Emacs

text, tool /ee'maks/ (Editing MACroS, or Extensible MACro

System, GNU Emacs) A popular screen editor for Unix and

most other operating systems.

Emacs is distributed by the Free Software Foundation and was

Richard Stallman's first step in the GNU project. Emacs

is extensible - it is easy to add new functions; customisable

- you can rebind keys, and modify the behaviour of existing

functions; self-documenting - there is extensive on-line,

context-sensitive help; and has a real-time "what you see is

what you get" display. Emacs is writen in C and the higher

levels are programmed in Emacs Lisp.

Emacs has an entire Lisp system inside it. It was

originally written in TECO under ITS at the MIT AIlab. AI Memo 554 described it as "an advanced,

self-documenting, customisable, extensible real-time display

editor".

It includes facilities to view directories, run compilation

subprocesses and send and receive electronic mail and

Usenet news (GNUS). W3 is a web browser, the

ange-ftp package provides transparent access to files on

remote FTP servers. Calc is a calculator and symbolicmathematics package. There are "modes" provided to assist in

editing most well-known programming languages. Most of these

extra functions are configured to load automatically on first

use, reducing start-up time and memory consumption. Many

hackers (including Denis Howe) spend more than 80% of their

tube time inside Emacs.

GNU Emacs is available for Unix, VMS, GNU/Linux,

FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, MS Windows, MS-DOS, and

other systems. Emacs has been re-implemented more than 30

times. Other variants include GOSMACS, CCA Emacs, UniPress

Emacs, Montgomery Emacs, and XEmacs. Jove, epsilon, and

MicroEmacs are limited look-alikes.

Some Emacs versions running under window managers iconify as

an overflowing kitchen sink, perhaps to suggest the one

feature the editor does not (yet) include. Indeed, some

hackers find Emacs too heavyweight and baroque for their

taste, and expand the name as "Escape Meta Alt Control Shift"

to spoof its heavy reliance on keystrokes decorated with

bucky bits. Other spoof expansions include "Eight Megabytes

And Constantly Swapping", "Eventually "malloc()'s All Computer

Storage", and "Emacs Makes A Computer Slow" (see recursiveacronym). See also vi.

Latest version: 20.6, as of 2000-05-11. 21.1 (RSN) adds a

new redisplay engine with support for proportional text,

images, tool bars, tool tips, toolkit scroll bars, and a

mouse-sensitive mode line.

FTP from your nearest GNU archive site.

E-mail: (bug reports only) [email protected].

Usenet newsgroups: news:gnu.emacs.help,

news:gnu.emacs.bug, news:alt.religion.emacs,

news:gnu.emacs.sources, news:gnu.emacs.announce.

[Jargon File]

(1997-02-04)