Software I like: Emacs

• Real programmers use emacs
• For MS Windows see GNU Emacs FAQ for MS Windows, including Getting Emacs.
  
• EmacsWiki
• An Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp
• William Mitchell's 49-slide presentation on Programming with GNU Emacs Lisp

My customizations

Under MS Windows, you should define a HOME environment variable (e.g., C:\Users\username\). Under Linux, HOME should already be defined.

You can add something like -geometry 80x40+100+25 to the Shortcut Target to specify the initial size and position of the Emacs window. (I'm not actually sure where to do this after using the installer for Emacs 27.2.)

Emacs can be customized using a .emacs file in one’s home directory and .el files in in the directory ~/.emacs.d/lisp/. These are my customizations:

• .emacs
• fun.el (defines some utility functions)
• pen.el (defines customized basic key bindings)
• html-ins.el (defines key bindings for HTML character entities)

Basic key bindings

The following table summarizes the emacs key bindings that I use, as defined in pen.el. They are patterned after BBN's PEN text editor:

• "The Design of the PEN Video Editor Display Module", D.R. Barach, D.H. Taenzer and R.E. Wells, Proc. ACM SIGPLAN SIGOA Symposium on Text Manipulation, SIGPLAN 16(6): June, 1981, pp. 130-136.
• User's Guide to PEN 7.0: A Screen-Oriented Editor. BBN Research Systems, 1982

The caret (or circumflex accent) character (^) is used to indicate control characters. For example, ^a signifies holding down the Control key while pressing the a key.

The Single column lists single-character commands. The following three columns list commands which consist of two characters: ^x, ^y or ^z followed by another character.

The table does not include the use of the arrow keys, backspace key, etc; nor the use of whatever menus may appear on the screen; nor all of the commands that can be invoked use ^[ x.

The strongly emphasized entries are those that I use most often, and that might be considered as fundamental.

	Single	^x	^y	^z
^a	Beginning of line	Save all buffers	(undefined)	Beginning of buffer
^b	Backward one character	List buffers	(undefined)	Move line to bottom of window
^c	(html-helper-mode commands)	Quit	(undefined)	Re-centre
^d	Delete character at cursor	List directory	Deactivate mark	Down half a window
^e	End of line	(undefined)	(undefined)	End of buffer
^f	Forward one character	Find file (after ^u)	(undefined)	(undefined)
^g	Gobble word to right	(undefined)	Get region	(undefined)
^h	Help	(undefined)	(undefined)	Home (beginning of window)
^i	(tab)	Indent region	(undefined)	Insert/Overwrite mode
^j	(line feed)	(undefined)	(undefined)	Search backward (after ^u)
^k	Kill line	Edit keyboard macro	Kill region	(undefined)
^l	Left one word	Call last kbd macro	(undefined)	Scroll left
^m	(carriage return)	(coding-system commands)	(undefined)	(undefined)
^n	Next line	Set goal column for ^n & ^p	(undefined)	Next screenful
^o	Open space	Delete blank lines	Open region	(undefined)
^p	Previous line	Mark page	Put region	Previous screenful
^q	(see ^\)
^r	Right one word	Re-highlight (redraw)	(undefined)	Scroll right
^s	(see S)
^t	Toggle characters	Clear modification flag	(undefined)	Line to top
^u	User argument	Re-use user argument	Unkill region	Up half a window
^v	(html-insert commands)	Find alternate file	(undefined)	Split window vertically
^w	Wipe word to left	Write file	(undefined)	Split window horizontally
^x	(^x commands)	Run command shell	Exchange pos'n with mark	…
^y	(region commands)	(undefined)	Set mark	(undefined)
^z	(^z commands)	Exit & save	(undefined)	Other window
^\	Quote	(undefined)	(undefined)	(undefined)
^]	Search forward (after ^u)	Save buffer	Shape of region	(undefined)
^[	Meta	…	(undefined)	(undefined)
S	(self-insert)	Save buffer	Shape of region	Incremental search fwd
(		Start macro	Blink matching open	(undefined)
)		End macro	(undefined)	(undefined)
L		Count lines on page	Convert region to lower case	(undefined)
U		Undo	Convert region to upper case	(undefined)
=		Show cursor position	(undefined)	Show cursor position
1		Single window	(undefined)	Single window
C		(undefined)	(undefined)	Change case sensitivity for searches

^s and ^q are not used because in some contexts they are interpreted as transmission off and on, respectively.

Key bindings for HTML character entities

The following table lists the keystrokes to use after ^v in order to insert various HTML character entities. In some cases, pairs of characters may be entered in either order.

Non-alphabetic symbols

Ligatures

Non-Latin characters

Decorated Latin characters

Greek characters

Glyph1 is displayed using a Symbol font. Glyph2 is displayed using HTML character-entity names. The latter is more correct but doesn't work in many browsers; the former is inelegant but may work in some circumstances. The variant lower-case characters are even more problematical than the others.

