonts, including variable-width fonts, and fonts of differing heights, are supported.
• There is a new ‘tags’ package and a new UNIX manual browsing package. They are
similar to earlier versions; for more information look at the source code.
• There is a new implementation of Dired, with many new features. The online info for
Dired, not the Dired node of Emacs info, provides more detail.
• GNUS (a network news reader), VM (an alternative mail reader), ILISP (a package
for interacting with inferior Lisp processes), ANGE-FTP (a package for making FTPaccessible files appear just like files on the local disk, even to Dired), Calendar (an
Emacs-based calendar and appointment- management tool), and W3 (an interface to
the World Wide Web) are a part of the XEmacs Lisp library. See the related documentation in the online info browser.
• Emacs now supports floating-point numbers.
• When you send mail, mail aliases are now expanded in the buffer. In earlier versions,
they were expanded after the mail-sending command was executed.
• The initial value of load-path is computed when Emacs starts up, instead of being
hardcoded in when Emacs is compiled. As a result, you can now move the Emacs
executable and Lisp library to a different location in the file system without having to
recompile.
• Any existing subdirectories of the Emacs Lisp directory are now added to the loadpath by default.
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• On some machines, you can change the audible bell using the sound-alist variable.
See Section 29.7 [Audible Bell], page 314 for more information.
• You can use multiple X windows to display multiple Emacs frames.
• You can use the X selection mechanism to copy material from other applications and
into other applications. You can also use all Emacs region commands on a region selected with the mouse. See Section 9.2 [Mouse Selection], page 76 for more information.
• By default, the variable zmacs-regions is set to highlight the region between point
and the mark. This unifies X selection and Emacs selection behavior.
• XEmacs has a menu bar for mouse-controlled operations in addition to keystrokes. See
Section 2.4 [Pull-down Menus], page 29.
• You can look in the file ‘/usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.11/etc/Emacs.ad’ for a list of
Emacs X resources. You can set these resources in your X environment to set your
preferences for color, fonts, location, and the size of XEmacs frames. Refer to your X
documentation for more information about resources.
New Commands and Variables
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
There are many new functions in XEmacs, and many existing functions whose semantics
have been expanded. Most of these are only of interest to the Emacs-Lisp programmer;
see the NEWS file C-h n for a complete list. What follows is a partial list of the new
interactive commands:
byte-compile-and-load-file and byte-compile-buffer byte-compile the contents
of a file or buffer.
The new conx function lets you generate random sentences for your amusement.
compile-defun compiles and evaluates the current top-level form.
find-this-file and find-this-file-other-window can be used interactively with
a prefix argument to switch to the filename at point in the buffer. find-this-fileother-window displays the file in another window.
Several new functions have been added that allow you to customize the color and
font attributes of a region of text: invert-face, make-face-bold, make-face-bolditalic, make-face-italic, make-face-unbold, make-face-unitalic, set-facebackground, set-face-background-pixmap, set-face-font, set-face-foreground,
and set-face-underline-p.
load-default-sounds and load-sound-file allow you to customize the audible bell
sound. load-default-sounds loads and installs sound files. load-sound-file reads
in audio files and adds them to the sound alist. play-sound plays the specified sound
type.
locate-library finds the file that the function load-library loads, and it displays
the file’s full pathname.
make-directory creates a directory, while remove-directory removes a directory.
mark-beginning-of-buffer and mark-end-of-buffer push the mark to the beginning or end of a buffer, respectively.
Several functions have been added that allow you to perform various editing, region, and window operations using the mouse: mouse-del-char, mouse-delete-
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window, mouse-keep-one-window, mouse-kill-line, mouse-line-length, mousescroll, mouse-select, mouse-select-and-split, mouse-set-mark, mouse-setpoint, mouse-track, mouse-track-adjust, mouse-track-and-copy-to-cutbuffer,
mouse-track-delete-and-insert, mouse-track-insert, and mouse-window-toregion.
• compare-windows takes an argument ignore-whitespace. The argument means ignore
changes in whitespace.
You can conditionalize your ‘.emacs’ file as follows so that XEmacs commands are
invoked only when you are in XEmacs:
(cond ((string-match "Lucid" emacs-version)
;;
;; Code for any version of Lucid Emacs or XEmacs goes here
;;
))
(cond ((and (string-match "XEmacs" emacs-version)
(or (> emacs-major-version 19)
(>= emacs-minor-version 12)))
;;
;; Code which requires XEmacs version 19.12 or newer goes here
;;
))
(cond ((>= emacs-major-version 19)
;;
;; Code for any vintage-19 emacs goes here
;;
))
(cond ((and (not (string-match "Lucid" emacs-version))
(= emacs-major-version 19))
;;
;; Code specific to FSF Emacs 19 (not XEmacs) goes here
;;
))
(cond ((< emacs-major-version 19)
;;
;; Code specific to emacs 18 goes here
;;
))
Alternatively, use ‘.xemacs/init.el’ for an init file. See Section 29.6 [Init File],
page 311.
Of particular interest for use in files are:
• add-menu lets you add a new menu to the menubar or a submenu to a pull-down
menu. add-menu-item, disable-menu-item, delete-menu-item, enable-menu-item,
and relabel-menu-item allow you to customize the XEmacs pull-down menus.
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• make-frame creates a new Emacs frame (X window).
These new variables are only present in XEmacs:
• minibuffer-confirm-incomplete prompts for confirmation in contexts where completingread allows answers that are not valid completions.
• Several variables have been added that allow you to customize the color and shape of
the mouse pointer: x-pointer-background-color, x-pointer-foreground-color,
x-mode-pointer-shape, x-pointer-shape, and
x-nontext-pointer-shape.
• zmacs-regions determines whether LISPM-style active regions should be used.
Changes in Key Bindings
XEmacs has the following new default function keybindings:
hHELPi
Same as C-h.
hUNDOi
Same as M-x undo.
hCUTi
Same as the Cut menu item; that is, it copies the selected text to the X Clipboard selection.
hCOPYi
Same as the Copy menu item.
hPASTEi
Same as the Paste menu item.
hPGUPi
Same as M-v.
hPGDNi
Same as C-v.
hHOMEi
Same as M-<.
hENDi
Same as M->.
hLEFT-ARROWi
Same as the function backward-char.
hRIGHT-ARROWi
Same as the function forward-char.
hUP-ARROWi
Same as the function previous-line.
hDOWN-ARROWi
Same as the function next-line.
Glossary
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Glossary
Abbrev
An abbrev is a text string which expands into a different text string when
present in the buffer. For example, you might define a short word as an abbrev
for a long phrase that you want to insert frequently. See Chapter 24 [Abbrevs],
page 233.
Aborting
Aborting means getting out of a recursive edit (q.v.). You can use the commands C-] and M-x top-level for this. See Section 30.1 [Quitting], page 325.
Auto Fill mode
Auto Fill mode is a minor mode in which text you insert is automatically broken
into lines of fixed width. See Section 21.6 [Filling], page 177.
Auto Saving
Auto saving means that Emacs automatically stores the contents of an Emacs
buffer in a specially-named file so the information will not be lost if the buffer is
lost due to a system error or user error. See Section 15.5 [Auto Save], page 123.
Backup File
A backup file records the contents that a file had before the current editing
session. Emacs creates backup files automatically to help you track down or
cancel changes you later regret. See Section 15.3.1 [Backup], page 120.
Balance Parentheses
Emacs can balance parentheses manually or automatically. Manual balancing
is done by the commands to move over balanced expressions (see Section 22.2
[Lists], page 182). Automatic balancing is done by blinking the parenthesis that
matches one just inserted (see Section 22.5 [Matching Parens], page 189).
Bind
To bind a key is to change its binding (q.v.). See Section 29.4.2 [Rebinding],
page 305.
Binding
A key gets its meaning in Emacs by having a binding which is a command
(q.v.), a Lisp function that is run when the key is typed. See Section 2.3
[Commands], page 28. Customization often involves rebinding a character to
a different command function. The bindings of all keys are recorded in the
keymaps (q.v.). See Section 29.4.1 [Keymaps], page 303.
Blank Lines
Blank lines are lines that contain only whitespace. Emacs has several commands
for operating on the blank lines in a buffer.
Buffer
The buffer is the basic editing unit; one buffer corresponds to one piece of text
being edited. You can have several buffers, but at any time you are editing
only one, the ‘selected’ buffer, though several buffers can be visible when you
are using multiple windows. See Chapter 16 [Buffers], page 139.
Buffer Selection History
Emacs keeps a buffer selection history which records how recently each Emacs
buffer was selected. Emacs uses this list when choosing a buffer to select. See
Chapter 16 [Buffers], page 139.
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C-
‘C’ in the name of a character is an abbreviation for Control. See Chapter 2
[Keystrokes], page 23.
C-M-
‘C-M-’ in the name of a character is an abbreviation for Control-Meta. See
Chapter 2 [Keystrokes], page 23.
Case Conversion
Case conversion means changing text from upper case to lower case or vice
versa. See Section 21.7 [Case], page 180, for the commands for case conversion.
Characters
Characters form the contents of an Emacs buffer; also, Emacs commands are
invoked by keys (q.v.), which are sequences of one or more characters. See
Chapter 2 [Keystrokes], page 23.
Command A command is a Lisp function specially defined to be able to serve as a key
binding in Emacs. When you type a key (q.v.), Emacs looks up its binding
(q.v.) in the relevant keymaps (q.v.) to find the command to run. See Section 2.3
[Commands], page 28.
Command Name
A command name is the name of a Lisp symbol which is a command (see
Section 2.3 [Commands], page 28). You can invoke any command by its name
using M-x (see Chapter 7 [M-x], page 65).
Comments
A comment is text in a program which is intended only for the people reading
the program, and is marked specially so that it will be ignored when the program
is loaded or compiled. Emacs offers special commands for creating, aligning,
and killing comments. See Section 22.6 [Comments], page 190.
Compilation
Compilation is the process of creating an executable program from source code.
Emacs has commands for compiling files of Emacs Lisp code (see Section 23.3
[Lisp Libraries], page 211) and programs in C and other languages (see Section 23.1 [Compilation], page 209).
Complete Key
A complete key is a character or sequence of characters which, when typed by
the user, fully specifies one action to be performed by Emacs. For example, X
and Control-f and Control-x m are keys. Keys derive their meanings from
being bound (q.v.) to commands (q.v.). Thus, X is conventionally bound to a
command to insert ‘X’ in the buffer; C-x m is conventionally bound to a command
to begin composing a mail message. See Chapter 2 [Keystrokes], page 23.
Completion
When Emacs automatically fills an abbreviation for a name into the entire
name, that process is called completion. Completion is done for minibuffer
(q.v.) arguments when the set of possible valid inputs is known; for example,
on command names, buffer names, and file names. Completion occurs when
you type hTABi, hSPCi, or hRETi. See Section 6.3 [Completion], page 59.
Glossary
337
Continuation Line
When a line of text is longer than the width of the frame, it takes up more
than one screen line when displayed. We say that the text line is continued,
and all screen lines used for it after the first are called continuation lines. See
Chapter 4 [Basic Editing], page 47.
Control-Character
ASCII characters with octal codes 0 through 037, and also code 0177, do not
have graphic images assigned to them. These are the control characters. Any
control character can be typed by holding down the hCTRLi key and typing some
other character; some have special keys on the keyboard. hRETi, hTABi, hESCi,
hLFDi, and hDELi are all control characters. See Chapter 2 [Keystrokes], page 23.
Copyleft
A copyleft is a notice giving the public legal permission to redistribute a program
or other work of art. Copylefts are used by leftists to enrich the public just as
copyrights are used by rightists to gain power over the public.
Current Buffer
The current buffer in Emacs is the Emacs buffer on which most editing commands operate. You can select any Emacs buffer as the current one. See
Chapter 16 [Buffers], page 139.
Current Line
The line point is on (see Section 1.1 [Point], page 14).
Current Paragraph
The paragraph that point is in. If point is between paragraphs, the current
paragraph is the one that follows point. See Section 21.4 [Paragraphs], page 176.
Current Defun
The defun (q.v.) that point is in. If point is between defuns, the current defun
is the one that follows point. See Section 22.3 [Defuns], page 184.
Cursor
The cursor is the rectangle on the screen which indicates the position called
point (q.v.) at which insertion and deletion takes place. The cursor is on or
under the character that follows point. Often people speak of ‘the cursor’ when,
strictly speaking, they mean ‘point’. See Chapter 4 [Basic Editing], page 47.
Customization
Customization is making minor changes in the way Emacs works. It is often
done by setting variables (see Section 29.2 [Variables], page 291) or by rebinding
keys (see Section 29.4.1 [Keymaps], page 303).
Default Argument
The default for an argument is the value that is used if you do not specify
one. When Emacs prompts you in the minibuffer for an argument, the default
argument is used if you just type hRETi. See Chapter 6 [Minibuffer], page 57.
Default Directory
When you specify a file name that does not start with ‘/’ or ‘~’, it is interpreted
relative to the current buffer’s default directory. See Section 6.1 [Minibuffer
File], page 57.
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Defun
A defun is a list at the top level of parenthesis or bracket structure in a program.
It is so named because most such lists in Lisp programs are calls to the Lisp
function defun. See Section 22.3 [Defuns], page 184.
hDELi
The hDELi character runs the command that deletes one character of text. See
Chapter 4 [Basic Editing], page 47.
Deletion
Deleting text means erasing it without saving it. Emacs deletes text only when
it is expected not to be worth saving (all whitespace, or only one character).
The alternative is killing (q.v.). See Section 10.1 [Killing], page 79.
Deletion of Files
Deleting a file means removing it from the file system. See Section 15.10 [Misc
File Ops], page 137.
Deletion of Messages
Deleting a message means flagging it to be eliminated from your mail file. Until
the mail file is expunged, you can undo this by undeleting the message.
Deletion of Frames
When working under the multi-frame X-based version of XEmacs, you can
delete individual frames using the Close menu item from the File menu.
