Level: Intermediate Michael Stutz (stutz@dsl.org), Author, Consultant
02 Oct 2007 This tutorial, the sixth in a series,
walks you through some of the useful ways you can customize and configure the Emacs
environment. Learn how to change everything about the Emacs environment to your
liking, from the behavior of minor modes to the default key bindings. Along the way,
figure out how to set variables, make all your customizations automatic with a startup file,
save and recall any window and frame customizations that you make, and use the easy
customizer that comes built into Emacs.
In this tutorial
- Set Emacs variables
- Display the value of a variable
- Set a variable
- Use and know common Emacs variables
- Customize your Emacs key bindings
- Fix the Home and End keys
- Fix the Del key
- Make a custom key
- Customize your Emacs interface
- Take out the menu bar
- Put a clock on the mode line
- Customize your location
- Turn on syntax highlighting
- Summary of common Emacs interface functions
- Use your Emacs startup file
- Set variables in your startup file
- Define key bindings in your startup file
- Set modes in your startup file
- Make short answers possible
- Putting it all together
- Remember Emacs window and frame customizations
- Enable Winner mode
- Cycle through your window configurations
- Use the Emacs Customize function
- Start a customization buffer
- Pick a customization group
- Change a customization option
- Customize specific attributes
- Know the Emacs customization functions
Objectives
After working through this tutorial, you'll know how to change every aspect of
the Emacs editing environment, and how to save your customizations so that they can be
recalled later.
Prerequisites
Before working through this tutorial, you should complete the previous
tutorials in this series. They lay down the basic foundation and explain many of
the Emacs concepts you use in this tutorial.
System requirements
This tutorial requires a user account on any UNIX-based system that has a
recent copy of Emacs installed. There are several varieties of Emacs; the original and most popular is GNU
Emacs, which is published online by the GNU Project. You should have a recent copy of GNU Emacs—one that is at version 20 or
greater. Versions 20 and 21 are the most commonly available, and development
snapshots of version 22 are also available. This tutorial works with any of
these versions for Emacs. If your system is running something older, it's time
to upgrade. To know what version of Emacs you have running, use the GNU-style
--version flag:
$ emacs --version
GNU Emacs 22.0.91.1
Copyright (C) 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
GNU Emacs comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
You may redistribute copies of Emacs
under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
For more information about these matters, see the file named COPYING.
$
|
Because this tutorial deals exclusively with graphical elements of Emacs operation in the X Window System
environment, you should also have an X server up and running.
Duration
2 hours
Formats html, pdf
| 
