Emacs-for-Goodness-Sake

Emacs for Goodness’ Sake

A Gentle Journey into the Operating System Disguised as a Text Editor

Welcome to a different kind of Emacs book—one that acknowledges the learning curve while celebrating the view from the top. This book is for anyone who’s heard that Emacs can do everything but doesn’t know where to start, especially those coming from modern IDEs like VS Code, IntelliJ, or Sublime Text.

📚 What’s Inside

This book takes you on a journey from basic text editing to using Emacs as your IDE, email client, task manager, and more. Each chapter builds on the previous one, but they’re also designed to be relatively standalone.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction - Why Emacs? Why now? Why this book?
  2. Chapter 1: First Steps - Opening, editing, and saving files without having a breakdown
  3. Chapter 2: The Emacs Philosophy - Understanding buffers, windows, and frames
  4. Chapter 3: Movement and Key Bindings - Making your fingers dance across the keyboard
  5. Chapter 4: Configuration Basics - Making Emacs yours with init.el
  6. Chapter 5: Package Management - Standing on the shoulders of giants with MELPA
  7. Chapter 6: Org-mode - Your life in plain text
  8. Chapter 7: Emacs as an IDE - LSP, debugging, and modern development
  9. Chapter 8: Communication Hub - Email, IRC, RSS, and never leaving Emacs
  10. Chapter 9: Just Enough Elisp - Programming your editor
  11. Chapter 10: Dired - File management as text editing
  12. Chapter 11: Macros and Registers - Automation for humans
  13. Appendix: Survival Guide for IDE Refugees - Making the transition smooth

🎯 Who This Book Is For

🚀 Getting Started

  1. Install Emacs (version 28 or later recommended): 
    # macOS
brew install emacs
   
# Linux (Debian/Ubuntu)
sudo apt-get install emacs
   
# Windows
winget install GNU.Emacs
# Or download from https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/download.html
  2. Start with Chapter 1 if you’re new to Emacs
  3. Jump to the Appendix if you’re coming from VS Code or another IDE
  4. Dive into Chapter 6 if you’re here for Org-mode

📖 How to Read This Book

For Complete Beginners

Start at Chapter 1 and work through sequentially. Don’t skip Chapter 2 (Philosophy)—understanding why Emacs works the way it does makes everything else easier.

For IDE Refugees

Read the Appendix first, then Chapter 2 (Philosophy), then jump around based on your needs.

For Vim Users

You might want to start with the Evil mode section in the Appendix, then read Chapter 2 to understand the Emacs way.

🎮 Special Features

Throughout the book, you’ll find:

💡 Philosophy

This book believes that:

🤝 Contributing

Found a typo? Have a better explanation? Want to add a chapter on your favorite Emacs feature? Contributions are welcome!

  1. Fork this repository
  2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b improve-chapter-x)
  3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Improve explanation of macros')
  4. Push to the branch (git push origin improve-chapter-x)
  5. Create a Pull Request

📝 License

This book is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0). You’re free to:

As long as you provide attribution and share under the same license.

🙏 Acknowledgments

📬 Contact

Questions? Suggestions? Emacs war stories? Open an issue on GitHub or reach out to the community:

🚦 Status

This book is complete but will continue to evolve. Emacs never stops growing, and neither should this guide.

Version History

“Emacs is the only software that I’ve used for 30 years and am still discovering new features.”

Start reading with the Introduction →

Remember: Every Emacs expert was once where you are now. The journey is worth it.

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