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Product-Info
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.name
emacs
.fullname
GNU Emacs editor
.type
Text Editing
.short
GNU Emacs editor
.description
GNU Emacs is the GNU incarnation of the advanced, self-documenting,
customizable, extensible real-time display editor Emacs. (The `G' in
`GNU' is not silent.)
We say that Emacs is a "display" editor because normally the text
being edited is visible on the screen and is updated automatically as
you type your commands.
We call it 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.
We call Emacs 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 it to find out what any command does, or to find all the
commands that pertain to a topic.
"Customizable" means that you can change the definitions of Emacs
commands in little ways. For example, if you use a programming
language in which comments start with `<**' and end with `**>', you
can tell the Emacs comment manipulation commands to use those strings.
Another sort of customization is rearrangement of the command set.
For example, if you prefer the four basic cursor motion commands (up,
down, left and right) on keys in a diamond pattern on the keyboard,
you can have it.
"Extensible" means that you can go beyond simple customization and
write entirely new commands, programs in the Lisp language to be run
by Emacs's own Lisp interpreter. Emacs is an "on-line extensible"
system, which means that it is divided into many functions that call
each other, any of which can be redefined in the middle of an editing
session. Any part of Emacs can be replaced without making a separate
copy of all of Emacs. Most of the editing commands of Emacs are
written in Lisp already; the few exceptions could have been written in
Lisp but are written in C for efficiency. Although only a programmer
can write an extension, anybody can use it afterward.
.version
18.59
.author
Richard Stallman
.distribution
GNU Public License
.described-by
Fred Fish (fnf@amigalib.com)