🚀 go-pugleaf

I have been a heavy user of emacs for a number of  years now, and have
finally achieved moderate proficiency even in some of the many obscure
modes.   I have a great  deal  of admiration  for  the  Free  Software
Foundation and its ideals,  and I deeply appreciate their contribution
of emacs to the user community.  Emacs has made my life with unix much
more bearable, particularly because it was available on the wide range
of machines with which I have come in contact in recent years.

I don't forget however the difficult learning curve I experienced with
my first exposure to emacs.  I had experience with several  editors on
several operating systems at the time, so my  complaints are not those
of a neophyte.  Summing up over those years, I can now say  that emacs
is very sophisticated and powerful for  the experienced user.  For the
beginner however it is so formidable that  many  who try it give up in
disgust before they have a chance to learn  the better features of it.

I have been compiling a list  of complaints of  emacs features, and it
occured to me that it would  only be fair to send  it to you guys even
if  you can't   do anything about it.  I   am sure that you yourselves
would have done things differently if you had to do it all over again,
and in context,  I believe that emacs stands  out as one  of the great
pieces  of   software in  computer  history.   I have   tried,   in my
complaints, to be constructive, suggesting  other ways  it could  have
been done rather than just bitching.

Anyway, for whatever its worth, here's the list.

EMACS COMPLAINTS
================

  The basic movement   commands are difficult  to master  because they
  involve control characters, and the keys are widely separated on the
  keyboard, so for instance if  you want to repeat  the  sequence  "up
  left delete up left delete..." you must use both hands in  a complex
  sequence of motions.  A better choice would be  to have basic motion
  commands grouped together on the  keyboard,  like i,k,j,m etc. and a
  logical representation, such  as j=backward-char and k=forward-char,
  and h=backward-word and l=forward-word.
  
  Many operations are not reversible,  in  that when  an  operation is
  done, then undone, you are  not   in the  same  state as   you  were
  initially.   For instance  if  you do  a M-d  (delete  word forward)
  followed by a  C-y (yank)  or  C-_ (undo) your  cursor is now on the
  other  side of  the   deleted word.    All  commands should  have  a
  complementary command   that returns you  exactly  to  the  original
  state.

  The meta- key is used  very extensively  in emacs although it is not
  even a  standard key on most  keyboards, and the  alternative use of
  ESC is  very clumsy, and forces  emacs   users to learn two  sets of
  motions for common  operations   on  different keyboards.    It also
  happens to  be one of   the keys  that   are always in  a  different
  position  on different keyboards.   Its not clear  how  this problem
  could be overcome.

  C-h is a  logical key for help  mode, but  unfortunately it is  also
  defined as delete, or is it back space?.  These two troublesome keys
  are  constantly switched around  on  different  keyboards  and cause
  endless inconvenience.  All  too   often,  on a strange keyboard,  I
  strike back-space (or delete, you know, the wrong  one) and get into
  help mode.      Until    keyboard   manufacturers  get  their   keys
  standardized,    both  of   these    keys    should  be   mapped  to
  delete-backward-char.

  The big jump  commands C-v and M-v only  go to within  a page of the
  beginning or  end of the buffer,  necessitating a switch  to smaller
  jump commands C-n and C-p to get all the way.   A big  jump near the
  end should bring you all the way to the end.

  The big jump commands C-v and M-v always jump one page ahead  of the
  cursor, so that when you stop jumping, you then must move the cursor
  again to center it on the page, or jump a page beyond where you want
  to go and then  center with  C-l.  Either way you  do more work than
  necessary.   These jump commands should always  place  the cursor in
  the middle of the page.

  The delete  word command    M-d picks  the  strangest  criteria  for
  determining separation between 'words'.  For instance, when deleting
  the last word at the end of a sentence the space  and period remain.
  If you then  do another M-d that  deletes the  period, the following
  space, AND  the first word of  the next sentence!   It would be much
  more rational to use white space as  word separator.  In a c program
  the problem is even worse, as it is almost impossible to predict how
  far the delete will jump.  The commands M-f and M-b exhibit the same
  problem.  The word jump commands should jump to the next white space
  in text mode, and to the next ;  or }  in c-mode.  There should be a
  convention that a word is  associated with the  space before it (or,
  alternatively the space after it) so that all word handling commands
  such as delete-word  delete  both the  word and its  space.   Search
  commands would position the cursor  convently  for a  single  stroke
  word deletion.

