CAT(1)

NAME
emacs - GNU project Emacs

SYNOPSIS
gnumacs [file ...]

DESCRIPTION
GNU Emacs is a new version of Emacs written by the author of the original (PDP-10) Emacs, Richard Stallman. Its user functionality appears to encompass anything any other Emacs does, and it is easily extensible since it is written in a version of Lisp specifically designed to support editing. Stallman encourages you to improve and extend Emacs, and urges that you contribute your extensions to the GNU library. Eventually GNU (Gnu's Not Unix) will be a complete replacement for Berkeley Unix, not requiring any license agreement.

GNU Emacs has extensive interactive self-documentation. Control-h (backspace or C-h) enters the self-documentation feature. Help Tutorial (C-h t) requests an interactive tutorial. Help Apropos (C-h A) helps you find a command given its functionality, Help Character (C-h c) describes a given character's effect, and Help Function (C-h f) describes a given Lisp function specified by name.

GNU Emacs's Undo can undo several steps of modification to your buffers, so it is easy to recover from editing mistakes.

GNU Emacs's many special packages handle mail reading (RMail) and sending (Mail), outline editing (Outline), compiling (Compile), running subshells within Emacs windows (Shell), and even running a Lisp top-level (Lisp-Interaction-Mode).

There is currently no reference manual (promised for May 85), but users of other Emacs's should have little trouble adapting; users new to Emacs will be able to use basic features fairly rapidly by studying the tutorial and using the self-documentation mechanisms.

FILES
/usr/local/emacs/src - C source files and object files
/usr/local/emacs/lisp - Lisp source files and compiled files that define most editing commands. Some are preloaded; others are autoloaded from this directory when used.
/usr/local/emacs/etc - various programs that are used with GNU Emacs, and some files of information.
/usr/local/emacs/info - files for the Info documentation browser (a subsystem of Emacs) to refer to. Currently not much of Unix is documented here.
/usr/local/emacs/etc/DIFF discusses GNU Emacs vs. Twenex Emacs; this is useful because there is a published manual for Twenex Emacs, obtainable for $3.50 per copy from
   Publications Department
   Artificial Intelligence Lab
   545 Tech Square, rm 818
   Cambridge, MA 02139
/usr/local/emacs/etc/CCADIFF discusses GNU Emacs vs. CCA Emacs;

BUGS
Bugs should be reported to bug-gnu-emacs@mit-prep. Bugs tend actually to be fixed if they can be isolated, so it is in your interest to report them in such a way that they can be easily reproduced.

Bugs that I know about are: over-long filenames are sometimes truncated at the edge of the screen; shell will not work with programs running in Raw mode.