• Emacs
  • Good Packages
  • First steps
    • General Interface stuff
    • Window Splits
    • Input Methods
  • Configuration
  • Default Keybindings
    • Moving
      • Navigation
    • Buffermanipulation
      • Copy/Paste
      • Delete
    • Search
    • Splits
  • Tips
  • LaTeX
  • dired
  • org-mode
  • Cheatsheet

Variants:

• GNU Emacs
• mg (used to be micro GNU Emacs), minimal OpenBSD fork
• Spacemacs, Emacs Distribution/Setup, for VIM-users
• ErgoEmacs, Keybindings by Xah Lee for better ergonomics

Tutorials:

• http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/emacs.html (Xah Lee: Practical Emacs)

Table of standard keybindings:

• http://wttools.sourceforge.net/emacs-stuff/emacs-keybindings.html

• AucTeX https://www.gnu.org/software/auctex/ - Editing LaTeX, includes latex-preview
  • ubuntu etc: sudo-apt get auctex
• Org-mode - Organize ideas and notes, planning, like vimwiki but has more of everything (built in)
• gnus - Email, Newsgroups, RSS (built in)
• notmuch - Email
• dired - directory editing mode (built in)
• Magit - git mode

Open from the terminal with emacs & or in your desktop menu. emacs --no-window-system or emacs -nw starts without the GUI, just in the terminal. If you want emacs to always start in the terminal, you can either install the emacs-nox package or just create a simple shell-alias.

Emacs is not a modal editor like VIM.

To Yank means to paste, like in VIM. Kill usually means to cut or copy.

C-x means to press Ctrl+x. M-x means to press Alt+x. The meta-key (M) is Alt by default, you can of course change it though. As a general guideline: the meta-version of a command is often a somewhat stronger version of C-. E.g. C-w is cut, M-w is copy.

Command	Keycombination
Undo	C-/
Redo	C-g, C-/
Save	C-x, C-s
Quit	C-x, C-c
Word forward	C-Right oder M-f
Word back	C-Left oder M-b
Document beginning	C-Home oder M-<
Document end	C-End oder M->
Character forward	C-f
Character back	C-b
Page down	C-v, PgDown
Page up	M-v, PgUp
Delete right word	M-d
Delete left word	M-Backspace
Delete line	C-k
Select text	C-Space
Copy	M-w
Cut	C-w
Insert	C-y
Abort Command/Sequence	C-g

To select text, put the cursor on the beginning of the select-area, press C-Space, then go to the end of the select-area and perform your manipulation (e.g. copy),

Command	Keycombination
horizontal split	C-x, 2
vertical split	C-x, 3
next window	C-x, o
delete other windows	C-x, 1
delete this window	C-x, 0

If your native tongue is German (or something similiar, it's not the only postfix language) but you usually use an English keyboard, it might be a good idea to automatically convert ae to ä and AE to Ä without changing the keyboard layout for every letter. To do this just press C-u C-\ and type german-postfix. After doing this you can switch between the layouts with C-\.

The init-file is located in ~/.emacs (~/.mg for mg). You can immediately load changes in the file in an opened emacs session with M-x load-file.

Some examples:

;; ========ENCODING========
;; UTF-8 as default encoding
(set-language-environment "UTF-8")
(set-default-coding-systems 'utf-8)

;; ========STYLE==========
;; load theme misterioso
;; (load-theme 'misterioso)
;; moe-theme
	(add-to-list 'custom-theme-load-path "~/.emacs.d/themes/")
	(load-theme 'moe-dark t)
;; set background color independent from theme
;;(setq initial-frame-alist
;;	'((width . 92)
;;	(height . 54)
;;	(background-color . "honeydew")))
;;(setq default-frame-alist
;;	'((menu-bar-lines . 1)
;;	(tool-bar-lines . 0)
;;	(width . 92)
;;	(height . 52)
;;	(background-color . "honeydew")))

;; default font and size
;; M-x (print (font-family-list)) to show fonts
;;(when (member "DejaVu Sans Mono" (font-family-list))
;;	(set-face-attribute 'default nil :font "DejaVu Sans Mono-10"))
;; show line numbers
(global-display-line-numbers-mode 1)
;; turn on highlighting of current line for all files
;; toggle on/off with M-x for current buffer
(global-hl-line-mode 1)
;; turn on bracket match highlight
(show-paren-mode 1)
;; set line spacing
;;(setq line-spacing 0.5)
;; stop cursor blinking
(blink-cursor-mode 0)


