F.1 Basic Emacs usage under Mac OS and GNUstep

By default, the <alt> and <option> keys are the same as <Meta>. The Mac <Cmd> key is the same as <Super>, and Emacs provides a set of keybindings using this modifier key that mimic other Mac / GNUstep applications (see Mac / GNUstep Events). You can change these bindings in the usual way (see Key Bindings).

The variable ns-right-alternate-modifier controls the behavior of the right <alt> and <option> keys. These keys behave like the left-hand keys if the value is left (the default). A value of control, meta, alt, super, or hyper makes them behave like the corresponding modifier keys; a value of none tells Emacs to ignore them.

The standard Mac / GNUstep font and color panels are accessible via Lisp commands. To use the color panel, drag from it to an Emacs frame to change the foreground color of the face at that position (if the <shift> key is held down, it changes the background color instead). To discard the settings, create a new frame and close the altered one.

<S-Mouse-1> (i.e., clicking the left mouse button while holding down the <Shift> key) adjusts the region to the click position, just like <Mouse-3> (mouse-save-then-kill); it does not pop up a menu for changing the default face, as <S-Mouse-1> normally does (see Temporary Face Changes). This change makes Emacs behave more like other Mac / GNUstep applications.

When you open or save files using the menus, or using the <Cmd-o> and <Cmd-S> bindings, Emacs uses graphical file dialogs to read file names. However, if you use the regular Emacs key sequences, such as <C-x C-f>, Emacs uses the minibuffer to read file names.

On GNUstep, in an X-windows environment you need to use <Cmd-c> instead of one of the <C-w> or <M-w> commands to transfer text to the X primary selection; otherwise, Emacs will use the “clipboard” selection. Likewise, <Cmd-y> (instead of <C-y>) yanks from the X primary selection instead of the kill-ring or clipboard.

F.1.1 Grabbing environment variables

Many programs which may run under Emacs, like latex or man, depend on the settings of environment variables. If Emacs is launched from the shell, it will automatically inherit these environment variables and its subprocesses will inherit them from it. But if Emacs is launched from the Finder it is not a descendant of any shell, so its environment variables haven't been set, which often causes the subprocesses it launches to behave differently than they would when launched from the shell.

For the PATH and MANPATH variables, a system-wide method of setting PATH is recommended on Mac OS X 10.5 and later, using the /etc/paths files and the /etc/paths.d directory.