Re: Emacs newbie - Syntax Highlighting and Indentation

[Peter S Galbraith <p.galbraith@globetrotter.net>]

David Rasmussen <david.rasmussen@gmx.net> wrote:

> Peter S Galbraith wrote:
> > I'm a little disappointed (but not surprised) that everyone replying
> > so far says to edit the .emacs file.
> > The simple and user-friendly answer is to use the Options menu, enable
> > Syntax Highlighting and then Save Options.
> > I'm also encouraging new users to use the custom interface rather than
> > scaring them with elisp edits.
> 
> I agree completely that there's no need to do things the hard way, if there
> is an easy way. I have nothing against menu systems and such that makes a
> program more user-friendly. The only reason I wanted to know "the hard
> way", is that one of my reasons for learning emacs is that I want to learn
> to use a powerful editor that is likely to be available on all sorts of
> system, even if I am only logging in with ssh etc.
> And I can't be certain that there is this nice menu on all the other
> systems that I might use emacs on. So I want to learn to use emacs
> "platform independantly".

Okay, but the only thing that using the Options menu and saving does (or
using customization and saving) is add an entry to your .emacs which you
are free to copy to another machine the same way.  There's no black
magic involved.

The nice thing about looking at the custom interface once in a while is
that it makes a nice summary of features in one place.  You learn a lot
about what's available by looking at it.