Emacs Commandments

Xah Lee, 2012-10-29

Thou shall know this concept: ① everything is a command. ② a command may have a keybinding.

Thou shall have met Adam and Eve:

• execute-extended-command 【Alt+x】 or 【▤ Menu】 (call a command by name)
• keyboard-quit 【Ctrl+g】 (cancel a command or key sequence)

Thou shall know thy brethren:

• describe-function 【F1 f】
• describe-key 【F1 k】

Thou shall then know thy siblings:

• describe-mode 【F1 m】
• describe-variable 【F1 v】
• describe-char (useful for Unicode)

Then, know thou this: apropos-command 【F1 a】 and apropos and universal-argument 【Ctrl+u】.

If you are not familiar with them, see: Tips on Long Term Emacs Productivity.

But when coding elisp or doing configuration, sometimes you have a value, and you want to know which variable possibly hold that value. The answer is: apropos-value. I learned my way from: 〔who holds this value? 2012-06-20 By Dirk-Jan C Binnema. @ emacs-fu.blogspot.com…〕

Go forth and memorize them, every last single one of them. Then, you shall beat Darth Vader.