The first steps with Emacs

If you have never before worked with Emacs, it is no bad idea to go through the tutorial. Open it by using the Help->Emacs Tutorial menu command. You will learn the most important commands and shortcuts to use the general features of Emacs.

The Emacs package also contains a reference card. This 6-page document lists all important commands and shortcuts and is extremely useful until these commands are carved into your brain by constant use of the program. The Postscript document refcard.ps in the \etc subdirectory of your Emacs installation can be printed using GSView. Double-clicking the file refcard.ps should launch Ghostview and show the file after a few seconds. Click on the File->Print menu command to open the print dialog box. In addition to the usual printer selection box you will see a field called "Print Method". Unless you call a PostScript printer your own, select "Windows GDI printer" and click OK.

Now you should be ready to play around a little. Open a few files which are lying around on your harddisk. Try e.g. C or C++ source files and see what happens (the menu will be extended with a C option containing useful commands to edit C source files). If you don't have a C file around, start a new file from scratch: use the same command C-c C-f (that is: type c and then f while holding down the Control key) as for opening an existing file, but provide a location and name of the not yet existing file, e.g. test.c. Or simply drag and drop just any file on the Emacs window and see that it displays next to anything you try.