Deletion of Windows
When you delete a subwindow of an Emacs frame, you eliminate it from the
frame. Other windows expand to use up the space. The deleted window can
never come back, but no actual text is lost. See Chapter 17 [Windows], page 145.
Directory
Files in the Unix file system are grouped into file directories. See Section 15.7
[Directories], page 133.
Dired
Dired is the Emacs facility that displays the contents of a file directory and
allows you to “edit the directory”, performing operations on the files in the
directory. See Section 15.9 [Dired], page 135.
Disabled Command
A disabled command is one that you may not run without special confirmation.
Commands are usually disabled because they are confusing for beginning users.
See Section 29.4.3 [Disabling], page 308.
Dribble File
A file into which Emacs writes all the characters that the user types on the
keyboard. Dribble files are used to make a record for debugging Emacs bugs.
Emacs does not make a dribble file unless you tell it to. See Section 30.3 [Bugs],
page 328.
Echo Area The area at the bottom of the Emacs frame which is used for echoing the
arguments to commands, for asking questions, and for printing brief messages
(including error messages). See Section 1.2 [Echo Area], page 14.
Echoing
Echoing refers to acknowledging the receipt of commands by displaying them
(in the echo area). Emacs never echoes single-character keys; longer keys echo
only if you pause while typing them.
Glossary
Error
339
An error occurs when an Emacs command cannot execute in the current circumstances. When an error occurs, execution of the command stops (unless the
command has been programmed to do otherwise) and Emacs reports the error
by printing an error message (q.v.). Type-ahead is discarded. Then Emacs is
ready to read another editing command.
Error Messages
Error messages are single lines of output printed by Emacs when the user asks
for something impossible to do (such as killing text forward when point is at
the end of the buffer). They appear in the echo area, accompanied by a beep.
hESCi
is a character used as a prefix for typing Meta characters on keyboards
lacking a hMETAi key. Unlike the hMETAi key (which, like the hSHIFTi key, is held
down while another character is typed), the hESCi key is pressed and released,
and applies to the next character typed.
hESCi
Fill Prefix The fill prefix is a string that Emacs enters at the beginning of each line when
it performs filling. It is not regarded as part of the text to be filled. See
Section 21.6 [Filling], page 177.
Filling
Filling text means moving text from line to line so that all the lines are approximately the same length. See Section 21.6 [Filling], page 177.
Frame
When running Emacs on a TTY terminal, “frame” means the terminal’s screen.
When running Emacs under X, you can have multiple frames, each corresponding to a top-level X window and each looking like the screen on a TTY. Each
frame contains one or more non-overlapping Emacs windows (possibly with associated scrollbars, under X), an echo area, and (under X) possibly a menubar,
toolbar, and/or gutter.
Global
Global means ‘independent of the current environment; in effect
throughout Emacs’. It is the opposite of local (q.v.). Examples of the use of
‘global’ appear below.
Global Abbrev
A global definition of an abbrev (q.v.) is effective in all major modes that do
not have local (q.v.) definitions for the same abbrev. See Chapter 24 [Abbrevs],
page 233.
Global Keymap
The global keymap (q.v.) contains key bindings that are in effect unless local key
bindings in a major mode’s local keymap (q.v.) override them.See Section 29.4.1
[Keymaps], page 303.
Global Substitution
Global substitution means replacing each occurrence of one string by another
string through a large amount of text. See Section 13.7 [Replace], page 106.
Global Variable
The global value of a variable (q.v.) takes effect in all buffers that do not
have their own local (q.v.) values for the variable. See Section 29.2 [Variables],
page 291.
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Graphic Character
Graphic characters are those assigned pictorial images rather than just names.
All the non-Meta (q.v.) characters except for the Control (q.v.) character are
graphic characters. These include letters, digits, punctuation, and spaces; they
do not include hRETi or hESCi. In Emacs, typing a graphic character inserts that
character (in ordinary editing modes). See Chapter 4 [Basic Editing], page 47.
Grinding
Grinding means adjusting the indentation in a program to fit the nesting structure. See Chapter 20 [Indentation], page 163.
Hardcopy
Hardcopy means printed output. Emacs has commands for making printed
listings of text in Emacs buffers. See Section 28.4 [Hardcopy], page 285.
hHELPi
You can type hHELPi at any time to ask what options you have, or to ask what
any command does. hHELPi is really Control-h. See Chapter 8 [Help], page 67.
Inbox
An inbox is a file in which mail is delivered by the operating system. Some
mail handlers transfers mail from inboxes to mail files (q.v.) in which the mail
is then stored permanently or until explicitly deleted.
Indentation
Indentation means blank space at the beginning of a line. Most programming
languages have conventions for using indentation to illuminate the structure of
the program, and Emacs has special features to help you set up the correct
indentation. See Chapter 20 [Indentation], page 163.
Insertion
Insertion means copying text into the buffer, either from the keyboard or from
some other place in Emacs.
Justification
Justification means adding extra spaces to lines of text to make them come
exactly to a specified width. See Section 21.6 [Filling], page 177.
Keyboard Macros
Keyboard macros are a way of defining new Emacs commands from sequences of
existing ones, with no need to write a Lisp program. See Section 29.3 [Keyboard
Macros], page 301.
Key
A key is a sequence of characters that, when input to Emacs, specify or begin to
specify a single action for Emacs to perform. That is, the sequence is considered
a single unit. If the key is enough to specify one action, it is a complete
key (q.v.); if it is less than enough, it is a prefix key (q.v.). See Chapter 2
[Keystrokes], page 23.
Keymap
The keymap is the data structure that records the bindings (q.v.) of keys to the
commands that they run. For example, the keymap binds the character C-n to
the command function next-line. See Section 29.4.1 [Keymaps], page 303.
Kill Ring
The kill ring is the place where all text you have killed recently is saved. You
can re-insert any of the killed text still in the ring; this is called yanking (q.v.).
See Section 10.2 [Yanking], page 81.
Killing
Killing means erasing text and saving it on the kill ring so it can be yanked
(q.v.) later. Some other systems call this “cutting.” Most Emacs commands to
Glossary
341
erase text do killing, as opposed to deletion (q.v.). See Section 10.1 [Killing],
page 79.
Killing Jobs
Killing a job (such as, an invocation of Emacs) means making it cease to exist.
Any data within it, if not saved in a file, is lost. See Section 3.1 [Exiting],
page 37.
List
A list is, approximately, a text string beginning with an open parenthesis and
ending with the matching close parenthesis. In C mode and other non-Lisp
modes, groupings surrounded by other kinds of matched delimiters appropriate
to the language, such as braces, are also considered lists. Emacs has special
commands for many operations on lists. See Section 22.2 [Lists], page 182.
Local
Local means ‘in effect only in a particular context’; the relevant kind of context
is a particular function execution, a particular buffer, or a particular major
mode. Local is the opposite of ‘global’ (q.v.). Specific uses of ‘local’ in Emacs
terminology appear below.
Local Abbrev
A local abbrev definition is effective only if a particular major mode is selected.
In that major mode, it overrides any global definition for the same abbrev. See
Chapter 24 [Abbrevs], page 233.
Local Keymap
A local keymap is used in a particular major mode; the key bindings (q.v.)
in the current local keymap override global bindings of the same keys. See
Section 29.4.1 [Keymaps], page 303.
Local Variable
A local value of a variable (q.v.) applies to only one buffer. See Section 29.2.4
[Locals], page 298.
M-
M- in the name of a character is an abbreviation for hMETAi, one of the modifier
keys that can accompany any character. See Chapter 2 [Keystrokes], page 23.
M-C-
‘M-C-’ in the name of a character is an abbreviation for Control-Meta; it means
the same thing as ‘C-M-’. If your terminal lacks a real hMETAi key, you type
a Control-Meta character by typing hESCi and then typing the corresponding
Control character. See Chapter 2 [Keystrokes], page 23.
M-x
M-x is the key which is used to call an Emacs command by name. You use it
to call commands that are not bound to keys. See Chapter 7 [M-x], page 65.
Mail
Mail means messages sent from one user to another through the computer
system, to be read at the recipient’s convenience. Emacs has commands for
composing and sending mail, and for reading and editing the mail you have
received. See Chapter 26 [Sending Mail], page 243.
Major Mode
The major modes are a mutually exclusive set of options each of which configures Emacs for editing a certain sort of text. Ideally, each programming
language has its own major mode. See Chapter 19 [Major Modes], page 161.
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XEmacs User’s Manual
The mark points to a position in the text. It specifies one end of the region
(q.v.), point being the other end. Many commands operate on the whole region,
that is, all the text from point to the mark. See Chapter 9 [Mark], page 73.
Mark Ring
The mark ring is used to hold several recent previous locations of the mark,
just in case you want to move back to them. See Section 9.1.4 [Mark Ring],
page 75.
Message
See ‘mail’.
Meta
Meta is the name of a modifier bit which a command character may have. It is
present in a character if the character is typed with the hMETAi key held down.
Such characters are given names that start with Meta-. For example, Meta-<
is typed by holding down hMETAi and at the same time typing < (which itself is
done, on most terminals, by holding down hSHIFTi and typing ,). See Chapter 2
[Keystrokes], page 23.
Meta Character
A Meta character is one whose character code includes the Meta bit.
Minibuffer The minibuffer is the window that Emacs displays inside the echo area (q.v.)
when it prompts you for arguments to commands. See Chapter 6 [Minibuffer],
page 57.
Minor Mode
A minor mode is an optional feature of Emacs which can be switched on or off
independent of the major mode. Each minor mode has a command to turn it
on or off. See Section 29.1 [Minor Modes], page 291.
Mode Line
The mode line is the line at the bottom of each text window (q.v.), which gives
status information on the buffer displayed in that window. See Section 1.3
[Mode Line], page 15.
Modified Buffer
A buffer (q.v.) is modified if its text has been changed since the last time the
buffer was saved (or since it was created, if it has never been saved). See
Section 15.3 [Saving], page 118.
Moving Text
Moving text means erasing it from one place and inserting it in another. This
is done by killing (q.v.) and then yanking (q.v.). See Section 10.1 [Killing],
page 79.
Named Mark
A named mark is a register (q.v.) in its role of recording a location in text so
that you can move point to that location. See Chapter 11 [Registers], page 89.
Narrowing Narrowing means creating a restriction (q.v.) that limits editing in the current
buffer to only a part of the text in the buffer. Text outside that part is inaccessible to the user until the boundaries are widened again, but it is still there, and
saving the file saves the invisible text. See Section 28.3 [Narrowing], page 284.
Glossary
343
Newline
characters in the buffer terminate lines of text and are called newlines.
See Chapter 2 [Keystrokes], page 23.
hLFDi
Numeric Argument
A numeric argument is a number, specified before a command, to change the
effect of the command. Often the numeric argument serves as a repeat count.
See Section 4.9 [Arguments], page 53.
Option
An option is a variable (q.v.) that allows you to customize Emacs by giving it
a new value. See Section 29.2 [Variables], page 291.
Overwrite Mode
Overwrite mode is a minor mode. When it is enabled, ordinary text characters
replace the existing text after point rather than pushing it to the right. See
Section 29.1 [Minor Modes], page 291.
Page
A page is a unit of text, delimited by formfeed characters (ASCII ControlL, code 014) coming at the beginning of a line. Some Emacs commands are
provided for moving over and operating on pages. See Section 21.5 [Pages],
page 177.
Paragraphs
Paragraphs are the medium-size unit of English text. There are special Emacs
commands for moving over and operating on paragraphs. See Section 21.4
[Paragraphs], page 176.
Parsing
We say that Emacs parses words or expressions in the text being edited. Really,
all it knows how to do is find the other end of a word or expression. See
Section 29.5 [Syntax], page 308.
Point
Point is the place in the buffer at which insertion and deletion occur. Point is
considered to be between two characters, not at one character. The terminal’s
cursor (q.v.) indicates the location of point. See Chapter 4 [Basic], page 47.
Prefix Key
A prefix key is a key (q.v.) whose sole function is to introduce a set of multicharacter keys. Control-x is an example of a prefix key; any two-character
sequence starting with C-x is also a legitimate key. See Chapter 2 [Keystrokes],
page 23.
Prompt
A prompt is text printed to ask the user for input. Printing a prompt is called
prompting. Emacs prompts always appear in the echo area (q.v.). One kind
of prompting happens when the minibuffer is used to read an argument (see
Chapter 6 [Minibuffer], page 57); the echoing which happens when you pause
in the middle of typing a multi-character key is also a kind of prompting (see
Section 1.2 [Echo Area], page 14).
Quitting
Quitting means cancelling a partially typed command or a running command,
using C-g. See Section 30.1 [Quitting], page 325.
Quoting
Quoting means depriving a character of its usual special significance. In Emacs
this is usually done with Control-q. What constitutes special significance depends on the context and on convention. For example, an “ordinary” character
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as an Emacs command inserts itself; so in this context, a special character is
any character that does not normally insert itself (such as hDELi, for example),
and quoting it makes it insert itself as if it were not special. Not all contexts
allow quoting. See Chapter 4 [Basic Editing], page 47.
Read-only Buffer
A read-only buffer is one whose text you are not allowed to change. Normally
Emacs makes buffers read-only when they contain text which has a special significance to Emacs, such as Dired buffers. Visiting a file that is write-protected
also makes a read-only buffer. See Chapter 16 [Buffers], page 139.
Recursive Editing Level
A recursive editing level is a state in which part of the execution of a command
involves asking the user to edit some text. This text may or may not be the
same as the text to which the command was applied. The mode line indicates
recursive editing levels with square brackets (‘[’ and ‘]’). See Section 28.5
[Recursive Edit], page 286.
Redisplay
Redisplay is the process of correcting the image on the screen to correspond to
changes that have been made in the text being edited. See Chapter 1 [Frame],
page 13.
Regexp
See ‘regular expression’.
Region
The region is the text between point (q.v.) and the mark (q.v.). Many commands operate on the text of the region. See Chapter 9 [Mark], page 73.
