Emacs Berlin Beginners Curriculum

Windows versions of GNU Emacs are distributed as zip-files, which can be found on gnu.org ftp mirrors. Find the zip file with the highest version number, at time of writing this is emacs-24.5-bin-i686-mingw32.zip, and download it.

Create a directory where you want to put Emacs, for example C:\Program Files\Emacs and unpack the zip file there.

The runemacs.exe program in the bin directory will start Emacs. The addpm.exe program will add Emacs to the start menu.

OS X already comes with a version of Emacs installed, but it's very old (Emacs 22), and it doesn't have GUI support, so it only works inside a terminal. You want to avoid using this version.

If you have Homebrew available then that is the most straightforward option.

$ brew update
$ brew install emacs --with-cocoa
$ brew linkapps emacs

Alternatively you can download a .dmg at emacsformacosx.com.

That should be enough to get you going. Emacs Redux has some more tips on setting up Emacs on OS X.

Your package manager should have ready-made packages available. If you have a graphical package manager look for an "emacs" package, or install the package from the command line with apt-get or yum.

If you've managed to install and start Emacs, you should see a screen that looks like this,

This screen isn't of great interest to us, and in fact we will disable it soon. The only thing for us to do here is find the Emacs version (look for where it says "This is GNU Emacs …"). Verify that you have version 24.5 or later.

Now you can exit this screen by pressing `q`, and you should now find yourself in the *scratch* buffer.

Try typing this line of code

(dotimes (x 10) (insert "\nHello Emacs!"))

Now place the cursor at the end of the line, so behind the last closing parenthesis. Press and hold the Ctrl key, and with Ctrl pressed type x e.

Congratulations! You just wrote and executed your first piece of Emacs Lisp code.

From here on it gets real, you should try to practice the commands that follow until they are committed to memory. It's a good idea to write these on a small piece of paper or index card. Keep it close to your computer as a reference.

To exit Emacs, type C-x C-c.

You can quit a partially entered command, type C-g.

To close informational "windows" like an error message or help information, type q

Let me repeat that

Emacs predates the modern terminology of copy/cut/paste. Cut is called kill, this deletes some text from the buffer, and appends it to the kill ring. To "paste" it you yank it from the kill ring back to the buffer.

The command to "copy" is called kill-ring-save, since it adds a piece of text to the kill ring, without deleting it from the buffer.

C-y / yank inserts at the current cursor position, which in Emacs terminology is called point.

You already used the command `eval-last-sexp`, bound to `C-x C-e`, which evaluates the s-expression preceding point (the cursor position).

Another command for evaluating is `C-M-x`, which evaluates the outermost form.

TODO

There are many ways to organize the configuration of your Emacs. We'll give you a blueprint so you have a structure that you can fill in yourself as time goes on.

Most of the extra functionality will be installed through packages. These can be installed from multiple places, we'll set things up to download packages from the two main "package repositories", GNU ELPA and MELPA.

A package may require some extra setup or configuration, such as customizing variables or creating key bindings. To keep that all in one place we'll use a command called use-package, which is itself installed as… a package. Package-ception!

;; Install packages from these sources
;;   - GNU ELPA: The official GNU package repository, relatively small
;;   - MELPA: The main community-run package archive
(setq package-archives
      '(("gnu" . "https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/")
        ("melpa" . "https://melpa.org/packages/")))

(package-initialize)

;; Download a list of available packages if we don't have it already
(unless (file-exists-p "~/.emacs.d/elpa/archives/melpa")
  (package-refresh-contents))

;; The `use-package' package makes it easy to install and configure packages
(package-install 'use-package)


;; For example,
(use-package multiple-cursors

  ;; install the package if it isn't already
  :ensure t

  ;; configure key bindings
  :bind (("C-S-c C-S-c" . mc/edit-lines)
         ("C->"         . mc/mark-next-like-this)
         ("C-<"         . mc/mark-previous-like-this)
         ("C-c C-<"     . mc/mark-all-like-this)))

For each language that you commonly program in, you should at least install a "major mode". This will provide syntax highlighting and other language-specific functionality. What follows are some example configs to get you started. Just copy over the ones that are relevant to you.

Emacs is over 30 years old. It was developed in a time when computers took half a room, and before the rise of GUIs and desktop systems. A lot of its terminology also stems from this time, making it sound like Emacsers speak a different language.

For your convenience we have compiled a simple phrase book translation Emacsish to English.