Emacs in Mac OS showing the use of menu. Remember, real programers don't fear the mouse. Note that all keyboard shortcuts are shown beside the menu too. The “C-x” means “Ctrl+x”.
Xah Lee, 2005
If you are running emacs in Microsoft Windows, just use your mouse and pull menus.
On Microsoft Windows, there's ErgoEmacs and EmacsW32+Emacs. Both are enhanced emacs for Windows. (disclaimer: the ErgoEmacs distribution is started by me.)
For Mac OS X, Aquamacs Emacs is a emacs with complete Mac user interface as much as possible. If you never used emacs before, or never used a text terminal or unix, this is a good choice. If you have used emacs before, then Carbon Emacs is a better choice.
Emacs in Mac OS showing the use of menu. Remember, real programers don't fear the mouse. Note that all keyboard shortcuts are shown beside the menu too. The “C-x” means “Ctrl+x”.
The following is a tutorial covering the basics for operating emacs by just keyboard. Using emacs with only keyboard and without mouse and without graphical menu is important, because for programers and sys admins working on remote servers in a unix/linux text terminal, keyboard is the only efficient way. Emacs is developed and designed with text terminal use from its very beginning in the 1980s.
If you never need to work on remote servers thru text terminal, you can skip this section.
Emacs in a Text Terminal. In a text terminal, you can invoke the textual menu by pressing “Alt+`”. (or, pressing the Esc key followed by the backtick ` key.)
Type: “emacs filename”, in your terminal.
To save file, press “Ctrl+x” then “Ctrl+s”.
Type: “Ctrl+x” then “Ctrl+c”. This means: holding down Ctrl key, press x, then holding down Ctrl key, press c.
To quit without saving, just do quit and emacs will ask if you want to save.
Whenever confused in emacs where keystrokes doesn't seems to work, hold down Ctrl then press g, which will cancel the sequence of keys you may have pressed by mistake.
Congratulations! You have obtained the Mastery of Emacs Basics!