Re: Issues with emacs

[Gregory Benjamin]

Here's my off-the-top-of-my-head variation on your idea:

> Wouldn't it be very useful to have a QUICKSTART or HOWTO shipped
> with Emacs?  Something really short and concise and containing
> something like this:
> 
> Notation:
> 
> * C- means Control
> * M- means Meta (or Alt if you don't have a Meta key)
> * C-M- means Control and Meta
> 
> 
> Movement:
> 

I don't use any of these four in day-to-day use, though I did learn
them initially.

> C-n - Move to the next line
> C-p - Move to the previous line
> C-v - Move one screen downwards
> M-v - Move one screen upwards

I use these instead. I prefer to simply hold down the up or down arrow
key to scroll since, on modern computers, this moves through the text
at about 15 lines per second.

Arrow keys - work as expected
C-a - Move to beginning of line
C-e - Move to end of line
M-< - Move to beginning of buffer (requires shift)
M-> - Move to end of buffer (requires shift)

I class C-s and C-r as cursor movement keys.

C-s - Search/Jump forward
C-r - Search/Jump backward

> Editing:
> 
> C-x C-f - Open a file
> C-x b - Switch to another buffer
> C-x C-s - Save the current buffer to a file

C-d - delete character
M-d - delete "word"

My ~/.emacs has: (setq kill-whole-line t) so that:

C-k - delete from point to EOL or entire line if point is in col 1.

Setting kill-whole-line t makes C-k comfortable for deleteing blocks
of text. Just type C-a, then C-k as many times as desired. In cases
where I want to cut/paste more than a few lines of text:

C-space - Start marking region to cut/paste

> C-w - Cut the current selection ("killing" and deleting)
> M-w - Copy the current selection ("killing" but not deleting)
> C-y - Paste ("yanking" killed text)
> C-/ - Undo
> 
> 
> Searching/replacing:
> 
> C-s - Search
> M-% - Search and replace
> C-M-% - Search and replace (regular expressions)
> 
> 
> Miscellaneous:
> 
> M-x - Execute a command that doesn't necessarily have a key binding
> C-x C-c - Exit Emacs
> C-g - Abort unfinished key sequence
> ESC ESC ESC - If you messed up somehow and want to hide in a corner
> and hope for it to go away