Registers
Registers are named slots in which text or buffer positions or rectangles can be
saved for later use. See Chapter 11 [Registers], page 89.
Regular Expression
A regular expression is a pattern that can match various text strings; for example, ‘l[0-9]+’ matches ‘l’ followed by one or more digits. See Section 13.5
[Regexps], page 101.
Replacement
See ‘global substitution’.
Restriction
A buffer’s restriction is the amount of text, at the beginning or the end of the
buffer, that is temporarily invisible and inaccessible. Giving a buffer a nonzero
amount of restriction is called narrowing (q.v.). See Section 28.3 [Narrowing],
page 284.
hRETi
hRETi is the character than runs the command to insert a newline into the text.
It is also used to terminate most arguments read in the minibuffer (q.v.). See
Chapter 2 [Keystrokes], page 23.
Saving
Saving a buffer means copying its text into the file that was visited (q.v.) in
that buffer. To actually change a file you have edited in Emacs, you have to
save it. See Section 15.3 [Saving], page 118.
Scrolling
Scrolling means shifting the text in the Emacs window to make a different part
of the buffer visible. See Chapter 12 [Display], page 93.
Glossary
345
Searching
Searching means moving point to the next occurrence of a specified string. See
Chapter 13 [Search], page 97.
Selecting
Selecting a buffer means making it the current (q.v.) buffer. See Chapter 16
[Buffers], page 139.
Self-documentation
Self-documentation is the feature of Emacs which can tell you what any command does, or can give you a list of all commands related to a topic you specify.
You ask for self-documentation with the help character, C-h. See Chapter 8
[Help], page 67.
Sentences
Emacs has commands for moving by or killing by sentences. See Section 21.3
[Sentences], page 175.
Sexp
An sexp (short for ‘s-expression,’ itself short for ‘symbolic expression’) is the
basic syntactic unit of Lisp in its textual form: either a list, or Lisp atom.
Many Emacs commands operate on sexps. The term ‘sexp’ is generalized to
languages other than Lisp to mean a syntactically recognizable expression. See
Section 22.2 [Lists], page 182.
Simultaneous Editing
Simultaneous editing means two users modifying the same file at once. If simultaneous editing is not detected, you may lose your work. Emacs detects
all cases of simultaneous editing and warns the user to investigate them. See
Section 15.3.2 [Simultaneous Editing], page 122.
String
A string is a kind of Lisp data object which contains a sequence of characters.
Many Emacs variables are intended to have strings as values. The Lisp syntax
for a string consists of the characters in the string with a ‘"’ before and another
‘"’ after. Write a ‘"’ that is part of the string as ‘\"’ and a ‘\’ that is part of
the string as ‘\\’. You can include all other characters, including newline, just
by writing them inside the string. You can also include escape sequences as in
C, such as ‘\n’ for newline or ‘\241’ using an octal character code.
String Substitution
See ‘global substitution’.
Syntax Table
The syntax table tells Emacs which characters are part of a word, which characters balance each other like parentheses, etc. See Section 29.5 [Syntax],
page 308.
Tag Table A tag table is a file that serves as an index to the function definitions in one or
more other files. See Section 22.11 [Tags], page 193.
Termscript File
A termscript file contains a record of all characters Emacs sent to the terminal.
It is used for tracking down bugs in Emacs redisplay. Emacs does not make
a termscript file unless explicitly instructed to do so. See Section 30.3 [Bugs],
page 328.
Text
Text has two meanings (see Chapter 21 [Text], page 167):
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• Data consisting of a sequence of characters, as opposed to binary numbers, images, graphics commands, executable programs, and the like. The
contents of an Emacs buffer are always text in this sense.
• Data consisting of written human language, as opposed to programs, or
something that follows the stylistic conventions of human language.
Top Level Top level is the normal state of Emacs, in which you are editing the text
of the file you have visited. You are at top level whenever you are not in a
recursive editing level (q.v.) or the minibuffer (q.v.), and not in the middle of a
command. You can get back to top level by aborting (q.v.) and quitting (q.v.).
See Section 30.1 [Quitting], page 325.
Transposition
Transposing two units of text means putting each one into the place formerly
occupied by the other. There are Emacs commands to transpose two adjacent
characters, words, sexps (q.v.), or lines (see Section 14.2 [Transpose], page 111).
Truncation
Truncating text lines in the display means leaving out any text on a line that
does not fit within the right margin of the window displaying it. See also
‘continuation line’. See Chapter 4 [Basic Editing], page 47.
Undoing
Undoing means making your previous editing go in reverse, bringing back the
text that existed earlier in the editing session. See Chapter 5 [Undo], page 55.
Variable
A variable is Lisp object that can store an arbitrary value. Emacs uses some
variables for internal purposes, and has others (known as ‘options’ (q.v.)) you
can set to control the behavior of Emacs. The variables used in Emacs that you
are likely to be interested in are listed in the Variables Index of this manual.
See Section 29.2 [Variables], page 291, for information on variables.
Visiting
Visiting a file means loading its contents into a buffer (q.v.) where they can be
edited. See Section 15.2 [Visiting], page 116.
Whitespace
Whitespace is any run of consecutive formatting characters (spaces, tabs, newlines, and backspaces).
Widening
Widening is removing any restriction (q.v.) on the current buffer; it is the
opposite of narrowing (q.v.). See Section 28.3 [Narrowing], page 284.
Window
Emacs divides the frame into one or more windows, each of which can display
the contents of one buffer (q.v.) at any time. See Chapter 1 [Frame], page 13,
for basic information on how Emacs uses the frame. See Chapter 17 [Windows], page 145, for commands to control the use of windows. Note that if
you are running Emacs under X, terminology can be confusing: Each Emacs
frame occupies a separate X window and can, in turn, be divided into different
subwindows.
Word Abbrev
Synonymous with ‘abbrev’.
Glossary
347
Word Search
Word search is searching for a sequence of words, considering the punctuation
between them as insignificant. See Section 13.3 [Word Search], page 100.
Yanking
Yanking means reinserting text previously killed. It can be used to undo a
mistaken kill, or for copying or moving text. Some other systems call this
“pasting”. See Section 10.2 [Yanking], page 81.
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The GNU Manifesto
349
The GNU Manifesto
What’s GNU? GNU’s Not Unix!
GNU, which stands for GNU’s Not Unix, is the name for the complete Unix-compatible
software system which I am writing so that I can give it away free to everyone who can use
it. Several other volunteers are helping me. Contributions of time, money, programs, and
equipment are greatly needed.
So far we have an Emacs text editor with Lisp for writing editor commands, a source
level debugger, a yacc-compatible parser generator, a linker, and around 35 utilities. A
shell (command interpreter) is nearly completed. A new portable optimizing C compiler
has compiled itself and may be released this year. An initial kernel exists, but many more
features are needed to emulate Unix. When the kernel and compiler are finished, it will be
possible to distribute a GNU system suitable for program development. We will use TEX
as our text formatter, but an nroff is being worked on. We will use the free, portable X
window system as well. After this we will add a portable Common Lisp, an Empire game, a
spreadsheet, and hundreds of other things, plus online documentation. We hope to supply,
eventually, everything useful that normally comes with a Unix system, and more.
GNU will be able to run Unix programs, but will not be identical to Unix. We will make
all improvements that are convenient, based on our experience with other operating systems. In particular, we plan to have longer filenames, file version numbers, a crashproof file
system, filename completion perhaps, terminal-independent display support, and perhaps
eventually a Lisp-based window system through which several Lisp programs and ordinary
Unix programs can share a screen. Both C and Lisp will be available as system programming languages. We will try to support UUCP, MIT Chaosnet, and Internet protocols for
communication.
GNU is aimed initially at machines in the 68000/16000 class with virtual memory, because they are the easiest machines to make it run on. The extra effort to make it run on
smaller machines will be left to someone who wants to use it on them.
To avoid horrible confusion, please pronounce the ‘G’ in the word ‘GNU’ when it is the
name of this project.
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Why I Must Write GNU
I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I must share it with other
people who like it. Software sellers want to divide the users and conquer them, making each
user agree not to share with others. I refuse to break solidarity with other users in this way.
I cannot in good conscience sign a nondisclosure agreement or a software license agreement.
For years I worked within the Artificial Intelligence Lab to resist such tendencies and other
inhospitalities, but eventually they had gone too far: I could not remain in an institution
where such things are done for me against my will.
So that I can continue to use computers without dishonor, I have decided to put together
a sufficient body of free software so that I will be able to get along without any software
that is not free. I have resigned from the AI lab to deny MIT any legal excuse to prevent
me from giving GNU away.
Why GNU Will Be Compatible With Unix
Unix is not my ideal system, but it is not too bad. The essential features of Unix seem
to be good ones, and I think I can fill in what Unix lacks without spoiling them. And a
system compatible with Unix would be convenient for many other people to adopt.
How GNU Will Be Available
GNU is not in the public domain. Everyone will be permitted to modify and redistribute
GNU, but no distributor will be allowed to restrict its further redistribution. That is to
say, proprietary modifications will not be allowed. I want to make sure that all versions of
GNU remain free.
Why Many Other Programmers Want to Help
I have found many other programmers who are excited about GNU and want to help.
Many programmers are unhappy about the commercialization of system software. It
may enable them to make more money, but it requires them to feel in conflict with other
programmers in general rather than feel as comrades. The fundamental act of friendship
among programmers is the sharing of programs; marketing arrangements now typically used
essentially forbid programmers to treat others as friends. The purchaser of software must
choose between friendship and obeying the law. Naturally, many decide that friendship is
more important. But those who believe in law often do not feel at ease with either choice.
They become cynical and think that programming is just a way of making money.
By working on and using GNU rather than proprietary programs, we can be hospitable
to everyone and obey the law. In addition, GNU serves as an example to inspire and a
banner to rally others to join us in sharing. This can give us a feeling of harmony which
is impossible if we use software that is not free. For about half the programmers I talk to,
this is an important happiness that money cannot replace.
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How You Can Contribute
I am asking computer manufacturers for donations of machines and money. I’m asking
individuals for donations of programs and work.
One consequence you can expect if you donate machines is that GNU will run on them
at an early date. The machines should be complete, ready-to-use systems, approved for use
in a residential area, and not in need of sophisticated cooling or power.
I have found very many programmers eager to contribute part-time work for GNU.
For most projects, such part-time distributed work would be very hard to coordinate; the
independently-written parts would not work together. But for the particular task of replacing Unix, this problem is absent. A complete Unix system contains hundreds of utility
programs, each of which is documented separately. Most interface specifications are fixed
by Unix compatibility. If each contributor can write a compatible replacement for a single
Unix utility, and make it work properly in place of the original on a Unix system, then
these utilities will work right when put together. Even allowing for Murphy to create a few
unexpected problems, assembling these components will be a feasible task. (The kernel will
require closer communication and will be worked on by a small, tight group.)
If I get donations of money, I may be able to hire a few people full or part time. The
salary won’t be high by programmers’ standards, but I’m looking for people for whom
building community spirit is as important as making money. I view this as a way of enabling
dedicated people to devote their full energies to working on GNU by sparing them the need
to make a living in another way.
Why All Computer Users Will Benefit
Once GNU is written, everyone will be able to obtain good system software free, just
like air.
This means much more than just saving everyone the price of a Unix license. It means
that much wasteful duplication of system programming effort will be avoided. This effort
can go instead into advancing the state of the art.
Complete system sources will be available to everyone. As a result, a user who needs
changes in the system will always be free to make them himself, or hire any available
programmer or company to make them for him. Users will no longer be at the mercy of one
programmer or company which owns the sources and is in sole position to make changes.
Schools will be able to provide a much more educational environment by encouraging all
students to study and improve the system code. Harvard’s computer lab used to have the
policy that no program could be installed on the system if its sources were not on public
display, and upheld it by actually refusing to install certain programs. I was very much
inspired by this.
Finally, the overhead of considering who owns the system software and what one is or is
not entitled to do with it will be lifted.
Arrangements to make people pay for using a program, including licensing of copies,
always incur a tremendous cost to society through the cumbersome mechanisms necessary
to figure out how much (that is, which programs) a person must pay for. And only a
police state can force everyone to obey them. Consider a space station where air must be
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manufactured at great cost: charging each breather per liter of air may be fair, but wearing
the metered gas mask all day and all night is intolerable even if everyone can afford to
pay the air bill. And the TV cameras everywhere to see if you ever take the mask off are
outrageous. It’s better to support the air plant with a head tax and chuck the masks.
Copying all or parts of a program is as natural to a programmer as breathing, and as
productive. It ought to be as free.
Some Easily Rebutted Objections to GNU’s Goals
“Nobody will use it if it is free, because that means they can’t rely on any
support.”
“You have to charge for the program to pay for providing the support.”
If people would rather pay for GNU plus service than get GNU free without service,
a company to provide just service to people who have obtained GNU free ought to be
profitable.
We must distinguish between support in the form of real programming work and mere
handholding. The former is something one cannot rely on from a software vendor. If your
problem is not shared by enough people, the vendor will tell you to get lost.
If your business needs to be able to rely on support, the only way is to have all the
necessary sources and tools. Then you can hire any available person to fix your problem;
you are not at the mercy of any individual. With Unix, the price of sources puts this out of
consideration for most businesses. With GNU this will be easy. It is still possible for there
to be no available competent person, but this problem cannot be blamed on distribution
arrangements. GNU does not eliminate all the world’s problems, only some of them.
Meanwhile, the users who know nothing about computers need handholding: doing
things for them which they could easily do themselves but don’t know how.
Such services could be provided by companies that sell just hand-holding and repair
service. If it is true that users would rather spend money and get a product with service, they
will also be willing to buy the service having got the product free. The service companies
will compete in quality and price; users will not be tied to any particular one. Meanwhile,
those of us who don’t need the service should be able to use the program without paying
for the service.
“You cannot reach many people without advertising, and you must charge for
the program to support that.”