Name	Glyph1	Glyph2	Keystrokes	Name	Glyph1	Glyph2	Keystrokes
Alpha	A	Α	gA	alpha	a	α	ga
Beta	B	Β	gB	beta	b	β	gb
Gamma	G	Γ	gG	gamma	g	γ	gg
Delta	D	Δ	gD	delta	d	δ	gd
Epsilon	E	Ε	gE	epsilon	e	ε	ge
Zeta	Z	Ζ	gZ	zeta	z	ζ	gz
Eta	H	Η	gH	eta	h	η	gh
Theta	Q	Θ	gQ	theta	q	θ	gq
				theta	J	ϑ	gJ
Iota	I	Ι	gI	iota	i	ι	gi
Kappa	K	Κ	gK	kappa	k	κ	gk
Lambda	L	Λ	gL	lambda	l	λ	gl
Mu	M	Μ	gM	mu	m	μ	gm
Nu	N	Ν	gN	nu	n	ν	gn
Xi	X	Ξ	gX	xi	x	ξ	gx
Omicron	O	Ο	gO	omicron	o	ο	go
Pi	P	Π	gP	pi	p	π	gp
Rho	R	Ρ	gR	rho	r	ρ	gr
Sigma	S	Σ	gS	sigma	s	σ	gs
				sigma	V	ς	gV
Tau	T	Τ	gT	tau	t	τ	gt
Upsilon	U	Υ	gU	upsilon	u	υ	gu
Phi	F	Φ	gF	phi	f	φ	gf
				phi	j		gj
Chi	C	Χ	gC	chi	c	χ	gc
Psi	Y	Ψ	gY	psi	y	ψ	gy
Omega	W	Ω	gW	omega	w	ω	gw
				omega	v		gv

Coding-system commands

The following table shows three of the coding-system commands, which are prefaced by ^X^M. The command is followed by the name of the coding system and then ^M. For example, ^x ^m c mule-utf-16-le ^m.

c	Specify coding system for the immediately following command
f	Use specified coding system for the visited file in the current buffer
r	Revisit current file using the specified coding system (Emacs version 22)

There are also other coding-system commands.

LaTeX mode(s)

My current favourite is AUCTeX.

HTML mode(s)

I have been using Nelson Minar's html-helper-mode and G. U. Lauri's version; see also page on EmacsWiki (cf. D. Brierton's suggested extensions from 2002)).

In 2011 Jan, I started considering the use of the HTML Mode built into Emacs (see also HtmlMode in EmacsWiki).

For me, the advantages of the old html-helper-mode (apart from the fact that I'm used to it) are that it generates time-stamps, and that it has keystrokes defined for definition lists and for em, strong, code, sup and sub (and for span class=menu that I added myself).

The disadvantages are that it hasn't been supported for a long time, and that it doesn't support the entry and indenting of tables.

((HTML-mode
  (time-stamp-line-limit . -50)
  (time-stamp-end . "\\.?$")
  (time-stamp-format . "%:y-%02m-%02d:%:H:%:M:%:S")
  (time-stamp-start . "^Last modified: ")))

To get the time-stamp functionality that was provided by html-helper-mode, for the new HTML mode I created the code shown at the right, for inclusion in the directory-variables file ~/.dir-locals.el. (These became available only in Emacs version 23; they do not work for remote directories, which might become a problem if I were using the feature whereby they identify the files to which they apply based on location rather than mode.) I have not been able to figure out how to get an initial-caps abbreviated month name from the date and time formatting specifications.

Here is a list of those particular html-helper-mode keystrokes that I have been used to using, for comparison with the newer HTML mode.

Keystrokes	Entity	Notes	Keystrokes [1]
^C &	&		^V &
^C <	&lt;		^V <
^C >	&gt;		^V >
^C ␠	&nbsp;	^C Space	^V ␠
Keystrokes	Tag	Notes	Keystrokes [2]
^C ^L u	ul		^C ^C u
^C ^L o	ol		^C ^C o
^C ^L i	li (or dt+dd)		^C ^C l
^C ^L d	dl
^C ^L t	dt+dd
^C ^A n	a name=		^C ^C n
^C ^A l	a href=		^C ^C h
^C ␉	img	^C Tab	^C ^C i
^C ^S e	em
^C ^S s	strong
^C ^S c	code
^C ^S k	kbd
^C ^S m	span class=menu	added by me
^C ^P ^	sup
^C ^P _	sub
^C ^T1	h1		^C 1
^C ^T2	h2		^C 2
^C ^T3	h3		^C 3
^C ^T4	h4		^C 4
^C ^T5	h5		^C 5
^C ^T6	h6		^C 6
^C ␍	br	^C Enter	^C ␊ (^C ^J)
␛ ␍	p	^[ Enter	^C ␍

[1] Keystrokes defined in my html-ins.el
[2] Keystrokes defined in newer HTML mode