  The search command C-s causes  endless trouble by putting emacs into
  a different  mode, which  causes  confusion by  redefining the keys.
  The common operation of searching for a word and then deleting it is
  made much  more difficult as  it requires an ESC to  exit the search
  mode, followed by the delete, followed by C-s  C-s to search for the
  next  occurence.   All too often  I  hit   delete before ESC,  which
  deletes a character  in the  mini-buffer, thus  changing the  search
  string  and  throwing  me back   somewhere else.   There should be a
  bare-bones simple search  command that  searches only  for the  next
  occurence of a completely defined string, allowing  immediate use of
  the normal commands like delete.

  Searching  forward with C-s  places  the  cursor  after  the string,
  whereas searching backwards  with  C-r places it before the  string,
  requiring different  commands for dealing   with  the string.   This
  makes it  difficult to predict  instinctively where you will wind up
  after the search.

  The combination of the  commands  C-x  .  (set-fill-prefix)  and M-q
  (fill-paragraph) provide a   convenient approximation  to real  word
  wrap   in a  word   processor.  There    is however a  philosophical
  dichotomy in  the way it  recognizes  adjacent paragraphs.   Say for
  instance you set fill prefix to two spaces, like this paragraph, and
  one  of  the lines 'hangs out' to  the left   margin.   M-q will not
  recognize this line as part of the paragraph, and therefore will not
  wrap it  back into  the fill prefix.  If however  you have a heading
  line at the top of the paragraph with no fill  prefix, followed by a
  paragraph  with a  two-space prefix, a M-q  on  this  paragraph will
  append the  paragraph  onto the end  of the heading line.   In other
  words in  this  case it will  accept the title line  as part  of the
  paragraph even  though   it has   a  different fill  prefix!    This
  combination of sometimes including and sometimes excluding  lines of
  different  fill  prefix  is  maximally inconvenient.   If  it always
  accepted adjacent lines as part of the paragraph, you could clean up
  and justify the  most ragged paragraphs  with one keystroke, without
  having to force the lines to conform first to the  fill prefix.  You
  would only have to ensure that there is vertical white space between
  paragraphs (which is already a restriction).  If  it always rejected
  adjacent lines with  different fill prefix, you  would  not have  to
  worry about non-indented title lines.

  There is  no way to undo  a movement command.   Often  an accidental
  keystroke throws you   off  into the text  somewhere,  which  always
  requires a tedious  sequence of keystrokes   to return to where  you
  came from. A 'movement-undo' command would be convenient.

  There is no function to produce double-spacing in text mode.

  The  delete-line command C-k  behaves differently for regular  lines
  than  for  lines  consisting  of only  a  <CR>.  This  is especially
  troublesome when you delete a line without a <CR>, as  at the end of
  file.  Line processing would  be  much facilitated  if there  were a
  real "delete line" command  that deleted  the whole   line including
  <CR> with a single keystroke.

  There  is no marker  for the end  of file,  so  that extraneous <CR>
  characters are invisible.  Alternatively, deleting a line at the end
  of file produces tediously unexpected results, as noted above.

  The undo command is very useful.  If however you have many undo's to
  perform, you run into a problem when  you exceed the limit of stored
  undo information.   If you give it  one  too many undo  commands, it
  starts undoing   the undo's  themselves!   You are  now in  a  nasty
  position where  you  did not achieve all  the  undo's you  wanted to
  originally,  and worse  still,  some of the  undo's  that  you  have
  achieved have  themselves been undone.   You now have two unpleasant
  options- either you  undo through  the  whole sequence until you get
  back  to  the original condition  (this means many undo's, and you'd
  better recognize when you get back to the initial condition) or just
  recover the file and lose all your  edits  before the undo sequence.
  It would  be  much friendlier  to  inform  the user  when   the undo
  information has been   exhausted, and  to give   him the  option  of
  forgetting about ALL the undo's, or to keep the ones that  have been
  performed up to that point.

