exit: C-x C-c The bottom highlighted bar is the status bar / mode line bar. The bottom line is a minibuffer. The highlighted text area is called a region. The point to the left of the cursor is called the point. To search the emacs documentation: M-x (alt-x) apropos or C-h a. Keyboard Navigation: k - j - l - h - Moving around in the buffer: C-p Up one line C-n Down on line C-f Forward on character C-b Backward on character C-a Beggining of line C-e End of line C-v Down one page M-v Up one page M-f Forward one word M-b Backward one word M-< Beggining of buffer M-> End of buffer M-g Quit current operation Commands: Two access methods, for example to save a buffer: C-x C-s |or| M-x save-buffer The first is the keyboard shortcut to the function The latter is a direct call to the function Keystroke Function Description C-x C-s save-buffer Save the current buffer to disk C-x u undo Undo the last operation C-c C-f find-file Open a file from disk C-s isearch-forward Search forward for a string C-r isearch-backward Search backward for a string replace-string Search & replace for a string replace-regexp Search & replace using regexp C-h t help-with-tutorial Use the interactive tutorial C-h f describe-function Display help for a function C-h v describe-variable Display help for a variable C-h x describe-key Display what a key sequence does C-h a apropos Search help for string/regexp C-h F view-emacs-FAQ Display the emacs FAQ C-h i info Read the Emacs documentation C-x r m bookmark-set Set a bookmark. Useful in searches C-x r b bookmark-jump Jump to a bookmark C-g To exit an M-x command M-x ispell Spell checker. Command-line completion: When using M-x, you can use TAB for command-line completion. Try M-x and type search, hit TAB and it will append a - to the word. This is because there are multiple search functions available. Hit TAB again and it will display a list of available functions for you to choose from. Type C-g to exit. Emacs modes: Emacs offer several modes for programming, send e-mail, reading usenet news, keeping appointments, and even playing games. Emacs modes are simply libraries of Lisp code that extend, modify, or enhance Emacs is some way. There are fundamentally two types of modes with emacs: major and minor Only one major mode may be ran at one time. Many minor modes can be active at a given time. Programming modes: C,C++,JAVA: The syntax of C, C++, and Java are quite similar. There is only one mode for programming with these languages: cc-mode or CC Mode. PERL: There are two modes for PERL programming: perl-mode and cperl-mode. The most recommended is cperl-mode. Modes: ispell mode - M-x ispell. chell-checker. html-helper mode - HTML authoring mode. shell mode - M-x shell. can't run full-screen apps. telnet mode - M-x telnet. ftp mode - M-x ftp man mode - M-x man. view manual pages. Customizing Emacs: Save custimizations in .emacs in home directory. Most customizations are done is Lisp code. #.emacs (setq-default transient-mark-mode t) # Highlight with mouse is true. (setq fill-column 20) # Column width for word-wrap feature. (setq auto-mode-alist (cons '("\\.html$" . html-helper-mode) auto-mode-alist)) # Emacs will open all .html files in html-helper mode. # This can be used with *.pl, *.cpp, etc. To stop the welcome message from displaying: .emacs: (setq inhibit-startup-message t) Try: M-x customize