Debra Cameron - Learning GNU Emacs, 3rd Edition

Table E-25. Important modes

Our look is the result of reader comments, our own experimentation, and feedback from distribution channels. Distinctive covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects.

The animal on the cover of Learning GNU Emacs, Third Edition is a gnu (or wildebeest). Gnus are African antelopes that inhabit the Serengeti Plains. Male gnus (bulls) reach up to 52 inches in height and 500 pounds inweight, and have the most lethal horns of any of the antelopes. Bulls are very territorial and tend to remain alone. The females and young generally live in small herds. However, they may congregate in the tens of thousands during migration. Gnus are the favorite prey of lions.

Jamie Peppard was the production editor and proofreader for Learning GNU Emacs Third Edition. Nancy Reinhardt was the copyeditor . Adam Witwer and Claire Cloutier provided quality control. Mary Agner provided production assistance. Johnna VanHoose Dinse wrote the index.

Edie Freedman designed the cover of this book using a 19th-century engraving from the Dover Pictorial Archive. Clay Fernald produced the cover layout with Quark Express 4.1 using Adobe's ITC Garamond font. Emma Colby produced the Quick Reference card with Adobe InDesign CS using the fonts Linotype Birka and Adobe Myriad Condensed.

Melanie Wang designed the interior layout, based on a series design by David Futato. This book was converted by Julie Hawks to FrameMaker 5.5.6 with a format conversion tool created by Erik Ray, Jason McIntosh, Neil Walls, and Mike Sierra that uses Perl and XML technologies. The text font is Linotype Birka; the heading font is Adobe Myriad Condensed; and the code font is LucasFont's TheSans Mono Condensed. The illustrations that appear in the book were produced by Robert Romano and Jessamyn Read using Macromedia FreeHand MX and Adobe Photoshop CS.

The online edition of this book was created by the Safari production group (John Chodacki, Ken Douglass, and Ellie Cutler) using a set of Frame-to-XML conversion and cleanup tools written and maintained by Erik Ray, Benn Salter, John Chodacki, Ellie Cutler, and Jeff Liggett.

Quite a few issues come up in discussions of GNU Emacs versus XEmacs, with character encoding schemes, user interface differences, and copyright issues among them. We're not interested in taking sides in the battles between these emacsen.

Typically we would not find the need to be quite so specific, but the user interface changed at Emacs 21.3.5; in particular you'll notice different toolbar icons if you have an earlier version.

FSF programs such as Emacs are often distributed with commercial systems. Even in these cases, the General Public License guarantees your right to use and give away their programs without restriction. Of course, the license does not apply to other proprietary software with which GNU tools have been shipped.

GPL-compatible is a critical distinction for many organizations. As our reviewer Mike Trent points out, many organizations release their software under a modified GPL because the GPL's license is actually "viral." That is, if one line of GPL'd code appears in a project, the entire project must be GPL'd. This means corporations interested in protecting their assets but still wanting to share code with the open source community cannot use the GPL without some modification.