  The macro facility  in emacs is one  of the most powerful and useful
  features, especially C-x (  ...   C-x )  where you can interactively
  define the macro while  even you  are testing it.  The  only pity is
  that you can only have one macro at a  time.   Often times you would
  like to define a couple of macros and use  them alternately.  I know
  that you can name them and call them that  way, but the  overhead of
  creating the macro, naming it, and calling it by name is so great as
  to make it  impractical for many quick editing  tasks.  It would  be
  nice if the first macro defined automatically became macro-zero.  If
  you give a command argument as  in "M-3 C-x (" that  it would define
  macro-three  instead of   macro-zero.   Now, to execute  the  macro,
  without argument  it would always  execute  macro-zero, whereas with
  argument it would execute the appropriate macro,  as in  "M-3 C-x e"
  to execute macro-three.

  The help facility and info  tree  are  wonderful features, as is the
  emacs tutorial.  The problem with the former two  is that you almost
  have to know  the  answer  to your  question before you can begin to
  look  it up.  Watch a new  user of emacs  struggling with it and you
  will know  exactly what I mean. The  problem with the latter is that
  it is  too time  consuming- I don't  know of any  emacs user who has
  been through the whole thing, and I myself could  only stand an hour
  of it. The  thing that is missing is  a quick,  easy summary of only
  the essential functions that an ordinary user  needs to know just to
  get started.  It is important in such a summary to keep it short and
  simple enough that someone can learn it quickly and  print it out to
  have it at hand when he needs it.  The basic functions are movement,
  cutting  and pasting,   reading and writing   files, and a few other
  basic things.  I supply as an example the  help facility I wrote for
  our people at BU.

EMACS BASIC SUMMARY
===================
in emacs parlance,  C- means [ctrl]  and  M- means [meta], so that C-n
means hold down the [ctrl] key while striking n. If you have no [meta]
key,  use  [esc], where  M-w means  strike (and  release)  [esc], then
strike w.

For every emacs command there is always a  M-x version and often a C-x
or C-<key> version.  The M-x version is the full command name, and the
C-x version (if it exists)  is a keyboard  macro for the same command.
For example "M-x forward-char" is equivalent to "C-f".  You can define
your own keyboard macros for any command.  If a M-x command requires a
numerical argument, supply the  argument  first with  M-<number>, then
the command.  For example to indent a region with two spaces, mark the
region (beginning  with C-2  then move  to   end) and  type  "M-2  M-x
indent-region".  When typing a M-x command, you can type the first few
characters and [tab] for automatic command completion.

MOVEMENT COMMANDS
=================
C-f		forward char (Try the arrow keys, they may work too)
C-b		back char
C-n		next line
C-p		previous line

M-]		next paragraph
M-[		previous paragraph
C-v		next page
M-v		previous page

C-<		beginning of buffer
C->		end of buffer

C-l		center page

MARK CUT PASTE
==============
C-2		mark beginning of region, then move to end
C-w		cut region
M-w		copy region (like C-w but leaves original)
C-y		paste (yank) last deleted section
C-k		cut line (you can do C-k C-k C-k ... and one C-y to restore)

SEARCH & REPLACE
================
C-s <string>	search forward for string, quit with [esc]
C-r <string>	search reverse for string, quit with [esc]
M-% <s1> [ret] <s2>	search for all occurences of <s1> and replace with
			<s2> with confirmation:- [spc] = ok, replace this
			one, [delete] = skip this one, try the next, [esc]
			= quit the search & replace.

QUIT EMACS
==========
C-x C-s		save buffer	(often these two are done in this order)
C-x C-c		exit emacs

C-z		suspend emacs, go back to unix.  Resume with "fg".
		Be careful when suspending, this leaves a running copy of
		emacs 'hanging around' using up space.  Do not start a new
		emacs until you have killed the old one properly.

