Where does a begginer begin

Where does a begginer begin

[bre]

I've been using emacs for basic text editing here and there for a few years
now. 

I've never been able to get very far in customizing it, and doing anything
beyond text edition, because any documentation sites intended to be helpful
I come across seems to assume way more knowledge than I have. 

For example, today I wanted to figure out how to make a latex template that
is loaded when I create a .tex file. 

The simplest way to do it seems to be auto-insert mode. But how to use
auto-insert mode?

OK, this website has some information:
http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/AutoInsertMode

but notice they have a bunch of elisp code, and never tell you where to
enter the elisp code it gives? Do I put it in a file? Do I put it in
*scratch*?  I tried the scratch pad, but I got all kinds of strange results,
and the end it simply didn't work. 

Is emacs documentation this hopeless? This is just one example. I have a
difficult time doing anything beyond basic text editing with emacs, because
of this documentation issue. All documentation seems to assume either the
person is a complete beginner, giving basic text editing documentation. Or
assume the person is quite familiar with it. There seems to be a big gap in
between. Anybody else have this problem? 
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Re: Where does a begginer begin

[Eric Abrahamsen]

On Mon, Aug 29 2011, bre wrote:

> I've been using emacs for basic text editing here and there for a few years
> now. 
>
> I've never been able to get very far in customizing it, and doing anything
> beyond text edition, because any documentation sites intended to be helpful
> I come across seems to assume way more knowledge than I have. 
>
> For example, today I wanted to figure out how to make a latex template that
> is loaded when I create a .tex file. 
>
> The simplest way to do it seems to be auto-insert mode. But how to use
> auto-insert mode?
>
> OK, this website has some information:
> http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/AutoInsertMode
>
> but notice they have a bunch of elisp code, and never tell you where to
> enter the elisp code it gives? Do I put it in a file? Do I put it in
> *scratch*?  I tried the scratch pad, but I got all kinds of strange results,
> and the end it simply didn't work. 
>
> Is emacs documentation this hopeless? This is just one example. I have a
> difficult time doing anything beyond basic text editing with emacs, because
> of this documentation issue. All documentation seems to assume either the
> person is a complete beginner, giving basic text editing documentation. Or
> assume the person is quite familiar with it. There seems to be a big gap in
> between. Anybody else have this problem? 

Emacswiki is really only supplemental to the main documentation, which
is inside emacs itself. Have you not seen the manual? You could start
with the tutorial (C-h t), which might be old hat to you, and then go on
to the Info manual pages for emacs itself, reachable most easily by (C-h
r). The section:

(info "(emacs)Init File")

Answers your specific question (the init file is where all your custom
code goes).

Also type C-h ? for the bewildering array of ways in which emacs can
answer questions about itself.

HTH,
Eric