Entering and Exiting Emacs
**************************
- The usual way to invoke Emacs is to type `emacs <RET>' at the shell
-(for XEmacs, type `xemacs <RET>'). Emacs clears the screen and then
-displays an initial advisory message and copyright notice. You can
-begin typing Emacs commands immediately afterward.
-
- Some operating systems insist on discarding all type-ahead when Emacs
-starts up; they give Emacs no way to prevent this. Therefore, it is
-wise to wait until Emacs clears the screen before typing the first
-editing command.
+ The usual way to invoke XEmacs is to type `xemacs <RET>' at the
+shell. XEmacs clears the screen and then displays an initial advisory
+message and copyright notice. You can begin typing XEmacs commands
+immediately afterward.
+
+ Some operating systems insist on discarding all type-ahead when
+XEmacs starts up; they give XEmacs no way to prevent this. Therefore,
+it is advisable to wait until XEmacs clears the screen before typing
+your first editing command.
+
+ If you run XEmacs from a shell window under the X Window System, run
+it in the background with `xemacs&'. This way, XEmacs does not tie up
+the shell window, so you can use that to run other shell commands while
+XEmacs operates its own X windows. You can begin typing XEmacs commands
+as soon as you direct your keyboard input to the XEmacs frame.
Before Emacs reads the first command, you have not had a chance to
give a command to specify a file to edit. Since Emacs must always have
-a current buffer for editing, it presents a buffer, by default, a
-buffer named `*scratch*'. The buffer is in Lisp Interaction mode; you
-can use it to type Lisp expressions and evaluate them, or you can
-ignore that capability and simply doodle. You can specify a different
-major mode for this buffer by setting the variable `initial-major-mode'
-in your init file. *Note Init File::.
-
- It is possible to give Emacs arguments in the shell command line to
-specify files to visit, Lisp files to load, and functions to call.
+a current buffer for editing, it presents a buffer, by default, a buffer
+named `*scratch*'. The buffer is in Lisp Interaction mode; you can use
+it to type Lisp expressions and evaluate them, or you can ignore that
+capability and simply doodle. (You can specify a different major mode
+for this buffer by setting the variable `initial-major-mode' in your
+init file. *Note Init File::.)
+
+ It is possible to specify files to be visited, Lisp files to be
+loaded, and functions to be called, by giving Emacs arguments in the
+shell command line. *Note Command Switches::. But we don't recommend
+doing this. The feature exists mainly for compatibility with other
+editors.
+
+ Many other editors are designed to be started afresh each time you
+want to edit. You edit one file and then exit the editor. The next
+time you want to edit either another file or the same one, you must run
+the editor again. With these editors, it makes sense to use a
+command-line argument to say which file to edit.
+
+ But starting a new Emacs each time you want to edit a different file
+does not make sense. For one thing, this would be annoyingly slow. For
+another, this would fail to take advantage of Emacs's ability to visit
+more than one file in a single editing session. And it would lose the
+other accumulated context, such as registers, undo history, and the mark
+ring.
+
+ The recommended way to use XEmacs is to start it only once, just
+after you log in, and do all your editing in the same Emacs session.
+Each time you want to edit a different file, you visit it with the
+existing Emacs, which eventually comes to have many files in it ready
+for editing. Usually you do not kill the Emacs until you are about to
+log out. *Note Files::, for more information on visiting more than one
+file.
projects / chise / xemacs-chise.git- / blobdiff