“It’s no use advertising a program people can get free.”
There are various forms of free or very cheap publicity that can be used to inform numbers
of computer users about something like GNU. But it may be true that one can reach more
microcomputer users with advertising. If this is really so, a business which advertises the
service of copying and mailing GNU for a fee ought to be successful enough to pay for its
advertising and more. This way, only the users who benefit from the advertising pay for it.
On the other hand, if many people get GNU from their friends, and such companies
don’t succeed, this will show that advertising was not really necessary to spread GNU. Why
is it that free market advocates don’t want to let the free market decide this?
The GNU Manifesto
353
“My company needs a proprietary operating system to get a competitive edge.”
GNU will remove operating system software from the realm of competition. You will
not be able to get an edge in this area, but neither will your competitors be able to get an
edge over you. You and they will compete in other areas, while benefitting mutually in this
one. If your business is selling an operating system, you will not like GNU, but that’s tough
on you. If your business is something else, GNU can save you from being pushed into the
expensive business of selling operating systems.
I would like to see GNU development supported by gifts from many manufacturers and
users, reducing the cost to each.
“Don’t programmers deserve a reward for their creativity?”
If anything deserves a reward, it is social contribution. Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so far as society is free to use the results. If programmers deserve to be
rewarded for creating innovative programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished
if they restrict the use of these programs.
“Shouldn’t a programmer be able to ask for a reward for his creativity?”
There is nothing wrong with wanting pay for work, or seeking to maximize one’s income,
as long as one does not use means that are destructive. But the means customary in the
field of software today are based on destruction.
Extracting money from users of a program by restricting their use of it is destructive
because the restrictions reduce the amount and the ways that the program can be used.
This reduces the amount of wealth that humanity derives from the program. When there
is a deliberate choice to restrict, the harmful consequences are deliberate destruction.
The reason a good citizen does not use such destructive means to become wealthier
is that, if everyone did so, we would all become poorer from the mutual destructiveness.
This is Kantian ethics; or, the Golden Rule. Since I do not like the consequences that
result if everyone hoards information, I am required to consider it wrong for one to do so.
Specifically, the desire to be rewarded for one’s creativity does not justify depriving the
world in general of all or part of that creativity.
“Won’t programmers starve?”
I could answer that nobody is forced to be a programmer. Most of us cannot manage
to get any money for standing on the street and making faces. But we are not, as a result,
condemned to spend our lives standing on the street making faces, and starving. We do
something else.
But that is the wrong answer because it accepts the questioner’s implicit assumption:
that without ownership of software, programmers cannot possibly be paid a cent. Supposedly it is all or nothing.
The real reason programmers will not starve is that it will still be possible for them to
get paid for programming; just not paid as much as now.
Restricting copying is not the only basis for business in software. It is the most common
basis because it brings in the most money. If it were prohibited, or rejected by the customer,
software business would move to other bases of organization which are now used less often.
There are always numerous ways to organize any kind of business.
Probably programming will not be as lucrative on the new basis as it is now. But that
is not an argument against the change. It is not considered an injustice that sales clerks
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make the salaries that they now do. If programmers made the same, that would not be an
injustice either. (In practice they would still make considerably more than that.)
“Don’t people have a right to control how their creativity is used?”
“Control over the use of one’s ideas” really constitutes control over other people’s lives;
and it is usually used to make their lives more difficult.
People who have studied the issue of intellectual property rights carefully (such as
lawyers) say that there is no intrinsic right to intellectual property. The kinds of supposed intellectual property rights that the government recognizes were created by specific
acts of legislation for specific purposes.
For example, the patent system was established to encourage inventors to disclose the
details of their inventions. Its purpose was to help society rather than to help inventors. At
the time, the life span of 17 years for a patent was short compared with the rate of advance
of the state of the art. Since patents are an issue only among manufacturers, for whom
the cost and effort of a license agreement are small compared with setting up production,
the patents often do not do much harm. They do not obstruct most individuals who use
patented products.
The idea of copyright did not exist in ancient times, when authors frequently copied other
authors at length in works of non-fiction. This practice was useful, and is the only way many
authors’ works have survived even in part. The copyright system was created expressly for
the purpose of encouraging authorship. In the domain for which it was invented—books,
which could be copied economically only on a printing press—it did little harm, and did
not obstruct most of the individuals who read the books.
All intellectual property rights are just licenses granted by society because it was thought,
rightly or wrongly, that society as a whole would benefit by granting them. But in any
particular situation, we have to ask: are we really better off granting such license? What
kind of act are we licensing a person to do?
The case of programs today is very different from that of books a hundred years ago.
The fact that the easiest way to copy a program is from one neighbor to another, the
fact that a program has both source code and object code which are distinct, and the fact
that a program is used rather than read and enjoyed, combine to create a situation in
which a person who enforces a copyright is harming society as a whole both materially and
spiritually; in which a person should not do so regardless of whether the law enables him
to.
“Competition makes things get done better.”
The paradigm of competition is a race: by rewarding the winner, we encourage everyone
to run faster. When capitalism really works this way, it does a good job; but its defenders
are wrong in assuming it always works this way. If the runners forget why the reward is
offered and become intent on winning, no matter how, they may find other strategies—such
as, attacking other runners. If the runners get into a fist fight, they will all finish late.
Proprietary and secret software is the moral equivalent of runners in a fist fight. Sad
to say, the only referee we’ve got does not seem to object to fights; he just regulates them
(“For every ten yards you run, you can fire one shot”). He really ought to break them up,
and penalize runners for even trying to fight.
“Won’t everyone stop programming without a monetary incentive?”
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Actually, many people will program with absolutely no monetary incentive. Programming has an irresistible fascination for some people, usually the people who are best at it.
There is no shortage of professional musicians who keep at it even though they have no
hope of making a living that way.
But really this question, though commonly asked, is not appropriate to the situation.
Pay for programmers will not disappear, only become less. So the right question is, will
anyone program with a reduced monetary incentive? My experience shows that they will.
For more than ten years, many of the world’s best programmers worked at the Artificial
Intelligence Lab for far less money than they could have had anywhere else. They got many
kinds of non-monetary rewards: fame and appreciation, for example. And creativity is also
fun, a reward in itself.
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Then most of them left when offered a chance to do the same interesting work for a lot
of money.
What the facts show is that people will program for reasons other than riches; but if
given a chance to make a lot of money as well, they will come to expect and demand it.
Low-paying organizations do poorly in competition with high-paying ones, but they do not
have to do badly if the high-paying ones are banned.
“We need the programmers desperately. If they demand that we stop helping
our neighbors, we have to obey.”
You’re never so desperate that you have to obey this sort of demand. Remember: millions
for defense, but not a cent for tribute!
“Programmers need to make a living somehow.”
In the short run, this is true. However, there are plenty of ways that programmers
could make a living without selling the right to use a program. This way is customary now
because it brings programmers and businessmen the most money, not because it is the only
way to make a living. It is easy to find other ways if you want to find them. Here are a
number of examples.
A manufacturer introducing a new computer will pay for the porting of operating systems
onto the new hardware.
The sale of teaching, hand-holding, and maintenance services could also employ programmers.
People with new ideas could distribute programs as freeware and ask for donations from
satisfied users or sell hand-holding services. I have met people who are already working this
way successfully.
Users with related needs can form users’ groups and pay dues. A group would contract
with programming companies to write programs that the group’s members would like to
use.
All sorts of development can be funded with a Software Tax:
Suppose everyone who buys a computer has to pay a certain percent of the
price as a software tax. The government gives this to an agency like the NSF
to spend on software development.
But if the computer buyer makes a donation to software development himself,
he can take a credit against the tax. He can donate to the project of his own
choosing—often, chosen because he hopes to use the results when
The GNU Manifesto
357
it is done. He can take a credit for any amount of donation up to the total tax
he had to pay.
The total tax rate could be decided by a vote of the payers of the tax, weighted
according to the amount they will be taxed on.
The consequences:
• The computer-using community supports software development.
• This community decides what level of support is needed.
• Users who care which projects their share is spent on can choose this for
themselves.
In the long run, making programs free is a step toward the post-scarcity world, where
nobody will have to work very hard just to make a living. People will be free to devote
themselves to activities that are fun, such as programming, after spending the necessary
ten hours a week on required tasks such as legislation, family counseling, robot repair, and
asteroid prospecting. There will be no need to be able to make a living from programming.
We have already greatly reduced the amount of work that the whole society must do
for its actual productivity, but only a little of this has translated itself into leisure for
workers because much nonproductive activity is required to accompany productive activity.
The main causes of this are bureaucracy and isometric struggles against competition. Free
software will greatly reduce these drains in the area of software production. We must do
this, in order for technical gains in productivity to translate into less work for us.
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Key (Character) Index
359
Key (Character) Index
!
! (query-replace) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
,
, (query-replace) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
.
. (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
. (query-replace) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
?
? (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
"
" (TeX mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
^
^ (query-replace) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
A
a (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
B
BS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
button1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
button1up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
button2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
button2up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
button3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
button3up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
47
23
23
23
23
23
23
C
C-@ (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
C-] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286, 325
C-_ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
C-> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
C-\ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
C-< . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
C-a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
C-a (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
C-b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
C-b (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
C-c . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
C-c ’ (Picture mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
C-c . (Picture mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
C-c / (Picture mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
C-c ; (Fortran mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
C-c ‘ (Picture mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
C-c { (TeX mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
C-c } (TeX mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
C-c > (Picture mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
C-c ^ (Picture mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
C-c \ (Picture mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
C-c < (Picture mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
C-c C-\ (Shell mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
C-c C-b (Outline mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
C-c C-b (Picture mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
C-c C-b (TeX mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
C-c C-c (Edit Abbrevs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
C-c C-c (Edit Tab Stops) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
C-c C-c (Mail mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
C-c C-c (Occur mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
C-c C-c (Shell mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
C-c C-d (Outline mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
C-c C-d (Picture mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
C-c C-d (Shell mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
C-c C-f (LaTeX mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
C-c C-f (Outline mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
C-c C-f (Picture mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
C-c C-f C-c (Mail mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
C-c C-f C-s (Mail mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
C-c C-f C-t (Mail mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
C-c C-h (Outline mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
C-c C-i (Outline mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
C-c C-j (Term mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
C-c C-k (Picture mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
C-c C-k (Term mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
C-c C-k (TeX mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
C-c C-l (Calendar mode). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
C-c C-l (TeX mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
C-c C-n (Fortran mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
C-c C-n (Outline mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
C-c C-o (Shell mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
C-c C-p (Fortran mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
360
C-c C-p (Outline mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
C-c C-p (TeX mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
C-c C-q (Mail mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
C-c C-q (Term mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
C-c C-q (TeX mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
C-c C-r (Fortran mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
C-c C-r (Shell mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
C-c C-r (TeX mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
C-c C-s (Mail mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
C-c C-u (Outline mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
C-c C-u (Shell mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
C-c C-w (Fortran mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
C-c C-w (Mail mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
C-c C-w (Picture mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
C-c C-w (Shell mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
C-c C-x (Picture mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
C-c C-y (Mail mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
C-c C-y (Picture mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
C-c C-y (Shell mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
C-c C-z (Shell mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
C-c TAB (Picture mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
C-d . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
C-d (Shell mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
C-e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
C-e (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
C-END . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
C-f . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
C-f (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
C-g . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57, 325
C-g (isearch-mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
C-h. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25, 67
C-h A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
C-h b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
C-h c . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
C-h C-\ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
C-h C-c . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
C-h C-d . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
C-h C-f . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
C-h C-h . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
C-h C-k . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
C-h C-w . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
C-h f . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69, 192
C-h F . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
C-h h . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
C-h i . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
C-h I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
XEmacs User’s Manual
C-h k . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
C-h l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
C-h L . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
C-h m . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
C-h n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
C-h p . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
C-h s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
C-h t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47, 72
C-h v . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69, 192, 292
C-h w . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
C-HOME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
C-k . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
C-l. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48, 93
C-l (query-replace) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
C-LEFT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
C-M-@ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75, 183
C-M-\ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164, 186
C-M-a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
C-M-a (Fortran mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
C-M-b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
C-M-c . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
C-M-d . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
C-M-e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
C-M-e (Fortran mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
C-M-f . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
C-M-h . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75, 184
C-M-h (Fortran mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
C-M-k . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80, 183
C-M-n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
C-M-o . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
C-M-p . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
C-M-q . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
C-M-q (Fortran mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
C-M-t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112, 183
C-M-u . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
C-M-v . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58, 147
C-M-w . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
C-M-x . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214, 217
C-n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
C-n (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
C-o . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
C-p . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
C-p (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
C-q . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
C-q (isearch-mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
C-r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Key (Character) Index
C-r (isearch-mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
C-r (query-replace) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
C-RIGHT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
C-s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
C-s (isearch-mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
C-SPC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
C-SPC (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
C-t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48, 111
C-u . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
C-u - C-x ; . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
C-u C-@ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
C-u C-SPC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
C-u C-x v v . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
C-u TAB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
C-v. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48, 93
C-v (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
C-w . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
C-w (isearch-mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
C-w (query-replace) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
C-x . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
C-x $ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
C-x ( . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
C-x ) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
C-x . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
C-x ; . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
C-x = . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
C-x [ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
C-x [ (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
C-x ] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
C-x ] (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
C-x ‘ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
C-x } . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
C-x > . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
C-x > (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
C-x ^ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
C-x < . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
C-x < (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
C-x 0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
C-x 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
C-x 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
C-x 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
C-x 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
C-x 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
C-x 4 b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
C-x 4 d . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
C-x 4 f . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
361
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
C-x
4 m . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
5 b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
5 C-f . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117, 118
a g . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
a i g. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
a i l. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
a l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
C-b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
C-c . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
C-d . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
C-e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
C-l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
C-o . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51, 80
C-p. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75, 177
C-q . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
C-q (version control) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
C-s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
C-t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
C-u . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
C-v . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
C-w . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
C-x . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
C-x (Calendar mode). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
d . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
DEL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80, 111, 175
e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
ESC ESC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
f . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
h . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
k . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
m . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
n n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
n w . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
o . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
q . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
r + . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
r b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
r g . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
r i . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
r j . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
r l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
r m . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
r n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
r r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
362
XEmacs User’s Manual
C-x r s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
C-x r SPC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
C-x r w . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
C-x RET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
C-x RET c . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
C-x hRETi C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
C-x RET C-\ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
C-x RET f . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
C-x RET k . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
C-x RET p . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
C-x RET t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
C-x s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
C-x TAB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
C-x u . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
C-x v = . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
C-x v ~ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
C-x v a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
C-x v c . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
C-x v d . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
C-x v h . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
C-x v i . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
C-x v l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
C-x v r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
C-x v s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
C-x v u . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
C-y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
C-y (isearch-mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
C-z . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
control key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
F
D
M
d (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
DEL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79, 111, 161, 181
DEL (isearch-mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
DEL (query-replace) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
DOWN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
m (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
M (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
M-! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
M-$ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
M-% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
M-’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
M-( . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
M-) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
M-, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
M-- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
M-- M-c . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
M-- M-l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
E
END . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
ESC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25, 26
ESC (query-replace) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
F1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
G
g char (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
g d (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
g m l (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
H
h (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
HOME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
hyper key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23, 24, 26
I
i
i
i
i
i
i
i
a
b
c
d
m
w
y
(Calendar
(Calendar
(Calendar
(Calendar
(Calendar
(Calendar
(Calendar
mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
265
265
265
264
264
264
264
L
LEFT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
LFD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25, 161, 185
LFD (TeX mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Key (Character) Index
M-- M-u . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
M-. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
M-/ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
M-: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
M-; . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
M-= . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
M-= (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
M-? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
M-@ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75, 175
M-{ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
M-{ (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
M-| . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
M-} . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
M-} (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
M-~ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
M-> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
M-> (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
M-^ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80, 163
M-\ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80, 163
M-< . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
M-< (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
M-1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
M-a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
M-a (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
M-b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
M-c . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
M-C-r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
M-C-s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
M-d . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80, 174
M-DEL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80, 111, 175
M-e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
M-e (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
M-f . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
M-g . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
M-h . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75, 176
M-i . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
M-k . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80, 175
M-l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
M-LFD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
M-LFD (Fortran mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
M-m . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
M-n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63, 168
M-n (isearch-mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
M-n (minibuffer history) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
M-n (Shell mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
M-p . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63, 168
363
M-p (isearch-mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
M-p (minibuffer history) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
M-p (Shell mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
M-q . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
M-r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
M-r (minibuffer history) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
M-s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
M-s (minibuffer history) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
M-SPC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
M-t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112, 175
M-TAB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192, 241
M-TAB (customization buffer). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
M-TAB (isearch-mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
