Emacs19
ments today. From within the editor a user can read and send mail, perform research on the Inter-
net, and even send out for coffee to RFC2324 compliant coffee makers.
Configuration of Emacs is accomplished via the
.emacs
file that can be created in each
user’s $HOME directory. If the configuration does not exist, Emacs will use its built-in
defaults. This file consists of a series of elisp expressions that the editor evaluates when the
application runs.
2.2.1Using Emacs
Navigating and using Emacs may appear confusing and counter-intuitive for those just learning
how to use the editor, however the time taken to master this editor can prove well-spent when
one considers the time savings that such an integrated and flexible development environment can
provide.
If Emacs is started from within X-Windows, it will automatically open a new window in
the desktop. To prevent this behavior, you can use the –
nw
option from the command line. Alter-
nately, you can tell Emacs how large to make the window by specifying the size of the window,
in characters, that you wish to create. Examples are:
$ emacs –nw main.c
$ emacs –geometry 80x24 main.c &
Figure 2-1 shows the initial Emacs screen if it is invoked without an initial file name.
Figure2-1 The initial Emacs screen.