Writing GNU Emacs Extensions

By Bob Glickstein

Book Overview

Yes, it is possible to be all things to all people, if you're talking about the Emacs editor. As a user, you can make any kind of customization you want, from choosing the keystrokes that invoke your... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1565922611
• ISBN13: 9781565922617
• Release Date: April 1997
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.08 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 7.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Step 3 in mastering Emacs...

...is reading this book. Step 1 would be to read O'Reilly's "Learning Gnu Emacs" from cover to cover. Step 2 would be to start bookmarking "Info" pages in the Emacs and Elisp manuals (inside Emacs; Emacs can bookmark places in files you've edited, bookmark directories, bookmark Info pages, etc.); and then you are ready to read this book. While you can become proficient in Emacs just by learning a handful of commands, to be truly productive and happy you must learn most of the features and use them. This is a very long process (over a year for me, learning a little bit more each day). But what I've gained from the journey is invaluable. For example, one insight I've gotten is that Emacs can work very well for the novice (open/type/save/close) and the expert (write major mode to handle new language) equally well, and this idea can apply to any software project. (Sure, it sounds simplistic but the moment of "Aha!" is more profound than that.)This book is fairly small and progressively introduces new ideas in writing Lisp code to add functionality to Emacs. I think in retrospect the topics covered were well chosen because I have looked up the examples time and again to use code snippets.Step 4 in mastering Emacs is to read the newsgroup gnu.emacs.help every day for a few months, which will teach you about a great many features Emacs has that are not covered in any book (or covered very well, like term mode, font-lock and many more).

A wonderful intro into the mysteries of emacs

The book is well paced and easy to read. The concepts build naturally upon one another. Glickstein provides real world examples to introduce new features. I highly recommend it!

Thorough and well written

Glickstein offers practical solutions to gnu-emacs problems from the opening pages and only gets better from there. He introduces emacs-lisp topics gradually, and always in the context of solving a practical problem. One of the things I loved most about this book is that from the very first chapter, made emacs more usable by correcting some annoying traits that I had just accepted. Now I realize I can fix what I don't like! After finishing this book, a reader should be more confident in finding and modifying solutions contained at the gnu-emacs archive. Hopefully emacs's popularity will increase further as even more people take its destiny into their own hands. This wonderful introduction is a good start.