M-u . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
M-v. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48, 93
M-v (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
M-w . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
M-x . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
M-y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
M-z . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
META . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
meta key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
N
next . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
O
o (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
P
p (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
p d (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
pgdn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
PGDN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
pgup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
PGUP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
prior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Q
q (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
364
XEmacs User’s Manual
R
T
RET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
RET (isearch-mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
RET (Shell mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
RIGHT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
t (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
TAB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25, 59, 161, 163, 167,
TAB (customization buffer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
TAB (Shell mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
S
s (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
S (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
S-TAB (customization buffer). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
shift key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
SPC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
SPC (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
SPC (query-replace) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
super key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23, 24, 26
253
185
295
282
U
u (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254, 262
UP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
X
x (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
Command and Function Index
365
Command and Function Index
A
abbrev-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233, 291
abbrev-prefix-mark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
abort-recursive-edit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286, 325
add-change-log-entry. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
add-global-abbrev . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
add-menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35, 333
add-menu-item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35, 333
add-mode-abbrev . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
add-name-to-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
american-calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
append-next-kill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
append-to-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
append-to-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86, 137
apropos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
apropos-documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
apropos-value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
ask-user-about-lock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
auto-fill-mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178, 291
auto-save-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
B
back-to-indentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
backward-char . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
backward-delete-char-untabify . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
backward-kill-sentence . . . . . . . . . . . 80, 111, 175
backward-kill-word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80, 111, 175
backward-list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
backward-or-forward-delete-char . . . . . . . . . . . 48
backward-page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
backward-paragraph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
backward-sentence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
backward-sexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
backward-text-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
backward-up-list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
backward-word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
batch-byte-compile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
beginning-of-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
beginning-of-defun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
beginning-of-fortran-subprogram . . . . . . . . . . 203
beginning-of-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
bookmark-delete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
bookmark-insert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
bookmark-insert-location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
bookmark-jump . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91, 92
bookmark-load . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
bookmark-save . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
bookmark-set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91, 92
bookmark-write . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
buffer-menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
byte-compile-and-load-file . . . . . . . . . . . 213, 332
byte-compile-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213, 332
byte-compile-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
byte-recompile-directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
C
c-indent-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
calendar-backward-day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
calendar-backward-month . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
calendar-backward-week . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
calendar-beginning-of-month . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
calendar-beginning-of-week . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
calendar-beginning-of-year . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
calendar-count-days-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
calendar-cursor-holidays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
calendar-end-of-month . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
calendar-end-of-week. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
calendar-end-of-year. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
calendar-exchange-point-and-mark . . . . . . . . .
calendar-forward-day. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
calendar-forward-month . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
calendar-forward-week . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
calendar-forward-year . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
calendar-goto-astro-day-number . . . . . . . . . . .
calendar-goto-chinese-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
calendar-goto-coptic-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
calendar-goto-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
calendar-goto-ethiopic-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
calendar-goto-french-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
calendar-goto-hebrew-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
calendar-goto-islamic-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
calendar-goto-iso-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
calendar-goto-julian-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
calendar-goto-mayan-long-count-date . . . . .
calendar-goto-persian-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
calendar-goto-today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
calendar-mark-today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
calendar-next-calendar-round-date . . . . . . .
calendar-next-haab-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
calendar-next-tzolkin-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
185
249
250
250
250
251
250
251
252
254
251
250
251
252
250
250
250
250
259
259
259
251
259
259
259
259
259
259
260
259
251
267
260
260
260
366
calendar-other-month. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
calendar-phases-of-moon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
calendar-previous-haab-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
calendar-previous-tzolkin-date . . . . . . . . . . . 260
calendar-print-astro-day-number . . . . . . . . . . 258
calendar-print-chinese-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
calendar-print-coptic-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
calendar-print-day-of-year . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
calendar-print-ethiopic-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
calendar-print-french-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
calendar-print-hebrew-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
calendar-print-islamic-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
calendar-print-iso-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
calendar-print-julian-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
calendar-print-mayan-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
calendar-print-persian-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
calendar-set-mark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
calendar-star-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
calendar-sunrise-sunset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
calendar-unmark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254, 262
call-last-kbd-macro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
cancel-debug-on-entry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
capitalize-word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112, 180
center-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
choose-completion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
clear-rectangle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
comint-delchar-or-maybe-eof . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
comint-dynamic-complete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
comint-next-input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
comint-previous-input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
command-apropos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
compare-windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134, 147, 333
compile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
compile-defun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184, 332
convert-mocklisp-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
conx . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288, 332
conx-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
conx-init . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
conx-load . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
conx-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
conx-save . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
copy-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
copy-last-shell-input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
copy-rectangle-to-register . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
copy-region-as-kill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
copy-to-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
copy-to-register . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
XEmacs User’s Manual
count-lines-page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
count-lines-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
count-matches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
count-text-lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
customize . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
customize-apropos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
customize-browse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
customize-customized. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
customize-face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
customize-group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
customize-option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
customize-saved . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
D
dabbrev-expand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
debug . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
debug-on-entry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
default-value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
define-abbrevs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
define-key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305, 306
delete-backward-char . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79, 111
delete-blank-lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51, 80
delete-char . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79, 240
delete-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
delete-horizontal-space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80, 163
delete-indentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80, 163
delete-matching-lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
delete-menu-item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36, 333
delete-non-matching-lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
delete-other-windows. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
delete-rectangle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
delete-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
describe-bindings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
describe-calendar-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
describe-coding-system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
describe-copying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
describe-distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
describe-function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69, 192
describe-input-method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
describe-key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
describe-key-briefly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
describe-language-environment . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
describe-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
describe-no-warranty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
describe-syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
describe-variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69, 192, 292
Command and Function Index
367
diary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
diary-anniversary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265, 275
diary-astro-day-number . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
diary-block . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
diary-cyclic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265, 275
diary-day-of-year . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
diary-float . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
diary-french-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
diary-hebrew-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
diary-islamic-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
diary-iso-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
diary-julian-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
diary-mail-entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
diary-mayan-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
diary-omer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
diary-parasha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
diary-phases-of-moon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
diary-rosh-hodesh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
diary-sabbath-candles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
diary-sunrise-sunset. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
diary-yahrzeit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
diff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
diff-backup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
digit-argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
dired-other-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135, 147
disable-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
disable-menu-item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36, 333
disassemble . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
display-time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
dissociated-press . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
do-auto-save . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
doctor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
down-list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
downcase-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
downcase-word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112, 180
E
edit-abbrevs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
edit-abbrevs-redefine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
edit-options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
edit-picture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
edit-tab-stops. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164,
edit-tab-stops-note-changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
edt-emulation-off . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
edt-emulation-on . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
235
235
298
239
167
164
288
288
electric-nroff-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
emacs-lisp-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
emacs-version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
enable-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
enable-menu-item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36, 333
end-kbd-macro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
end-of-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
end-of-defun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
end-of-fortran-subprogram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
end-of-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
enlarge-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
enlarge-window-horizontally . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
european-calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
eval-current-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
eval-defun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
eval-expression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
eval-last-sexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
eval-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
exchange-point-and-mark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
execute-extended-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
exit-calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
exit-recursive-edit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
expand-abbrev . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
expand-region-abbrevs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
F
fancy-diary-display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
fill-individual-paragraphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
fill-paragraph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
fill-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
fill-region-as-paragraph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
find-alternate-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
find-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
find-file-other-frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20, 117, 118
find-file-other-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118, 147
find-tag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
find-tag-other-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147, 201
find-this-file. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117, 332
find-this-file-other-window . . . . . . . . . 118, 332
finder-by-keyword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
fortran-column-ruler. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
fortran-comment-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
fortran-indent-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
fortran-indent-subprogram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
fortran-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
fortran-next-statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
368
fortran-previous-statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
fortran-split-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
fortran-window-create . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
forward-char . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
forward-list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
forward-page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
forward-paragraph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
forward-sentence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
forward-sexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
forward-text-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
forward-word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
frame-configuration-to-register . . . . . . . . . . . 90
G
global-set-key. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305, 306
goto-char . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
goto-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
H
hanoi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
help-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
help-for-help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
help-with-tutorial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47, 72
hide-body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
hide-entry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
hide-leaves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
hide-subtree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
holidays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
I
include-other-diary-files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
increment-register . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
indent-c-exp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
indent-for-comment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
indent-new-comment-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
indent-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164, 186
indent-relative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
indent-rigidly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
indent-sexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
indented-text-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
info . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Info-elisp-ref . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Info-goto-emacs-command-node . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
insert-abbrevs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
XEmacs User’s Manual
insert-anniversary-diary-entry . . . . . . . . . . . 265
insert-block-diary-entry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
insert-cyclic-diary-entry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
insert-diary-entry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
insert-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
insert-hebrew-diary-entry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
insert-islamic-diary-entry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
insert-kbd-macro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
insert-monthly-diary-entry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
insert-monthly-hebrew-diary-entry . . . . . . . 274
insert-monthly-islamic-diary-entry . . . . . . 274
insert-parentheses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
insert-register . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
insert-weekly-diary-entry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
insert-yearly-diary-entry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
insert-yearly-hebrew-diary-entry . . . . . . . . . 274
insert-yearly-islamic-diary-entry . . . . . . . 274
interactive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
interrupt-shell-subjob . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
inverse-add-global-abbrev . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
inverse-add-mode-abbrev . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
invert-face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316, 332
isearch-abort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
isearch-backward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
isearch-backward-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
isearch-complete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
isearch-delete-char . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
isearch-exit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
isearch-forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
isearch-forward-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
isearch-quote-char . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
isearch-repeat-backward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
isearch-repeat-forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
isearch-ring-advance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
isearch-ring-retreat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
isearch-yank-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
isearch-yank-word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
J
jump-to-register . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89, 146
just-one-space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Command and Function Index
K
kbd-macro-query . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
kill-all-abbrevs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
kill-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
kill-comment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
kill-compilation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
kill-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
kill-local-variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
kill-output-from-shell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
kill-rectangle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
kill-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
kill-sentence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80, 175
kill-sexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80, 183
kill-some-buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
kill-word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80, 174
L
latex-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
LaTeX-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
lisp-complete-symbol. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
lisp-indent-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
lisp-interaction-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
lisp-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
lisp-send-defun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
list-abbrevs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
list-bookmarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
list-buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
list-calendar-holidays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
list-coding-systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
list-command-history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
list-directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
list-hebrew-diary-entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
list-holidays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
list-input-methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
list-islamic-diary-entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
list-matching-lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
list-options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298
list-tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
list-yahrzeit-dates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
load . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
load-default-sounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314, 332
load-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
load-library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45, 211
load-sound-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315, 332
local-set-key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
369
local-unset-key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
locate-library. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212,
lpr-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
lpr-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
305
332
285
285
M
mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
mail-cc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
mail-fill-yanked-message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
mail-interactive-insert-alias . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
mail-other-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147, 243
mail-send . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
mail-send-and-exit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
mail-signature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
mail-subject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
mail-to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
mail-yank-original . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
make-directory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116, 332
make-face-bold. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316, 332
make-face-bold-italic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316, 332
make-face-italic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316, 332
make-face-larger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
make-face-smaller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
make-face-unbold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316, 332
make-face-unitalic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316, 332
make-frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20, 333
make-local-variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
make-obsolete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
make-symbolic-link . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
make-variable-buffer-local . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
manual-entry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
mark-beginning-of-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74, 332
mark-calendar-holidays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
mark-defun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75, 184
mark-diary-entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
mark-end-of-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74, 332
mark-fortran-subprogram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
mark-hebrew-diary-entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
mark-included-diary-files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
mark-islamic-diary-entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
mark-page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75, 177
mark-paragraph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75, 176
mark-sexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75, 183
mark-whole-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
mark-word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75, 175
minibuffer-complete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
370
minibuffer-complete-word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
modify-syntax-entry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
mouse-choose-completion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
mouse-del-char . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76, 332
mouse-delete-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76, 332
mouse-keep-one-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76, 332
mouse-kill-line. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76, 332
mouse-line-length . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76, 332
mouse-scroll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76, 332
mouse-select . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76, 332
mouse-select-and-split . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76, 332
mouse-set-mark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76, 332
mouse-set-point. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76, 332
mouse-track . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76, 332
mouse-track-adjust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76, 332
mouse-track-and-copy-to-cutbuffer . . . . 76, 332
mouse-track-delete-and-insert . . . . . . . . 76, 332
mouse-track-insert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332
mouse-window-to-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332
move-over-close-and-reindent . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
move-to-window-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
N
name-last-kbd-macro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
narrow-to-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
negative-argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
newline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
newline-and-indent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
next-complex-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
next-error . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
next-history-element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
next-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
next-list-mode-item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
next-matching-history-element . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
not-modified . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
nroff-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
number-to-register . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
O
occur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
open-dribble-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
open-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
open-rectangle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
open-termscript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
other-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
XEmacs User’s Manual
other-window-any-frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
outline-backward-same-level . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
outline-forward-same-level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
outline-next-visible-heading . . . . . . . . . . . . .
