Fun with Emacs

You probably heard that emacs can do lots of things. This page shows some.

Emacs Tetris

Alt+x tetris to start it. Use arrow keys to move the blocks.

Alt+x kill-buffer to close it.

Split Windows

You can split your window into two or more panes, vertically or horizontally.

Alt+x split-window-below

split top/bottom.

Alt+x split-window-right

split side-by-side.

Alt+x delete-other-windows

unsplit.

Alt+x other-window

move cursor to another pane. (or click mouse)

[see Emacs: Split Windows]

View Calendar

To run calendar in emacs, Alt+x calendar.

To close the calendar pane, type q.

Calculator

To run a calculator in emacs, Alt+x calc.

To quit calculator, type q.

To compute “1+2”, type 1 Enter 2 +. Or, you can type the expression directly by starting with a sinle quote, like this: ' 1 + 2 Enter.

Directory Navigation and Managing Files

To start, Alt+x dired, then, type a dir path. To exit, press q. For a full tutorial, see: Emacs: File Manager, dired.

Pretty Colors

Alt+x list-colors-display

Command Line Interface (aka Shell)

Alt+x shell to start a shell interface. [see Emacs: Run Shell in Emacs]

LISP in Emacs

Sometime you hear that emacs has the artificial intelligence language LISP built-in. That's right. Here's how you can run a short example.

In emacs, open a file, any file. In the file, type (+ 1 2), then, select the whole text, then Alt+x eval-region. You will see the result “3”. CONGRADULATIONS, you've just evaluated a lisp program!

See: Emacs Lisp Basics.