Author Sam Neaves

What is emacs?

Emacs is a text editor and a type of integrated development environment (IDE). It is widely known for its extensibility and customizable features, and has been used for software development, writing and editing text, and more. It was originally developed in the 1970s and has since evolved into a powerful tool used by many developers and users.

How to install emacs?

Because emacs is extendable there are many versions. https://vigou3.gitlab.io/emacs-modified-macos/ Is a version that has been useful for some members of the IEU for simple install of Emacs on mac os with 'emacs speaks statistics' ready to run.

Note you will normally use the GUI to run emacs to get the full power rather than emacs in the terminal. Emacs can act as a replacement terminal.

Basic Tutorial

To run the tutorial, start Emacs and type C-h t , that is, Ctrl-h followed by t . After doing this tutorial you will understand how to navigate emacs buffers to edit text.

You will have found out that in emacs you need to press the ctrl key a lot! To stop yourself getting "emacs pinky" it is suggested to remap the caps lock key to control. That way you can press the caps lock key instead which is more comfortable.

Apple-menu > system settings > keyboard > keyboard short cuts > modifier keys > caplock to control

Using Dired to navigate file system.

Emacs is an excellent tool to view dirs and edit files move files around etc.

Using emacs to connect to BC4/Bp other remote machines using TRAMP

You can open dired or files locally using emacs TRAMP.

Using emacs as alternative to R Studio

Use ess mode and tramp/dired.

Using magit for git

See the following video: magit demo

There are lots of resources to use emacs:

See some good demos here: Emacs rocks