outline-previous-visible-heading . . . . . . . . .
outline-up-heading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
overwrite-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
146
173
173
173
173
173
291
P
phases-of-moon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
picture-backward-clear-column . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
picture-backward-column . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
picture-clear-column. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
picture-clear-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
picture-clear-rectangle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
picture-clear-rectangle-to-register . . . . . 241
picture-forward-column . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
picture-motion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
picture-motion-reverse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
picture-move-down . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
picture-move-up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
picture-movement-down . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
picture-movement-left . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
picture-movement-ne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
picture-movement-nw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
picture-movement-right . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
picture-movement-se . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
picture-movement-sw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
picture-movement-up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
picture-newline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
picture-open-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
picture-set-tab-stops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
picture-tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
picture-tab-search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
picture-yank-rectangle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
picture-yank-rectangle-from-register . . . . 241
plain-tex-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
plain-TeX-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
play-sound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314, 332
point-to-register . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
prefer-coding-system. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
prepend-to-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
previous-complex-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
previous-history-element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
previous-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
previous-list-mode-item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Command and Function Index
previous-matching-history-element. . . . . . . . . 62
print-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
print-diary-entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262, 272
print-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
Q
quail-set-keyboard-layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
query-replace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
query-replace-regexp. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
quietly-read-abbrev-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
quit-shell-subjob . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
quoted-insert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
R
re-search-backward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
re-search-forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
read-abbrev-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
read-key-sequence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
recenter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48, 93
recover-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
redraw-calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
relabel-menu-item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36, 333
remove-directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116, 332
rename-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
rename-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
repeat-complex-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
replace-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
replace-string . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
revert-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
run-lisp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
S
save-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
save-buffers-kill-emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
save-some-buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
scroll-calendar-left. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
scroll-calendar-left-three-months . . . . . . . 252
scroll-calendar-right . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
scroll-calendar-right-three-months . . . . . . 252
scroll-down . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
scroll-left . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
scroll-other-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147, 253
scroll-right . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
scroll-up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
371
search-backward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
search-forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
select-input-method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
self-insert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
send-shell-input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
set-buffer-file-coding-system . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
set-buffer-process-coding-system . . . . . . . . . 159
set-comment-column . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
set-default-file-modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
set-face-background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317, 332
set-face-background-pixmap . . . . . . . . . . . 317, 332
set-face-font . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317, 332
set-face-foreground . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317, 332
set-face-underline-p . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317, 332
set-fill-column . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
set-fill-prefix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
set-gnu-bindings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
set-goal-column . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
set-gosmacs-bindings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
set-keyboard-coding-system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
set-language-environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
set-mark-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
set-selective-display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
set-terminal-coding-system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
set-variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
set-visited-file-name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
setq-default . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
shell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
shell-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
shell-command-on-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
shell-send-eof . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
show-all . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
show-all-diary-entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
show-branches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
show-children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
show-entry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
show-output-from-shell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
show-subtree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
simple-diary-display. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
sort-columns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
sort-diary-entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
sort-fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
sort-lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
sort-numeric-fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
sort-pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
sort-paragraphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
spell-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
372
XEmacs User’s Manual
spell-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
spell-string . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
spell-word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
split-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
split-window-horizontally . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
split-window-vertically . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
start-kbd-macro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
stop-shell-subjob . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
substitute-key-definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
sunrise-sunset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
suspend-emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
switch-to-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
switch-to-buffer-other-frame . . . . . . . . . 20, 139
switch-to-buffer-other-window . . . . . . . 139, 147
switch-to-completions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
switch-to-other-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
T
tab-to-tab-stop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164,
tabify . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
tags-apropos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
tags-loop-continue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
tags-query-replace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
tags-search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
term . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
term-line-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
term-pager-toggle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
tex-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
tex-close-latex-block . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
tex-insert-braces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
tex-insert-quote . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
tex-kill-job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
tex-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
TeX-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
tex-print . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
tex-recenter-output-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
tex-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
tex-show-print-queue. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
tex-terminate-paragraph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
text-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
toggle-input-method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
toggle-read-only . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
top-level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286,
transpose-chars. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48,
transpose-lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
transpose-sexps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112,
167
165
202
201
201
201
283
284
284
170
170
169
169
170
168
168
170
170
170
170
169
167
154
141
325
111
112
183
transpose-words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112, 175
U
undo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
unexpand-abbrev . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
universal-argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
universal-coding-system-argument . . . . . . . . . 158
untabify . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
up-list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
upcase-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
upcase-word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112, 180
V
validate-tex-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
vc-cancel-version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
vc-create-snapshot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
vc-diff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
vc-directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
vc-insert-headers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
vc-next-action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
vc-print-log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
vc-register . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
vc-rename-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
vc-retrieve-snapshot. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
vc-revert-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
vc-update-change-log. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
vc-version-other-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
view-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
view-diary-entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
view-emacs-news . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
view-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
view-hello-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
view-lossage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
view-register . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
visit-tags-table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
W
what-cursor-position . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
what-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
what-page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
where-is. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
widen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
widget-backward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
widget-complete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
Command and Function Index
widget-forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
window-configuration-to-register . . . . . 90,
word-search-backward. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
word-search-forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
write-abbrev-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
write-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
373
295
146
100
100
236
119
X
x-copy-primary-selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
x-create-frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
x-delete-primary-selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
x-insert-selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
x-kill-primary-selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
x-mouse-kill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
x-own-secondary-selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
x-own-selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
x-set-point-and-insert-selection . . . . . . . . . . 84
xemacs-local-faq . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Y
Yank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
yank-pop. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
yank-rectangle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
yow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
Z
zap-to-char . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
zmacs-activate-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
zmacs-deactivate-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
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375
Variable Index
A
abbrev-all-caps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
abbrev-file-name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
abbrev-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
after-load-alist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
after-save-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
all-christian-calendar-holidays . . . . . . . . . . 268
all-hebrew-calendar-holidays . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
all-islamic-calendar-holidays . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
appt-audible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
appt-display-duration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
appt-display-mode-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
appt-message-warning-time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
appt-msg-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
appt-visible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
apropos-do-all . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
auto-fill-inhibit-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
auto-lower-frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
auto-mode-alist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
auto-raise-frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
auto-save-default . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
auto-save-interval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
auto-save-timeout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
auto-save-visited-file-name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
B
backup-by-copying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
backup-by-copying-when-linked . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
backup-by-copying-when-mismatch . . . . . . . . . . 121
bell-volume . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
blink-matching-paren. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
blink-matching-paren-distance . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
bookmark-save-flag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
bookmark-search-size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
buffer-file-coding-system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
buffer-file-name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
buffer-file-truename. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
buffer-read-only . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
buffer-tag-table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
C
c-argdecl-indent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
c-auto-newline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
c-brace-imaginary-offset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
c-brace-offset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
c-continued-statement-offset . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
c-indent-level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
c-label-offset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
c-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
c-mode-map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
c-tab-always-indent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
calendar-date-display-form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
calendar-daylight-savings-ends . . . . . . . . . . . 271
calendar-daylight-savings-ends-time . . . . . 271
calendar-daylight-savings-starts . . . . . . . . . 271
calendar-daylight-time-offset . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
calendar-daylight-time-zone-name . . . . . . . . . 256
calendar-holiday-marker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
calendar-holidays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
calendar-latitude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
calendar-load-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
calendar-location-name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
calendar-longitude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
calendar-standard-time-zone-name . . . . . . . . . 256
calendar-time-display-form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
calendar-time-zone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
calendar-today-marker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
calendar-week-start-day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
case-fold-search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106, 107
case-replace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
christian-holidays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
coding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
command-history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
command-line-args . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
comment-column . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
comment-end . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
comment-indent-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
comment-line-start . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
comment-line-start-skip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
comment-multi-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
comment-start . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
comment-start-skip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
compare-ignore-case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
compile-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
completion-auto-help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
completion-ignored-extensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
create-frame-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
ctl-arrow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
ctl-x-map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
current-input-method. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
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F
data-directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
data-directory-list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
debug-on-error . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
debug-on-quit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
default-buffer-file-coding-system . . . . . . . 158
default-directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
default-directory-alist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
default-frame-alist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
default-frame-plist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
default-input-method. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
default-major-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
delete-auto-save-files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
delete-old-versions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
describe-function-show-arglist . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
diary-date-forms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
diary-display-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
diary-entry-marker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
diary-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
diary-list-include-blanks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
diary-mail-days . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
diff-switches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
dired-kept-versions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
dired-listing-switches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
display-buffer-function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
doc-directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
file-coding-system-alist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
file-name-coding-system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
fill-column . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
fill-prefix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
find-file-compare-truenames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
find-file-hooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
find-file-not-found-hooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
find-file-run-dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
find-file-use-truenames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
fortran-check-all-num-for-matching-do . . . 204
fortran-comment-indent-char . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
fortran-comment-indent-style . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
fortran-comment-line-column . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
fortran-comment-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
fortran-continuation-char . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
fortran-continuation-indent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
fortran-do-indent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
fortran-electric-line-number . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
fortran-if-indent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
fortran-line-number-indent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
fortran-minimum-statement-indent . . . . . . . . . 204
frame-icon-title-format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20, 42
frame-title-format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20, 42
E
H
echo-keystrokes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
emacs-lisp-mode-hook. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
emacs-roots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
EMACSDATA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
EMACSLOADPATH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
EMACSPATH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
enable-local-variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
enable-recursive-minibuffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
esc-map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
european-calendar-style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
exec-directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
exec-path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
explicit-shell-file-name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
hebrew-holidays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
help-map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
holidays-in-diary-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
G
general-holidays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
global-map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
I
indent-tabs-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Info-directory-list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
INFOPATH. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
initial-calendar-window-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
initial-major-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
input-method-highlight-flag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
input-method-verbose-flag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
input-ring-size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
Variable Index
insert-default-directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58, 116
isearch-mode-map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
islamic-holidays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
377
minibuffer-local-ns-map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
mode-line-inverse-video . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
modeline-pointer-glyph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
muddle-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
K
kept-new-versions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
kept-old-versions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
keyboard-translate-table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
kill-ring-max . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
N
next-line-add-newlines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
next-screen-context-lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
L
LaTeX-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
lisp-body-indention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
lisp-directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
lisp-indent-offset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
lisp-interaction-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
lisp-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
lisp-mode-map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
list-diary-entries-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
list-directory-brief-switches . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
list-directory-verbose-switches . . . . . . . . . . 134
load-path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45, 211
local-holidays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
lpr-switches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
M
mail-abbrev-mailrc-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
mail-abbrev-mode-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
mail-alias-separator-string . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
mail-archive-file-name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
mail-header-separator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
mail-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
make-backup-files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
make-tags-files-invisible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
mark-diary-entries-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
mark-diary-entries-in-calendar . . . . . . . . . . . 267
mark-holidays-in-calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
mark-ring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
mark-ring-max . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
meta-flag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
minibuffer-confirm-incomplete . . . . . 58, 61, 334
minibuffer-local-completion-map . . . . . . . . . . 304
minibuffer-local-map. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
minibuffer-local-must-match-map . . . . . . . . . . 304
no-redraw-on-reenter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
nongregorian-diary-listing-hook . . . . . . . . . . 273
nongregorian-diary-marking-hook . . . . . . . . . . 273
nontext-pointer-glyph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
nroff-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
number-of-diary-entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
O
other-holidays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
outline-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
outline-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
P
page-delimiter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
paragraph-separate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
paragraph-start . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
parse-sexp-ignore-comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
PATH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
picture-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
picture-tab-chars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
plain-TeX-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
print-diary-entries-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
R
repeat-complex-command-map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
require-final-newline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
378
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S
V
save-abbrevs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
scheme-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
scroll-conservatively . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
scroll-step . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
search-slow-speed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
search-slow-window-lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
selective-display-ellipses . . . . . . . . . . . . 96, 174
sentence-end . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
shell-cd-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
shell-file-name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
shell-popd-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
shell-prompt-pattern. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
shell-pushd-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
sound-alist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
vc-command-messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
vc-comment-alist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
vc-default-back-end . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
vc-header-alist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
vc-initial-comment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
vc-keep-workfiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
vc-log-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
vc-make-backup-files. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
vc-mistrust-permissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
vc-path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
vc-static-header-alist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
vc-suppress-confirm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
version-control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
view-calendar-holidays-initially . . . . . . . . .
view-diary-entries-initially . . . . . . . . . . . . .
