Introduction   Introduction to XEmacs editor 
Indices, nodes containing large menus
Key (Character) Index   An item for each standard Emacs key sequence.
Command and Function Index   An item for each command and function name
Variable Index   An item for each variable in User-Guide
Concept Index   An item for the concepts introduced 
Entering, Exiting and Editing Emacs
1. Entering and Exiting Emacs   Starting Emacs from the shell and Exiting
2. XEmacs Windows and Menus   Description of Pull-down menus
3. Basic Editing Commands   Basic Editing commands 
Other Features of XEmacs
4. Customize key bindings and menus   Customize Emacs menus and keybindings
5. Help   Help menu and other help commands
6. Major and Minor Modes   Major and Minor modes in XEmacs
7. Files   Visiting, Saving and Listing Files
8. Other Customizations   Customizing Variables, Modes, etc
9. Selecting and Moving Text   Selecting text and moving text
10. Searching and Replacing   Searching and Replacing text 


 — The Detailed Node Listing —

Entering and Exiting Emacs
1.1 Entering Emacs   Entering Emacs from the shell
1.2 Emacs Frame   Basic information about the XEmacs Frame
1.3 Exiting Emacs  
1.4 The Mode Line   Interpreting the mode line.
1.5 The Echo Area   Bottom of the frame where you interact with Emacs. 
XEmacs Windows and Menus
2.1 XEmacs Windows   Manipulating XEmacs Windows
2.2 XEmacs Pull-down Menus   Description of XEmacs Pull-down Menus 
Pull-down menus
2.2.1 The File Menu   Items on the File Menu
2.2.2 The Edit Menu   Items on the Edit Menu
2.2.3 The Options Menu   Items on the Options Menu
2.2.4 The Buffers Menu   Items on the Buffers Menu
2.2.5 The Help Menu   The Help Menu at the extreme right on the frame 
Basic Editing Commands
3.1 Inserting Text   Insert text in Emacs by simply typing at the cursor position.
3.2 Moving Around   Moving Around the cursor in the buffer,
3.3 Erasing Text   Different commands for erasing text
3.4 Giving Numeric Arguments   Giving Numeric Arguments to commands
3.5 Undoing Changes   Undoing Changes made by mistake 
Customize key bindings and menus
4.1 Customize key bindings   Changing Key Bindings
4.2 Customizing Menus   Adding, Deleting, Enabling and Disabling Menus 
Help
5.1 Help menu   Items on the Help Menu 
Major and Minor Modes
6.1 Major Modes   Choosing Major Modes
6.2 Minor Modes   Auto-Fill, Abbrev and other minor modes 
Emacs Files
7.1 File Names   How to type and edit file name arguments.
7.2 Visiting Files   Visiting a file prepares Emacs to edit the file.
7.3 Saving Files   How to save Emacs files. 
Other Customizations
8.1 Other Customizations   Customizing Emacs variables
8.2 Init File Examples   Some examples of Lisp expressions in init.el file 
Selecting and Moving Text
9.1 Setting the Mark   Select a region of text by setting the Mark
9.2 Selecting Text with Mouse  
9.3 Operating on the Region   Various ways to operate on a selected text
9.4 Moving Text  
9.5 Accumulating Text   Accumulating Text from several buffers 
No sub menu for the node search and replace
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Introduction

You are reading about XEmacs which is a self-documenting, customizable, extensible real-time display editor.

XEmacs is a display editor because normally the text being edited is visible on the screen and is updated automatically as you type. See Display: (xemacs)Frame section ‘Frame’ in XEmacs User’s Manual.

It is 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. See Real-time: (xemacs)Basic section ‘Basic Editing’ in XEmacs User’s Manual.

It is 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 C-h to find out what a command does, or to find all the commands relevant to a topic. See (xemacs)Help section ‘Help’ in XEmacs User’s Manual.

Customizable means you can change the definitions of Emacs commands. 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 (see (xemacs)Comments section ‘Comments’ in XEmacs User’s Manual). Another sort of customization is rearrangement of the command set. For example, you can set up the four basic cursor motion commands (up, down, left and right) on keys in a diamond pattern on the keyboard if you prefer. See (xemacs)Customization section ‘Customization’ in XEmacs User’s Manual.

Extensible means 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: it is divided into many functions that call each other. You can redefine any function in the middle of an editing session and replace any part of Emacs without making a separate copy of all of Emacs. Most of the editing commands of Emacs are written in Lisp; the few exceptions could have been written in Lisp but are written in C for efficiency. Only a programmer can write an extension to Emacs, but anybody can use it afterward.

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