Practical Emacs Tutorial

emacs logo

This tutorial is designed for writers, scientists, engineers, to get started on emacs quickly. Each page teaches you something practical you can use right away. No emacs jargons. No need programing experience.

Emacs Quick Start

  1. Where to Download?
  2. Fun with Emacs
  3. Emacs First Day
  4. Basic Emacs Keys
  5. Basic Tips
  6. Less-known Tips
  7. Emacs on Windows

Manage Windows Topic

  1. Split Windows
  2. Save Split Windows Configuration
  3. Effective Windows Management
  4. Make Buffer Flow Side-by-Side
  5. Restore Opened Files, Windows Config
  6. Set Default Window Size

File Topic

  1. File Manager, dired
  2. Emacs Bookmark
  3. Open Recently Opened
  4. Open File Fast
  5. Open Last Closed File
  6. Open File Path Under Cursor
  7. Open File in External App
  8. Renaming Files

Buffer Topic

  1. List Buffers
  2. Switch Buffer
  3. Ido Mode
  4. New Empty Buffer
  5. Next/Previous User Buffer

Emacs Find Replace

  1. Search Text in Buffer
  2. isearch Current Word
  3. Isearch Whitespace Regex
  4. Highlight Text in Buffer
  5. List Delete Highlight Sort Lines
  6. Search Text in Directory
  7. Find Replace in Buffer
  8. Find Replace in Directory
  9. xah-find.el, Find Replace in Pure Elisp
  10. Regex Tutorial

Copy/Paste Topic

  1. Copy/Paste and kill-ring History
  2. Copy/Cut Current Line If No Selection
  3. Copy/Cut All or Selection
  4. Paste or Paste Previous
  5. Show kill-ring
  6. Copy to Register
  7. 1 Key to Copy/Paste from Register
  8. Copy Append
  9. Sync Copy/Paste Clipboards with Linux X11

Unicode Topic

  1. Unicode Basics
  2. Unicode Tutorial
  3. Emacs File Encoding FAQ
  4. Best Unicode Fonts for Programer
  5. Elisp: Unicode Escape Sequence
  6. Xah Math Input Mode
  7. Xah Unicode Browser Mode

Font Topic

  1. Font Setup
  2. Proportional Font
  3. Cycle Fonts by Command
  4. Set Line Spacing

Whitespace Topic

  1. Clean Empty Lines
  2. Delete Trailing Whitespace
  3. Delete Whitespace around Cursor
  4. Tabs, Space, Indentation Setup
  5. Make Whitespaces Visible
  6. Newline Representation ^M ^J ^L
  7. Batch Convert Line Ending in Dired

Rectangle Edit Topic

  1. Edit Column Text, Rectangle Commands
  2. Insert Alphabets A to Z
  3. Copy Rectangle Region to kill-ring
  4. Align Text
  5. picture-mode, ASCII Diagram
  6. Make Whitespaces Visible

Line Wrap Topic

  1. Hard Wrap Lines
  2. Toggle Line Wrap
  3. Reformat Lines for Source Code
  4. Visual Line Mode, Wrap Lines
  5. Novel Reading Mode
  6. toggle-word-wrap

Shell Topic

  1. Run Shell in Emacs
  2. Why Run Shell in Emacs?
  3. Difference between shell, term, eshell
  4. eshell
  5. View Linux man Page
  6. Interactive Abbrev
  7. File Manager, dired
  8. Batch Rename Files
  9. Linux: Basic Shell Commands

View Things Topic

  1. Spell Checking
  2. View Info Page
  3. View Image File
  4. View Image Thumbnails
  5. Eww Web Browser

org mode Topic

  1. Org Mode Markup Cheatsheet
  2. org-mode Tutorial
  3. Source Code Markup
  4. Org Mode for Todo
  5. Org Mode Customization
  6. Elisp: Parse Org Mode

HTML Topic

  1. Emacs HTML Tips
  2. Insert HTML Tag
  3. URL to Link Command
  4. Lines to HTML Table
  5. Replace HTML Entities
  6. CSS Compressor
  7. Color CSS Color Values
  8. View Image Thumbnails
  9. HTML Image Path to Img Tag
  10. Convert Image Files in Dired
  11. Xah HTML Mode

Elisp HTML Commands

  1. wrap-url
  2. URL to Link
  3. Link to Dead Link
  4. Make Image Links
  5. Extract URL
  6. Word to Wikipedia Linkify
  7. Wikipedia URL Linkify
  8. URL Percent Decode/Encode
  9. Lines to HTML Table
  10. Markup Function Names
  11. Color Source Code
  12. Transform Text Under Cursor
  13. Chinese Char Reference Linkify
  14. HTML make-citation
  15. update-title
  16. Google Map Linkify 🌐
  17. CSS Compressor
  18. Make Ruby Annotation
  19. Move Image File

Build Emacs

  1. Build Emacs on Linux
  2. Build Emacs from git

Packages

  1. Using magit for git

how-to

  1. Emergency vi
  2. Command to Open Menu
  3. Edit Tables
  4. Emacs Chinese Input

Emacs Efficiency Topic

  1. Keyboard Macro
  2. Completion
  3. Abbrev Mode
  4. Use Alias for Fast M-x
  5. Jump to Previous Mark
  6. Repeat Last Prompted Command
  7. Tips on Long Term Emacs Productivity

Misc

  1. GUI vs Terminal

For experienced emacs users or programers, see Practical Emacs Lisp. Knowing a little elisp goes a long way.

Testimonials

from Sacha and Marie emacs tutorial review 2014
http://sachachua.com/blog/2014/04/emacs-beginner-resources/

Thank YOU for your fantastic resource. I've been an emacs user for 28 years, and I've learned countless things from your tutorials.

I've used Emacs since 1986. Thanks for making such interesting remarks with history and pictures and so forth. In addition, you're right! —NN

;;; coffee-mode.el --- Major mode to edit CoffeeScript files in Emacs
;; Major thanks to http://xahlee.org/emacs/elisp_syntax_coloring.html
;; the instructions.

—Chris Wanstrath (co-founder of Github) At http://github.com/defunkt/coffee-mode/blob/master/coffee-mode.el

Thank you guys. Testimonial on Xah's Emacs Tutorial

Buy my tutorial to support the site. Thank you. [see Buy Xah Emacs Tutorial]

If you have a question, put $5 at patreon and message me.
Or Buy Xah Emacs Tutorial
Or buy a nice keyboard: Best Keyboards for Emacs

Emacs

Emacs Lisp

Misc