T
tab-stop-list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
tab-width . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
tag-mark-stack-max . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
tag-table-alist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198, 200
tags-always-build-completion-table . . . . . . 199
tags-build-completion-table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
tags-file-name. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199, 200
term-file-prefix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
term-setup-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
TeX-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
text-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
text-pointer-glyph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
today-invisible-calendar-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
today-visible-calendar-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
track-eol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
truncate-lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
truncate-partial-width-windows . . . . . . . . . . . 146
128
133
127
133
127
127
128
127
128
128
133
128
120
267
266
W
window-min-height . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
window-min-width . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
write-file-hooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
X
x-frame-defaults . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
x-mode-pointer-shape. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
x-nontext-pointer-shape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
x-pointer-background-color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
x-pointer-foreground-color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
x-pointer-shape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
Z
zmacs-region-stays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
zmacs-regions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85, 334
Concept Index
379
Concept Index
$
+
‘$’ in regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
‘+’ in regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
‘+?’ in regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
(
^
‘(’ in regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
‘^’ in regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
)
\
‘)’ in regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
‘\’ in regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
‘\’’ in regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
‘\(?:’ in regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
‘\=’ in regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
‘\‘’ in regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
‘\{n,m\} ’in regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
‘\>’ in regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
‘\<’ in regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
‘\b’ in regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
‘\B’ in regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
‘\s’ in regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
‘\S’ in regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
‘\w’ in regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
‘\W’ in regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
*
‘*’ in regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
‘*?’ in regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
.
‘.’ in regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
.mailrc file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
104
105
105
105
105
103
106
105
105
105
105
105
105
105
/
// in file name. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
?
‘?’ in regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
‘??’ in regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
[
‘[’ in regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
]
‘]’ in regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
|
‘|’ in regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
A
Abbrev mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
abbrevs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
aborting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
accumulating text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
active fields (customization buffer) . . . . . . . . . . . 293
active regions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
adding menu items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
adding menus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
againformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
Apps menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29, 33
apropos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
architecture-specific directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
arguments (from shell) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
arrow keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
ASCII . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Asm mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
astronomical day numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
audible bell, changing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
Auto Delete Selection menu item. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
380
Auto Fill mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178, 191,
Auto-Save mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
autoload . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
automatic package install . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
available packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
XEmacs User’s Manual
291
123
212
220
226
B
backup file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
batch mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
beginning of line in regexp. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
bell, changing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
binary packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
binding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
blank lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51, 191
body lines (Outline mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
bold font . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
bookmarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
boredom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
buffer menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Buffers menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29, 34
Buffers Menu Length... menu item . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Buffers Sub-Menus menu item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
buggestion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
bugs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328
building packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
byte code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
C
C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
C mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
C++ class browser, tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
calendar and LaTEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
calendar, first day of week . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
candle lighting times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
case conversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112, 180
Case Sensitive Search menu item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
CCL programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
centering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
change log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
changing buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
changing menu items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
character set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
character set (in regexp) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
checking in files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
checking out files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Chinese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Chinese calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
choosing packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219, 222
class browser, C++ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
Clear menu item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
clipboard selections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
coding systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28, 303
command history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
command line arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
command name. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
comparing files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
compilation errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
compiling files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
completion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
completion (symbol names) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
continuation line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Control-Meta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
Coptic calendar. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
Copy menu item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
copying files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
copying text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81, 86
core distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
crashes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
creating directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
creating files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
creating packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
current buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
current stack frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
cursor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14, 47
cursor motion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
customization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28, 186, 291
customization buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
customization groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
customizing faces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
cut buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Cut menu item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
cutting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Cyrillic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Concept Index
D
day of year . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
daylight savings time. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
debugger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
default argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
defuns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
Delete Frame menu item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
deleting blank lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
deleting characters and lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
deleting menu items. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
deleting packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
deletion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47, 79
deletion (of files) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135, 137
diary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
diary buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
diary file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
ding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
directory hierarchies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
directory listing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
disabled command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
disabling menu items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
doctor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
double slash in file name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
drastic changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
dribble file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
E
early package hierarchies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Ebrowse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
echo area. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Edit menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29, 32
editable fields (customization buffer) . . . . . . . . . 293
editing level, recursive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286, 325
EDT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
Eliza. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
Emacs initialization file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
Emacs-Lisp mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
enabling menu items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
encoding of characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
End Macro Recording menu item . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
entering XEmacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
381
erasing characters and lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
error log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
etags program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
Ethiopic calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
Execute Last Macro menu item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Exit Emacs menu item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
exiting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37, 286
expansion (of abbrevs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
expression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
F
file dates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
file directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
File menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29, 30
file names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
file protection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50, 115, 117
files, remote . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
fill prefix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
filling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
font encoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
Font menu item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
font registry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
fonts and faces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
formfeed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Fortran mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
French Revolutionary calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28, 303
G
General Public License . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
getting help with keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
global keymap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
global substitution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
graphic characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Greek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Gregorian calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
grinding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
382
XEmacs User’s Manual
H
K
hardcopy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
header (TeX mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
headers (of mail message) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
heading lines (Outline mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Hebrew calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Help menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30, 35
hierarchies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
history of commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
history of minibuffer input. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
holiday forms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
holidays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
horizontal scrolling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
key rebinding, permanent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
key rebinding, this session . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
keyboard macros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
keycode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
keymap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28, 303
keystroke. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
keysym . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
keysyms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Kill Buffer menu item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
kill ring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
killing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
killing characters and lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
killing Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Korean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
I
L
Icomplete mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
ignoriginal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
indentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163, 185, 190
inferior process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Info. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
init file. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
input methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Insert File... menu item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
inserting blank lines. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
insertion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
install . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
installing packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
international scripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
interval operator (in regexps) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
invisible lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
IPA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Islamic calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
ISO commercial calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
italic font . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
language environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
last package hierarchies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
late package hierarchies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
LaTeX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
leaving Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
libraries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
license to copy XEmacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
line number . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
line wrapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Lisp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Lisp mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
loading libraries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
loading Lisp code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
local keymap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
local variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298
local variables in files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
local.rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
locking and version control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
log entry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
M
J
Japanese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Julian calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Julian day numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
justification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
151
257
257
179
mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243, 249
major modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
make . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
manual package install . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
manuals, on-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Concept Index
mark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
mark ring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75, 252
Markov chain. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
master file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
matching parentheses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Mayan calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
Mayan calendar round . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
Mayan haab calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
Mayan long count. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
Mayan tzolkin calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
menus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30, 148
message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243, 249
Meta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
minibuffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57, 65, 304
minibuffer history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
minor modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
mistakes, correcting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55, 111
mocklisp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
mode hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
mode line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15, 291
mode, Term . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
modified (buffer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
modifier key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
modifier mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
moon, phases of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
mouse operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
mouse selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
moving inside the calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
moving point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
moving text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
moving the cursor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
MULE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
multi-frame XEmacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
multibyte characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
N
named configurations (RCS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
narrowing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
New Frame menu item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
newline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
non-incremental search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
nroff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
numeric arguments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
383
O
omer count . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
on-line manuals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Open File, New Frame... menu item . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Open File... menu item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291, 292
Options menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29, 33
other editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
outlines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
outragedy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
Overstrike menu item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Overwrite mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
P
package building . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
package distributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
package hierarchies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
package path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
package tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217, 226
page number . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
paragraphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
parasha, weekly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
Paren Highlighting menu item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
parentheses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Paste menu item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
pasting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
paths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
per-buffer variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
Persian calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
phases of the moon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
pictures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14, 47
pointer face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
pointer shapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
prefix key sequence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
presidentagon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
primary selections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Print Buffer menu item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
prompt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
properbose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
Pull-down Menus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30, 148
384
XEmacs User’s Manual
Q
scrolling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
query replace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
quitting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
quitting (in search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
quitting Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
quoting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
scrolling in the calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
R
random sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
RCS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Read Only menu item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
read-only buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
rebinding keys, permanently . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
rebinding keys, this session . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
rectangle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90, 241
rectangles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
recursive editing level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286, 325
redefining keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
regexp alternative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
regexp grouping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104, 105
region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73, 180
registered file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
registers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
regular expression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
regular packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
remote files. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
removing directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
removing packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
replacement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
restriction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
Revert Buffer menu item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
root of a hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
rosh hodesh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
Russian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
S
Save Buffer As ... menu item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Save Buffer menu item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Save Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
saving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
saving option value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
SCCS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Scheme mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
searching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
selected buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
selected window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
selective display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
self-documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
setting option value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
setting variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
sexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
sexp diary entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
shell commands. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
Shell mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
shift modifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
shrinking XEmacs frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
simultaneous editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
single-file packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
site-specific directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Size menu item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
slashes repeated in file name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
snapshots and version control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
sorting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
sorting diary entries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
source packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
spelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Split Frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Start Macro Recording menu item . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
starting XEmacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
startup paths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
string substitution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
subshell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
subtree (Outline mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
sumo package install . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
sunrise and sunset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
suspending . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
switching buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Syntax Highlighting menu item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
syntax table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175, 308
Concept Index
385
T
tags table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
tags, C++ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
Teach Extended Commands menu item . . . . . . . . 33
techniquitous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
television. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Term mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
termscript file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
TeX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Text mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Tools menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30, 34
top level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
transposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111, 175, 183
truncation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
typos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
U
Un-split (Keep Others) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Un-split (Keep This) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
undo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Undo menu item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
30
30
55
32
version number . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
version-specific directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
vi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
viewing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
Viper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
visiting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
visiting files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
W
weeks, which day they start on . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
Weight menu item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
which packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
widening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Windows menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
word search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112, 174, 180
work file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
wrapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
X
X resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
V
variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
version control. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Y
yahrzeits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259, 277
yanking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
386
XEmacs User’s Manual
i
Short Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1
The XEmacs Frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2
Keystrokes, Key Sequences, and Key Bindings . . . . . . . . . . 23
3
Entering and Exiting Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
4
Basic Editing Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
5
Undoing Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
6
The Minibuffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
7
Running Commands by Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
8
Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
9
Selecting Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
10 Killing and Moving Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
11 Registers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
12 Controlling the Display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
13 Searching and Replacement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
14 Commands for Fixing Typos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
15 File Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
16 Using Multiple Buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
17 Multiple Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
18 World Scripts Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
19 Major Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
20 Indentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
21 Commands for Human Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
22 Editing Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
23 Compiling and Testing Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
24 Abbrevs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
25 Editing Pictures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
26 Sending Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
27 Reading Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
28 Miscellaneous Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
29 Customization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
30 Correcting Mistakes (Yours or Emacs’s) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
XEmacs Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
ii
XEmacs User’s Manual
Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The GNU Manifesto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Key (Character) Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Command and Function Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Variable Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Concept Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
335
349
359
365
375
379
iii
Table of Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE . . . . . . . . . . 3
Preamble . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
TERMS AND CONDITIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Appendix: How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs . . 7
Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Getting Other Versions of Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1
The XEmacs Frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.1
1.2
1.3
1.4
1.5
1.6
1.7
1.8
1.9
1.10
1.11
Point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
The Echo Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
The Mode Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
GUI Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
The XEmacs Menubar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
XEmacs Scrollbars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
XEmacs Mode Lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
XEmacs Toolbars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
XEmacs Gutters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Inhibiting Display of GUI Components. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Changing the Position, Orientation, and Appearance of GUI
Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
1.12 Using XEmacs Under the X Window System . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
1.13 Using XEmacs Under Microsoft Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2
Keystrokes, Key Sequences, and Key Bindings
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.1
2.2
2.3
2.4
Keystrokes as Building Blocks of Key Sequences . . . . . . . . . .
2.1.1 Representing Keystrokes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.1.2 Representing Key Sequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.1.3 String Key Sequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.1.4 Assignment of the hMETAi Key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.1.5 Assignment of the hSUPERi and hHYPERi Keys . . . . .
Representation of Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Keys and Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
XEmacs Pull-down Menus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.4.1 The File Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.4.2 The Edit Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
23
24
24
25
26
26
28
28
29
30
32
iv
XEmacs User’s Manual
2.4.3
2.4.4
2.4.5
2.4.6
2.4.7
2.4.8
3
33
33
34
34
35
35
Entering and Exiting Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3.1
3.2
3.3
4
The Apps Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Options Menu. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Buffers Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Tools Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Help Menu. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Customizing XEmacs Menus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Exiting Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Command Line Switches and Arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.2.1 Command Line Arguments for Any Position . . . . . 40
3.2.2 Command Line Arguments (Beginning of Line Only)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3.2.3 Command Line Arguments (for XEmacs Under X)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
How XEmacs finds Directories and Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.3.1 XEmacs Directory Hierarchies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.3.2 Package Hierarchies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
3.3.3 Directories and Paths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Basic Editing Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
4.1
4.2
4.3
4.4
4.5
4.6
4.7
4.8
4.9
Inserting Text. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Changing the Location of Point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Erasing Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Blank Lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Continuation Lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Cursor Position Information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Numeric Arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
47
48
49
50
51
51
51
52
53
5
Undoing Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
6
The Minibuffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
6.1
6.2
6.3
6.4
6.5
7
Minibuffers for File Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Editing in the Minibuffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Completion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.3.1 Completion Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.3.2 Completion Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.3.3 Strict Completion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.3.4 Completion Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Minibuffer History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Repeating Minibuffer Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
57
58
59
59
60
61
61
62
63
Running Commands by Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
v
8
Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
8.1
8.2
8.3
8.4
8.5
8.6
9
9.2
9.3
The Mark and the Region. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9.1.1 Setting the Mark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9.1.2 Operating on the Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9.1.3 Commands to Mark Textual Objects . . . . . . . . . . . .