READING & WRITING FILES
=======================
C-x C-f <file>	find <file> and open a new buffer for it (use C-x b)
C-x i <file>	insert <file> in this buffer at cursor location

BUFFER OPERATIONS (emacs windows)
=================================
C-x b <buf>	switch to buffer <buf> ([ret]=default, [tab]=prompt)
C-x 1		close all buffers except the one youre in
C-x 2		split screen to two buffers (then do C-x b <buf>)

EMACS HELP FACILITIES
=====================
C-h C-h C-h	complete emacs help.
C-h a <subj>	help apropos <subj>, like "C-h a buffer" tells about buffers
C-h i		info tree- browse through the emacs information tree.
C-h m		help mode. This is useful in all fancy modes such as rmail,
		gnus, info, etc. Gives brief summary of commands

UNDO AND ABORT
==============
C-_		undo last command (C-_ C-_ C-_ = undo last 3 commands)
C-g		abort this command (sometimes you need C-g C-g C-g)


TEXT PROCESSING
===============
M-x auto-fill-mode	toggle auto-fill mode (wrap-around)
M-q		justify paragraph
M-1 M-q		right justify paragraph (actually any number will do for 1)
M-g		justify region
C-x .		set fill prefix- example if you want the whole paragraph
		indented with 2 spaces, type 2 spaces, then C-x . then type
		in the rest of the paragraph.  M-q will now indent this
		paragraph with 2 spaces. (non-indented lines will be counted
		as a different paragraph)
C-x f		set right margin (with numeric argument or 'here') default=70
C-q C-l		insert form-feed
C-x ]		go to next page
C-x [		go to prev page
C-x C-p		mark page (then C-w to cut) formfeed is at end of page.
C-x l		count lines in this page. Format= total (above+below)
M-<num> C-x $	hide all lines indented more than <num> spaces (overview)
	
DEFINING KEYBOARD MACROS
========================
C-x (		start keyboard macro def. then type any sequence of commands
C-x )		end keyboard macro def.
C-x e		execute last defined keyboard macro

M-x name-last-kbd-macro	<name>		assign a name to the last defined
					keyboard macro (abbrev. name[tab])
M-x global-set-key <key> <command>	define a key to represent a command
					(abbrev. global-s[tab])
MORE ADVANCED TRICKS
====================

c-u c-[spc]	jump back to last mark
m-x compile	compile your program & keep track of the errors
c-x `		find the next error
Esc C-l		go to line number

TAG TABLES	allows you to tag a group of related files so that you
		can perform operations such as search & replace on all
		the  files without having  to  edit them individually.
		For full information check info tags

truncation	you can  make long lines  truncate instead of continue
		on    the  next    line   by   setting   the  variable
		truncate-lines to t.  This is done by the command "Esc
		Esc"   (evaluate  expression)   and   then  type   the
		expression (setq   truncate-lines  t) in  the  command
		minibuffer.  You can then scroll left and right to see
		them with C-x > and C-x <

PROBLEMS
========
common problems encountered with emacs

can't save files	check that your disk quota is not exceeded.

INIT FILE (~/.emacs)
====================
emacs reads the init file to set all your defaults.  The following are
some useful  things  you  may want to include in  your init file, just
copy them in if you like the sound of them.   The comments are already
in lisp syntax for you.

;;;; make [tab] insert a [tab] in c-mode ;;;;
(setq c-tab-always-indent nil)

;;;; make search case sensitive ;;;;
(setq-default case-fold-search nil)

;;;; make text-mode the default for new buffers ;;;;     
(setq default-major-mode 'text-mode)
     
;;;; turn on auto-fill automatically in text mode ;;;;
(setq text-mode-hook
      '(lambda () (auto-fill-mode 1)))

;;;; set arrow keys for x-terms ;;;;
(progn
  (setq SS3-map (make-keymap))
  (define-key SS3-map "A" 'previous-line) ; up arrow
  (define-key SS3-map "B" 'next-line)     ; down arrow
  (define-key SS3-map "C" 'forward-char)  ; right arrow
  (define-key SS3-map "D" 'backward-char) ; left arrow
  (define-key global-map "\eO" SS3-map)
  )

;;;; gnus stuff- you need this to run gnus ;;;;
(autoload 'gnus "gnus" "GNU Emacs NNTP-based news reader" 1)
(autoload 'gnus-post-news "gnus" "Post an article." t)
(setq gnus-nntp-server "bu-it")
(setq gnus-your-domain "bu.edu")
(setq gnus-your-organization "Boston University Center for Adaptive Systems")
(setq gnus-auto-select-next 'quietly)
(global-set-key "\C-x4g" 'gnus)