GNU Emacs is an extensible, customizable text editor that is much more than that. At its core is the Emacs Lisp interpreter, a dialect of the Lisp programming language with extensions for text editing.
What is the Emacs Editor in Linux?
Emacs editor features include:
- Content-based text editing modes, including syntax coloring, for a wide variety of file types, including plain text, source code, and HTML.
- Fully embedded documentation, including a tutorial for new users.
- Support for many languages and characters, including all European, Russian, Greek, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Lao, Ethiopian, and some Indian “Latin” characters.
- Many extensions that add other functions, including a project manager, a mail and newsreader, an interface debugger, a calendar, and more. Most of these extensions are distributed with Emacs; others are available separately.
- It was first implemented in 1976 as a collection of TECO macros in MIT AI labs’ Incompatible Time-Sharing System (ITS).
- Its name was first chosen as the acronym “Editor MACroS.” This version of the Emacs editor was initially written in 1984 and is actively developed.
Versions
Current Stable Version: 26.3 (2019-08-28).
It has a wide variety of new features, including GTK+ toolkit support, improved mouse support, a new keyboard macro system, enhanced Unicode support, and drag-and-drop operations in X, as well as many new modes and packages, including graphics. GDB supports Python mode, a Calc mathematical tool, a remote Tramp file editing system, and a user interface for enhanced Unicode support.
Development resources are available through the CVS repository hosted at savannah.gnu.org.
Version History
The last two versions of Emacs were released on:
- 2019-08-28: 26.3 released
- 2019-04-12: 26.2 released
For release dates of all distributions, please visit the official GNU website.
Supported Platforms
It can be operated on the following operating systems, regardless of machine type:
It also supports Berkeley Unix (BSD) 4.1-4.4, Microport, SCO Unix, System V, Uniplus 5.2, and 0 – 4.0.4 versions of Xenix.
There are codes to support some types of older machines running special operating systems developed by the manufacturer; however, in most cases, we still do not know if it works.
The precise reference is the MACHINES file distributed with this editor. This file also lists the specific requirements needed to compile Emacs on such systems.
Emacs is available from the GNU.org web address or a GNU mirror. Its development sources are available in the CVS repository hosted at savannah.gnu.org.
Certification
Printed guides can be purchased. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) publishes two guidelines: Introduction to Manual and Lisp Programming. The third guide, the Lisp Reference Guide, is currently out of print.
On the other hand, The Emacs Guide, Introduction to Lisp Programming, and the Lisp Reference Guide can be read online.
Other manuals with larger modes for different documents and other optional features are also available online.
All specified guides can be viewed in the form of information documents from Emacs. The distribution also includes the complete source code for the guides and the Reference Letter in multiple languages.
Frequently asked questions can be read online in HTML or plain text. The Savannah page contains additional information, including CVS access to development resources.
Wiki is a community website that collects Lisp code and style questions and answers.
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