9.1.4 The Mark Ring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Selecting Text with the Mouse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Additional Mouse Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
73
73
74
74
75
76
76
Killing and Moving Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
10.1 Deletion and Killing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
10.1.1 Deletion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
10.1.2 Killing by Lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
10.1.3 Other Kill Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
10.2 Yanking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
10.2.1 The Kill Ring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
10.2.2 Appending Kills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
10.2.3 Yanking Earlier Kills. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
10.3 Using X Selections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
10.3.1 The Clipboard Selection. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
10.3.2 Miscellaneous X Selection Commands . . . . . . . . . .
10.3.3 X Cut Buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
10.3.4 Active Regions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
10.4 Accumulating Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
10.5 Rectangles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
11
68
69
69
70
71
71
Selecting Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
9.1
10
Documentation for a Key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Help by Command or Variable Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Apropos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Keyword Search for Lisp Libraries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Help Mode Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Other Help Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
79
79
80
80
81
81
82
82
83
83
84
85
85
86
87
Registers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
11.1
11.2
11.3
11.4
11.5
11.6
11.7
Saving Positions in Registers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Saving Text in Registers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Saving Rectangles in Registers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Saving Window Configurations in Registers . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Keeping Numbers in Registers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Keeping File Names in Registers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Bookmarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
89
89
90
90
91
91
91
vi
12
XEmacs User’s Manual
Controlling the Display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
12.1
12.2
12.3
12.4
13
Scrolling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Horizontal Scrolling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Selective Display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Variables Controlling Display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
93
94
95
95
Searching and Replacement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
13.1 Incremental Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
13.1.1 Slow Terminal Incremental Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
13.2 Non-Incremental Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
13.3 Word Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
13.4 Regular Expression Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
13.5 Syntax of Regular Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
13.6 Searching and Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
13.7 Replacement Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
13.7.1 Unconditional Replacement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
13.7.2 Regexp Replacement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
13.7.3 Replace Commands and Case. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
13.7.4 Query Replace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
13.8 Other Search-and-Loop Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
14
Commands for Fixing Typos . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
14.1
14.2
14.3
14.4
15
Killing Your Mistakes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Transposing Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Case Conversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Checking and Correcting Spelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
111
111
112
112
File Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
15.1 File Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15.2 Visiting Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15.3 Saving Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15.3.1 Backup Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15.3.1.1 Single or Numbered Backups. . . . . . . . .
15.3.1.2 Automatic Deletion of Backups . . . . . .
15.3.1.3 Copying vs.Renaming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15.3.2 Protection Against Simultaneous Editing . . . . . .
15.4 Reverting a Buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15.5 Auto-Saving: Protection Against Disasters . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15.5.1 Auto-Save Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15.5.2 Controlling Auto-Saving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15.5.3 Recovering Data from Auto-Saves . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15.6 Version Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15.6.1 Concepts of Version Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15.6.2 Editing with Version Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15.6.3 Variables Affecting Check-in and Check-out . . .
15.6.4 Log Entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15.6.5 Change Logs and VC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
115
116
118
120
120
121
121
122
123
123
124
124
125
125
125
126
128
128
129
vii
15.6.6
15.6.7
15.6.8
15.6.9
15.7
15.8
15.9
15.10
16
139
140
140
141
141
Concepts of Emacs Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Splitting Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Using Other Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Displaying in Another Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Deleting and Rearranging Windows. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
145
145
146
147
148
World Scripts Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
18.1
18.2
18.3
18.4
18.5
18.6
18.7
18.8
19
Creating and Selecting Buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Listing Existing Buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Miscellaneous Buffer Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Killing Buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Operating on Several Buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Multiple Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
17.1
17.2
17.3
17.4
17.5
18
130
131
131
131
131
132
132
133
134
135
135
135
136
137
137
Using Multiple Buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
16.1
16.2
16.3
16.4
16.5
17
Examining And Comparing Old Versions . . . . . .
VC Status Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Renaming VC Work Files and Master Files . . . .
Snapshots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15.6.9.1 Making and Using Snapshots . . . . . . . .
15.6.9.2 Snapshot Caveats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15.6.10 Inserting Version Control Headers . . . . . . . . . . .
Listing a File Directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Comparing Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Dired, the Directory Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15.9.1 Entering Dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15.9.2 Editing in Dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15.9.3 Deleting Files With Dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15.9.4 Immediate File Operations in Dired . . . . . . . . . . .
Miscellaneous File Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
What is Mule? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Language Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Input Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Selecting an Input Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Mule and Fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Coding Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Recognizing Coding Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Specifying a Coding System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
151
152
153
154
154
155
157
158
Major Modes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
19.1 Choosing Major Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
20
Indentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
20.1 Indentation Commands and Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
20.2 Tab Stops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
20.3 Tabs vs. Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
viii
21
XEmacs User’s Manual
Commands for Human Languages . . . . . . . 167
21.1 Text Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
21.1.1 Nroff Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
21.1.2 TEX Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
21.1.2.1 TEX Editing Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . .
21.1.2.2 TEX Printing Commands . . . . . . . . . . . .
21.1.3 Outline Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
21.1.3.1 Format of Outlines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
21.1.3.2 Outline Motion Commands . . . . . . . . . .
21.1.3.3 Outline Visibility Commands . . . . . . . .
21.2 Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
21.3 Sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
21.4 Paragraphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
21.5 Pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
21.6 Filling Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
21.6.1 Auto Fill Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
21.6.2 Explicit Fill Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
21.6.3 The Fill Prefix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
21.7 Case Conversion Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
22
167
167
168
169
170
171
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
177
178
178
179
180
Editing Programs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
22.1
22.2
22.3
22.4
22.5
22.6
22.7
22.8
22.9
22.10
22.11
22.12
Major Modes for Programming Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Lists and Sexps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Defuns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Indentation for Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
22.4.1 Basic Program Indentation Commands . . . . . . . .
22.4.2 Indenting Several Lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
22.4.3 Customizing Lisp Indentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
22.4.4 Customizing C Indentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Automatic Display of Matching Parentheses . . . . . . . . . . . .
Manipulating Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
22.6.1 Multiple Lines of Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
22.6.2 Options Controlling Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Editing Without Unbalanced Parentheses . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Completion for Lisp Symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Documentation Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Change Logs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Tags Tables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
22.11.1 Source File Tag Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
22.11.2 Creating Tags Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
22.11.3 Etags Regexps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
22.11.4 Selecting a Tags Table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
22.11.5 Finding a Tag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
22.11.6 Searching and Replacing with Tags Tables . . . .
22.11.7 Tags Table Inquiries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Fortran Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
22.12.1 Motion Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
22.12.2 Fortran Indentation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
181
182
184
184
185
185
186
187
189
190
191
191
192
192
192
193
193
194
196
197
198
200
201
202
202
203
203
ix
22.13
23
22.12.2.1 Fortran Indentation Commands . . . . .
22.12.2.2 Line Numbers and Continuation . . . .
22.12.2.3 Syntactic Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
22.12.2.4 Variables for Fortran Indentation. . . .
22.12.3 Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
22.12.4 Columns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
22.12.5 Fortran Keyword Abbrevs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Asm Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Compiling and Testing Programs . . . . . . . . 209
23.1 Running “make”, or Compilers Generally . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
23.2 Major Modes for Lisp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
23.3 Libraries of Lisp Code for Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
23.3.1 Loading Libraries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
23.3.2 Compiling Libraries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
23.3.3 Converting Mocklisp to Lisp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
23.4 Evaluating Emacs-Lisp Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
23.5 The Emacs-Lisp Debugger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
23.6 Lisp Interaction Buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
23.7 Running an External Lisp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
23.8 Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
23.8.1 Package Flavors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
23.8.2 Package Distributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
23.8.3 Binary Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
23.8.4 Source Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
23.8.5 Getting Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
23.8.6 Choosing the Packages You Need . . . . . . . . . . . . .
23.8.7 XEmacs and Installing Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
23.8.8 Prerequisites for Building Source Packages . . . . .
23.8.9 What You Can Do With Source Packages . . . . .
23.8.10 Normal Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
23.8.11 Mule Support (mule) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
24
209
210
211
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
217
218
218
218
218
218
219
219
222
223
226
230
Abbrevs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
24.1
24.2
24.3
24.4
24.5
25
203
204
204
204
205
206
206
207
Defining Abbrevs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Controlling Abbrev Expansion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Examining and Editing Abbrevs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Saving Abbrevs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Dynamic Abbrev Expansion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
233
234
235
236
236
Editing Pictures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
25.1
25.2
25.3
25.4
Basic Editing in Picture Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Controlling Motion After Insert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Picture Mode Tabs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Picture Mode Rectangle Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
239
240
241
241
x
26
XEmacs User’s Manual
Sending Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
26.1 The Format of the Mail Buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
26.2 Mail Header Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
26.3 Mail Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
27
Reading Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
27.4 Calendar Mode and the Diary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
27.4.1 Movement in the Calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
27.4.1.1 Motion by Integral Days, Weeks, Months,
Years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
27.4.1.2 Beginning or End of Week, Month or Year
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
27.4.1.3 Particular Dates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
27.4.2 Scrolling the Calendar through Time . . . . . . . . . . 251
27.4.3 The Mark and the Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
27.4.4 Miscellaneous Calendar Commands . . . . . . . . . . . 252
27.5 LaTeX Calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
27.5.1 Holidays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
27.5.2 Times of Sunrise and Sunset. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
27.5.3 Phases of the Moon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
27.5.4 Conversion To and From Other Calendars . . . . . 257
27.6 Supported Calendar Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
27.7 Converting To Other Calendars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
27.8 Converting From Other Calendars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
27.8.1 Converting from the Mayan Calendar . . . . . . . . . 259
27.8.2 The Diary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
27.8.3 Commands Displaying Diary Entries . . . . . . . . . . 261
27.8.4 The Diary File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
27.8.5 Date Formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
27.8.6 Commands to Add to the Diary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
27.8.7 Special Diary Entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
27.8.8 Customizing the Calendar and Diary . . . . . . . . . . 266
27.8.8.1 Customizing the Calendar . . . . . . . . . . . 266
27.8.8.2 Customizing the Holidays. . . . . . . . . . . . 267
27.8.8.3 Date Display Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
27.8.8.4 Time Display Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
27.8.8.5 Daylight Savings Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
27.8.8.6 Customizing the Diary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
27.8.8.7 Hebrew- and Islamic-Date Diary Entries
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
27.8.8.8 Fancy Diary Display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
27.8.8.9 Included Diary Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
27.8.8.10 Sexp Entries and the Fancy Diary
Display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
27.8.8.11 Customizing Appointment Reminders
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
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28
Miscellaneous Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
28.1 Sorting Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
28.2 Running Shell Commands from XEmacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
28.2.1 Single Shell Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
28.2.2 Interactive Inferior Shell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
28.2.3 Shell Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
28.2.4 Interactive Inferior Shell with Terminal Emulator
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
28.2.5 Term Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
28.2.6 Paging in the terminal emulator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
28.3 Narrowing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
28.4 Hardcopy Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
28.5 Recursive Editing Levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
28.6 Dissociated Press . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
28.7 CONX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
28.8 Other Amusements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
28.9 Emulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
29
Customization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
29.1 Minor Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
29.2 Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
29.2.1 Examining and Setting Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
29.2.2 Easy Customization Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
29.2.2.1 Customization Groups. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
29.2.2.2 Changing an Option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
29.2.2.3 Customizing Faces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
29.2.2.4 Customizing Specific Items . . . . . . . . . . 297
29.2.3 Editing Variable Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
29.2.4 Local Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298
29.2.5 Local Variables in Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
29.3 Keyboard Macros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
29.3.1 Basic Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
29.3.2 Naming and Saving Keyboard Macros . . . . . . . . . 302
29.3.3 Executing Macros With Variations . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
29.4 Customizing Key Bindings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
29.4.1 Keymaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
29.4.2 Changing Key Bindings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
29.4.2.1 Changing Key Bindings Interactively
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
29.4.2.2 Changing Key Bindings Programmatically
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306
29.4.2.3 Using Strings for Changing Key Bindings
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
29.4.3 Disabling Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
29.5 The Syntax Table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
29.5.1 Information About Each Character . . . . . . . . . . . 308
29.5.2 Altering Syntax Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
29.6 The Init File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
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29.7
29.8
29.9
29.10
30
29.6.1 Init File Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
29.6.2 Init File Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
29.6.3 Terminal-Specific Initialization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Changing the Bell Sound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Faces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
29.8.1 Customizing Faces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Frame Components. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
X Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
29.10.1 Geometry Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
29.10.2 Iconic Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
29.10.3 Resource List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
29.10.4 Face Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
29.10.5 Widgets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
29.10.6 Menubar Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
317
318
319
319
321
323
323
Correcting Mistakes (Yours or Emacs’s) . . 325
30.1 Quitting and Aborting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
30.2 Dealing With Emacs Trouble. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
30.2.1 Recursive Editing Levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
30.2.2 Garbage on the Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
30.2.3 Garbage in the Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
30.2.4 Spontaneous Entry to Incremental Search . . . . .
30.2.5 Emergency Escape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
30.2.6 Help for Total Frustration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
30.3 Reporting Bugs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
30.3.1 When Is There a Bug . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
30.3.2 How to Report a Bug . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
325
326
326
326
326
326
327
327
328
328
329
XEmacs Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
General Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
New Commands and Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332
Changes in Key Bindings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
The GNU Manifesto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349
What’s GNU? GNU’s Not Unix! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Why I Must Write GNU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Why GNU Will Be Compatible With Unix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
How GNU Will Be Available . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Why Many Other Programmers Want to Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
How You Can Contribute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Why All Computer Users Will Benefit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Some Easily Rebutted Objections to GNU’s Goals . . . . . . . . . . . .
349
350
350
350
350
351
351
352
Key (Character) Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359
xiii
Command and Function Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365
Variable Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
Concept Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
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