;; ======KEYBINDINGS=====
;; swapping Ctrl & Alt from within Emacs is not possible,
;; you have to do it from the OS and independently for each OS


;; =======EDITING========
;; auto insert closing bracket
(electric-pair-mode 1)
;; stop cursor between CamelCase words
(global-subword-mode 1)
;; disable automatic backup~ files
(setq make-backup-files nil)
;; disable #auto-save# files
;; (setq auto-save-default nil)
;; refresh file automatically if it changes
;;(global-auto-revert-mode 1)
;; keep list of recently opened files
;; to use press M-x recentf-open-files, then just press digit key
(require 'recentf)
(recentf-mode 1)
(setq recentf-max-menu-items 25)
(global-set-key "\C-x\ \C-r" 'recentf-open-files)

;; remember cursor position - return cursor to same position
;; if file is opened again
(if (version< emacs-version "25.0")
	(progn
		(require 'saveplace)
		(setq-default save-place t))
	(save-place-mode 1))

People sometimes ask me if it is a sin in the Church of Emacs to use vi. Using a free version of vi is not a sin; it is a penance. So happy hacking. -- Richard Stallman

Command	Keycombination	Remember
Character forward	C-f	forward
Word forward	M-f oder C-Right	forward
Character backward	C-b	back
Word backward	M-b oder C-Left	back
Page down	C-v, PgDown	Arrow down
Page up	M-v, PgUp
Document beginning	C-Home	Stronger Home
Document end	C-End	Stronger End
Cursorpos. becomes screencenter	C-l
Line down	C-n	next line
Line up	C-p	previous line
Statement end	M-e	end
Line end	C-e	end
Statement start	M-a	Anfang (German for start)
Line start	C-a	Anfang

Command	Keycombination	Remember
recently opened files	M-x recentf-open-files
	C-x C-r	if set in .emacs
File open	C-x C-f	find file
File save	C-x C-s	save
File save as	C-x C-w	write
Open menu	[F10]	also in -nw mode!

Command	Keycombination	Remember
Buffer list	C-x C-b	buffer
Buffer choose	C-x b	buffer
Buffer close	C-x k	kill

Command	Keycombination	Remember
Shell open	M-x shell

Command	Keycombination	Remember
Undo	C-/
Redo	C-g, C-/	Abort command: undo
Cut	C-w	wipe
Copy	M-w	stronger C-w
Paste	C-y	yank

Command	Keycombination	Remember
Character delete	C-d	delete char
Word delete right	M-d	delete word
Word delete left	M-Backspace
Line delete	C-k	kill line
Sentence delete	M-k	kill sentence

Command	Keycombination	Remember
Word search	C-s	search
next occurence	C-s again
prev. occurence	C-r	redo search
Search end	C-g	abort command
Replace all	M-x replace-string	replaces all
Replace some	M-%	asks every time if you want to replace

Not finished yet.

trailing whitespace: whitespace/spaces after the last non-whitespace character in a line

Delete trailing whitespace with M-x delete-trailing-whitespace for the whole buffer.

Install the package AucTeX with your package manager and activate it by adding

;; ========LATEX=========
;; output pdf files
(setq TeX-PDF-mode t)
;; various options
(setq TeX-auto-save t)
(setq TeX-parse-self t)
(setq-default TeX-master nil)
(TeX-insert-braces 1)
;; visual line mode
(add-hook 'LaTeX-mode-hook 'visual-line-mode)
;; on-the-fly spell checking
;; (add-hook 'LaTeX-mode-hook 'flyspell-mode)
;; math mode
(add-hook 'LaTeX-mode-hook 'LaTeX-math-mode)

;; AUCTeX package
(load "auctex.el" nil t t)
(load "preview-latex.el" nil t t)
(require 'tex-site)

;; RefTeX package (integrated)
(require 'reftex)
(add-hook 'LaTeX-mode-hook 'turn-on-reftex) 
(setq reftex-plug-into-AUCTeX t)
(setq reftex-external-file-finders
      '(("tex" . "kpsewhich -format=.tex %f")
        ("bib" . "kpsewhich -format=.bib %f")))

to your .emacs configuration.

You can conveniently insert environments like itemize, list, etc. with C-c C-e and then typing what kind of environment you want.

Open with C-x d.

Still working on it.

Image from www.sachachua.org

Open with C-x org-mode. Still working on it.

Image from www.sachachua.org

Image from www.sachachua.org