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Emacs is too Big and Complex: Where do I start from?
2 points by afiori on Oct 21, 2019 | hide | past | favorite | 3 comments
I am an emacs noob trying to better use the editor. I am at the point where I can search for commands I know I need and learn what they do, but I feel like I need someone to tell me what are the commands I do not know I need.

For example I am trying to start using Magit and I cannot really make sense of how emacs is configured on a system.

Do you know some resource that can give me some high-level how I am supposed to use this editor?

Thanks.



I assume you want pure emacs, and not something like Spacemacs?

The built in tutorial is helpful, or I've found youtube to be suprisingly helpful for seeing what actually happens as the keys are pressed.

The thing with emacs is that it is far too big to learn it all at once, so just start with the bits you need, then, as you want to learn a new bit, look those up and keep a little cheatsheet next to your screen. It becomes muscle memory soon enough.

Also looking at other peoples dot-files on github for example can be interesting to see what else can be done.


GNU Emacs reference cards got me started. Maybe they can help you, too.

https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/refcards/index.html

However, these don't explain how to install magit. For that, you'll need to edit a ~/.emacs file, set up the package manager, and use "use-package" to get magit installed.

PS: using M-x (ALT-x) will bring up a command prompt with completion.


I wouldn't try to go top-down like that. The process should be:

I now need to git commit. Googles "magit commit"

I now need to git revert. Googles "magit revert"

It was much harder for us old timers who didn't have the benefit of google or stackoverflow. We had to read manpages or ask the guy sitting next to us to figure anything out.




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