xEmacs Tutorial


Getting Started with xEmacs
  1. Start up xEmacs by clicking the icon on the desktop, or by typing xemacs from a command line.
  2. xEmacs uses a menu along with the normal keyboard commands (some are listed below). You can use the menu to do just about anything. For example, to open up a file, you may click on the "Open" button (or click File : Open). You will also see a "Dired" button (don't bother with this option - its not used to edit code), "Save", "Print", "Cut", "Copy", "Paste", "Undo", and a few others including "Compile" and "Debug".
  3. To create a "project" all you need to do is create or add multiple files into one directory. You can open up all of these files (File : Open) or create them (Ctrl-x Ctrl-f - make sure you type in the .java extention!). They will be displayed on the top of the screen at little tabs (one for each file or Buffer). To switch over from one file to the other, you can click on the little tabs at the top of the screen. See Figure 1 for an illustration of the menu bar in xEmacs.

    4. Figure 1: Menu bar in xEmacs
    Figure 1: The Menu Bar in xEmacs

  4. Here are some of the more basic commands used with xEmacs:

    5. CommandUsed to:
    Ctrl-x Ctrl-fCreate new file/open file
    Ctrl-x uUndo last action
    Ctrl-kDeletes a whole line
    Ctrl-sSearch forwards "word" (Ctrl-s again to find next)
    Ctrl-rSearch backwards for "word" (Ctrl-r again for next)
    Ctrl-x Ctrl-sSave file
    Ctrl-x Ctrl-bList all buffers
    Ctrl-x Ctrl-fSwitch buffers/Create a new file
    Ctrl-gStop/kill a command
    Ctrl-x Ctrl-cQuit xEmacs