WHAT IS EMACS?

Well, how to begin is a question for philosophers, so I'm just going to dig in and go for it. The first question you may ask is, "What exactly is emacs?" And that would be a very good question. Some highbrow users may raise their eyebrows and reply, "What isn't emacs?" But not here, we will go into detail about the purpose, uses, and general basics of the emacs editor.

As mentioned in that last sentence, emacs, in the most basic sense, is a text editor. It allows you to create, edit, and save new or existing text files on your machine. But its scope and power is not limited to mere text editing. Emacs incorporates various operational modes specific to the type of document that you are working on. This document is being written in emacs under the text-mode. Other modes include HTML, C++, LISP, and SCHEME.

"What," you may ask, "is the purpose of these operating modes?" Excellent question! For now, let's just say that they make emacs smarter and friendlier to use when editing these types of files. For any programmers out there, can you say automatic parentheses matching?

By now, you have a very basic understanding of what emacs is and what it is capable of. So, given that, let's start working with emacs.