2.10 Useful Packages

Some Emacs packages are mentioned here as an aid to the new Viper user, to indicate what Viper is capable of. A vast number comes with the standard Emacs distribution, and many more exist on the net and on the archives.

This manual also mentions some Emacs features a new user should know about. The details of these are found in the GNU Emacs Manual.

The features first. For details, look up the Emacs Manual.

`Make'

Makes and Compiles can be done from the editor. Error messages will be parsed and you can move to the error lines.

`Shell'

You can talk to Shells from inside the editor. Your entire shell session can be treated as a file.

`Mail'

Mail can be read from and sent within the editor. Several sophisticated packages exist.

`Language Sensitive Editing'

Editing modes are written for most computer languages in existence. By controlling indentation, they catch punctuation errors.

The packages, below, represents a drop in the sea of special-purpose packages that come with standard distribution of Emacs.

`Transparent FTP'

ange-ftp.el can ftp from the editor to files on other machines transparent to the user.

`RCS Interfaces'

vc.el for doing RCS commands from inside the editor

`Directory Editor'

dired.el for editing contents of directories and for navigating in the file system.

`Syntactic Highlighting'

font-lock.el for automatic highlighting various parts of a buffer using different fonts and colors.

`Saving Emacs Configuration'

desktop.el for saving/restoring configuration on Emacs exit/startup.

`Spell Checker'

ispell.el for spell checking the buffer, words, regions, etc.

`File and Buffer Comparison'

ediff.el for finding differences between files and for applying patches.

Emacs Lisp archives exist on `archive.cis.ohio-state.edu' and `wuarchive.wustl.edu'