Three presses of Esc often also works, but may have side effects in some circumstances, such as minibuffer key/text input that accepts escapes. Key shortcuts tend to just run these commands, which is why there is often more than one way to do something.

Most everything in emacs can be done via M-x command. (the nonexistant) A would in real-button terms mean Control-Shift-2 Shift-A. If for some reason Alt doesn't work for you (for example because of a mismatched remote shell setup), you can emulate M-x by pressing escape, then x.Ĭ-a b specifies that you should hold Control only while you press a, then hit b. In key-combo references, the M refers to Meta, almost always Alt. You can often use tab completion (commands, filenames, more). Things like which file to open, what to save as, which function to call via M-x command The Minibuffer is the bottom-most line on the screen that shows messages, and where the occasional question is asked and answered. Buffers are also used to display temporary feedback, output, shells, mail clients if you use it, or anything else that needs to query or inform you using more than one line. You can link to complex stuff or cheat sheets for completism)Ī buffer is, in practice, often a document/file. This just in an effort to keep this a quick overview rather than something to surf away from. (When adding things: try to separate the stuff you've consistently used for a long time from the stuff you know about and might be useful. 3.7 Adding and removing keyboard shortcutsĮmacs is a multi-document, windowable editor with widely scriptable functionality (although most people don't, since LISP isn't for everyone).

3.6 'How do I install a mode as a user?'.3.5 'I want to see the region (selection).'.3.3 'I want the mode (and highlighting) to be set based on the file extension.'.3.2 'How do I remove the startup message?'.2.5 'Pasted code gets indented up the wahoo.2.4 'emacs: Cannot connect to X server localhost:10.0.' Huh?.2.2 File exists: /home/ username/.emacs.d/.

2.1 'I'd like to use a literal newline in searches.

1.7 Cutting, copying and pasting - marking and moving.

Emacs page down shortcut