[rescue] getting started with emacs

[Andrew M. Hoerter]

On Mon, May 28, 2018 at 08:36:32PM -0400, Steve Sandau wrote:

>But now I have a little more time to look at new things, and I am
>interested again in emacs. Is there a better way to get started that
>just to install it an read the man page? Just now I installed it on a
>Slackware 14 server to try it out.

The manpage is more of a quick reference for invoking emacs from the
shell than actually using it.

The FSF puts out an official manual as well as a reference card for
the standard keybindings.  The manual is available on the web, in
print, and as an Info document (Info is the often-maligned
hypertextish GNU documentation system).  For beginners, I think it's
serviceable, but maybe better used as a reference.

There's an O'Reilly Emacs book which I've lightly skimmed from time to
time.  It seems like a reasonable place to start, written in a
somewhat more approachable style.

There are also many Emacs screencasts on Youtube these days, if you
prefer that kind of thing.  Seeing a demo is good for whetting your
appetite with cool features or tricks that might inspire you to learn
how it's done.

Don't be dismayed if it seems like there's too much to learn all at
once.  Eventually you'll get the idea of how things hang together, and
Emacs makes it easy to access documentation for a given
variable/function/key when you get stuck.