Learning GNU Emacs, Third Edition

The biggest problem with this book is that it teaches you how to use MOUSE with Emacs!!! I have a lot of experience using VIM in terminal and I was expecting that the book from oReilly about the world most popular editor Emacs will not teach you how to use mouse. For example, from the book: "To paste from the system clipboard you can press the paste icon in the toolbar or associated option in the menu bar. ... or you can press middle button on the mouse or mouse wheel. the caveat here is that you need a mouse WITH a middle button" WHAT? That the hack! You should teach hot to get rid of mouse while writing software and say "Mouse is eval, don't use it if you want to be productive and efficient." This is just not acceptable for me and I'm reading this book since I have already purchased it and I can't find any better alternative to this book. this is just ridiculous OReilly, come on!Even if I highly appreciate all the hard work to write any book, I would give this book 2 stars instead of 3... The only reason why this is 3 stars is that this book has short table of commands distilled from the whole chapter at the end of each chapter and this is works good for me the way I learn Emacs.People who read this kind of books will never ever ever use mouse as a helper to develop software, they will be using TextMate or Syblime or some heavy IDE but not VIM or Emacs.

Disclaimer: I'm a Vim user, lifelong -- starting with vi on Unix System V. I'm not here to add fuel to the editor religious wars: I switched to Emacs because I'd had a sip of the Kool-Aid, and decided I wanted more.The book is great: It fulfills its promise and will take you to the promised land.Me? It make my hands hurt (Emacs, not the book). My first editor in life was TECO -- the granddaddy of Emacs -- so you could say I was predisposed to the Emacs side, but it just didn't turn out that way: A lifetime of Vi/Vim was inconquerable, even by this excellent tutorial.If you're coming to the "editor wars" from a neutral country, this book is a great way to experience Emacs. I have no complaints about the book at all. I'm glad I own it ... it's just a shame I'll never use it again. I've gone back where I belong.Look at my Vim book reviews if you want an unbiased (but opinionated) review of those :-)

This is a qualified 3 stars. I am a long time Vim user; I tried vanilla Emacs 12-15 years ago and dropped it in favor of Vim due to the complex key-chords, Now on the strength of reviews of people I respect (Bailey Ling for one), I am trying Emacs again, but Evil-mode. I am slowly finding there is a LOT to like about Emacs--as used in Evil-mode.So while I like the book, it doesn't help ME much as it is all about vanilla Emacs, when I was hoping it would give me some clarity on Emacs Lisp. It doesn't, or rather hasn't, and I don't think it will. I purchased this book on recommendation of another in regards to learning E-Lisp, and I don't think that panned out. OTOH, it makes very clear several aspects of Emacs, and as far as I can tell, has few typos, and should be a GREAT resource for someone wanting to learn vanilla Emacs.It doesn't suit me that well, but should serve others well, if they meet the intended audience.

I have been using Vim for at least the last 13 years and really wanted to spend some time learning another great editor (you never know what the system you're working on will have installed).I have attempted to use emacs off and on over the years going through the tutorial each time. I spent an entire month on travel using nothing but this book and emacs. I would curse the editor at times, but only because my body would fall back into muscle memory. This book helped me work through all of my issues learning emacs as well as a great reference for the special nuggets that make much more sense after you have been using emacs for a while. I will never be as fluent in emacs that I am in vim, but I can hold my own with the instruction within this book.

Excellent book. Teaches you right off the bat why, how, and where the command goes. Emacs is really not that hard, those who see it as hard are soft. YOU need this book if you want to learn Emacs and how to use it. Online guides do not cut the fog of learning as well as this book. Vim, nah that's for babies. Real Men use Emacs. Emacs has been described as having a learning curve of a spiral, for those of you who want the spiral turned into a flat line of ease of learning. GET THIS BOOK.Also, this book doesn't provide files for you to practice on. Go to a news page and copy all the text into emacs text editor(you'll learn what the text editor is in the book) and then practice as you learn.TL;DR Buy this book. learn Emacs.

It is much easier to learn Emacs with this book, and the learning experience is much more joyful. It starts up with very basic but handy commands for editing, and it goes beyond that a little bit. Don't complain that this book does not tell you everything about Emacs, since that would takes thousands of pages. However, this book does build the basics for you to dig more into Emacs. If you are an experienced programmer, learning Emacs Lisp and customizing your own Emacs won't be difficult.This book build you the basics, and mastering Emacs depends on your effort. A very good introductory book for new Emacs user.

So far very useful for quick reference while on the bus or looking for things that Ive had trouble with. I run oh-my-emacs and I ran into a lot of issues there but given some work and effort I resolved all of them but the need for 24.4 (on 24.3.) This issue was related to magic which is unimportant to me anyway.

This book helps to explain and tutor the subject quite well. For some people, it may be a learning curve, but looking at the big picture, this software is probably based on the foundation of word processing essentials and how it relates to the integration of other programs.

This is a good introduction to Emacs (though not XEmacs) covering all the basics of windows, frames, buffers, text editing, various programming modes. It touches lightly on adapting Emacs via configuration and programming.To really update Emacs, and to cover things like e-mail, news readers, web-browsing etc. would require a thicker book. I hope that O'Reilly oblige when(if) they update the book when Emacs 22 is released.Recommended to the beginner or someone coming back to Emacs after a break.

Like:-The structure to teach new users which has some programming experience-The teachings about how to self-customizing and self-creating mode for emacs-It has a lot of cheating-sheets, it’s wonderfulDislike:-Nothing for major emacs user which I am not, so I loved the book.

This will introduce you to a lot of emacs modes and submodes, even if it is a little too outdated for modern versions of the editor

This book contains everything you need to know to get started with Emacs. It covers most of Emacs 20 essentials extensively and somewhat introduces the reader to elisp programming. It's outdated (the current version is 28.2 at the time of writing), but its content still holds.