From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Xah Lee Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Newbie programmer beginning to use Emacs, Help! Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2007 11:18:04 -0800 (PST) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <241a8525-2573-474b-8b4d-b4493a6596b8@i12g2000prf.googlegroups.com> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-2022-JP Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1197920483 18988 80.91.229.12 (17 Dec 2007 19:41:23 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2007 19:41:23 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Dec 17 20:41:35 2007 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1J4Lpd-000363-9q for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Mon, 17 Dec 2007 20:40:53 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1J4LpJ-0004t8-Uc for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Mon, 17 Dec 2007 14:40:34 -0500 Original-Path: shelby.stanford.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!postnews.google.com!i12g2000prf.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 49 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 69.236.95.226 Original-X-Trace: posting.google.com 1197919085 28095 127.0.0.1 (17 Dec 2007 19:18:05 GMT) Original-X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2007 19:18:05 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: i12g2000prf.googlegroups.com; posting-host=69.236.95.226; posting-account=qPxGtQkAAADb6PWdLGiWVucht1ZDR6fn User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/523.12 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0.4 Safari/523.12, gzip(gfe), gzip(gfe) Original-Xref: shelby.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:154727 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:50151 Archived-At: Sean Ochoa wrote: $B!V(B Hey all. I'm sure you get this a lot for those adventurous enough to venture out from windows (notepad-esc) text editors... but I'm totally confused by the help files about how to use Emacs. Here are a few of my questions, for starters: 1. What is the "Meta" key (I couldn't find a definition that makes sense in documentation anywhere)? I'm using a HP Pavillion dv9428nr laptop running win xp pro and Emacs v22.1.1 $B!W(B The Meta key is a key on a Lisp Machine's keyboards (1980s). Those keyboards went obsolete alone with lisp machines, and IBM PC keyboards and decendents becomes the most popular (1990s and today). However, emacs did not modernize. (for photos and more detail, see * Why Emacs's Keyboard Shortcuts Are Painful http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_kb_shortcuts_pain.html ) $B!V(B3. What exactly is 'Dired Mode'?$B!W(B "Dired" stands for DIRectory Edit. In modern terminology, emacs's dired-mode is just a text-based directory browser and file manager. (meaning, you can use it to create, delete, copy, rename files, etc.) The "directory edit" kinda terminology reflects the fact that in the 1980s or 1970s, to do things like copy, delete etc files is in a implementation-sense to edit the directory. Much of emacs jargons remains in the 1980s. You can read more about how to used dired here: * File Management with Emacs http://xahlee.org/emacs/file_management.html $B!V(B2. How to enter a command like ftp mysite.net user:ad...@mysite.net password:admin_password, so that I can work on files from my web server$B!W(B See a short description here: * Fun With Emacs, section FTP (or file transfer) http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_fun.html Xah xah@xahlee.org $B-t(B http://xahlee.org/