Debra Cameron - Learning GNU Emacs, 3rd Edition

This feature works on Linux, but not on Windows. To make it work on Mac OS X, set shell-file-nameto /bin/sh.

If you normally use another binding for the set-markcommand or if you typically spell out that command, you'll run into a problem marking regions in the calendar. In the calendar, C-Spaceand C-@run calendar-set-markrather than set-mark, so that regions are marked by time rather than just across the screen. To mark regions correctly in the calendar (linearly by time rather than simply across the screen), you must type C-Space, C-@, or M-x calendar-set-markto set the mark.

You could delete the third column of a table by marking it as a rectangle, as described in Chapter 7. But bear with us for the sake of making this point: when you find yourself doing repetitive work, macros are the tool to remember.

Mac OS X users may have bound F3and F4, used in defining and executing macros, to another key. These users should press Option-F3and Option-F4to get the same functionality.

M-a's definition of a "sentence" is controlled by the variable sentence-end, which is a fairly complex regular expression. By default, a sentence ends with a period, question mark, or exclamation mark, optionally followed by a quotation mark or parenthesis (including brackets or braces), and followed by two or more spaces or a newline.

You can't change tab stops with this method, but you can change tab width. We'll cover this shortly.

Once upon a time, you had to enter indented text mode explicitly to get the behavior we describe here. Now it is on by default in text mode.

Of course, after the document is complete, you'll want to remove the asterisks. You can use a query-replace to change the asterisk-style headers into headers that are appropriate for your preferred formatting style. Find the lowest-level heading and do its replacement first. If you have third-level headings, replace all occurrences of *** with the mark-up for a third-level heading, then move on to second-level headings, and finally first-level headings. Be careful on first-level headings, though; there may well be asterisks in the file that are unrelated to headings; preface the asterisk with C-q C-jto ensure that you get an asterisk that starts on a new line. Another approach is to use Eric Pement's awk scripts. The script at http://www.student.northpark.edu/pemente/awk/outline_classic11.awk.txt converts an outline mode outline to a classic outline while the script at http://www.student.northpark.edu/pemente/awk/outline_numbered11.awk.txt converts to a numbered outline.

You can, however, store rectangles in registers, providing the effective equivalent of the kill ring. More on this shortly.

Like all Emacs delete commands, delete-rectangledoesn't store what you delete in the kill ring.

A number of online groups are dedicated to ASCII art. Of course, all such art requires that you use a monospace font for proper viewing. Newsgroups such as alt.ascii.art and web sites such as the Ascii Art Dictionary (http://www.ascii-art.de/) provide a good introduction.

Other commands can accomplish this task more quickly, but bear with us for the sake of a simple example. For example, this little exercise could be accomplished with a single mouse drag in artist mode. Picture mode also offers a quick command for drawing a rectangle, C-c C-r.

SGML stands for standardized general markup language. Both XML and HTML are descendants of SGML.

At this writing, there is no way to enter XHTML mode explicitly. If your file looks like an XHTML file, Emacs puts you in that mode automatically.

Pay no attention to the fact that this is called SGML versus HTML name entity mode. Since HTML mode is derived from SGML mode, many commands that work with HTML have sgml in their names. Also, note that the command is called sgml-name-8bit-mode, a clear discrepancy with the minibuffer message.

For some reason, perhaps the way SGML name entity mode is programmed, you can insert these entities only using key bindings. The mode fails to trap the equivalent commands and translate them into entities. For this reason, we focus on key bindings.

For instructions on making these bindings work properly, read this section carefully.

The version we downloaded in August 2004 marked this file as alpha code, so don't be surprised if you find bugs. Visit the file to see if its status has changed.

For this to work, you must invoke the command through the keyboard, either using its key binding or its command name. Using a menu option doesn't work.

If M-Tabis trapped by the operating system to switch between applications (it is on Red Hat Linux), type Esc Tabinstead.

We'd like to thank Emacs guru Eric Pement for pointing out TEI Emacs to Deb.

We sincerely hope that this support will be extended to Mac OS X as well, providing developers and writers on that platform the benefits of this tool's capabilities. Meanwhile, Mac users may want to install nxml mode from http://thaiopensource.com/download/ and psgml mode from http://www.lysator.liu.se/projects/about_psgml.html.

A straightforward introduction to setting up a complete environment for psgml mode can be found at http://openacs.org/doc/openacs-5-0-0/psgml-mode.html.

TEI Emacs, mentioned earlier in this chapter, automatically sets up the environment for you and adds more features including Auctex, a complete authoring environment that supports many TEX variants as well as bibcite/bibtex for generating bibliographies. However, LaTeX mode under TEI Emacs appears to be a different beast from Emacs LaTeX mode, and we do not describe it here.

If you don't have your TEX environment set up properly (and it isn't by default on Mac OS X, for example), this command hangs or crashes Emacs (pressing C-gmay help; in one author's case it did and in another's it didn't). Try the latex command at a shell prompt to see if the command exists before attempting to process a file using Emacs.

Using tex-buffergives the resulting .dvi file a long and strange filename that includes your domain name. We recommend using C-c C-f(for tex-file) instead.

The -koption overrides make's default of stopping after a job returns an error. Instead, makecontinues on branches of the dependency tree that do not depend on the branch where the error occurred.

Unfortunately, Emacs won't understand error messages generated by makeitself, such as those due to syntax errors in your Makefile .