Re: Newbie programmer beginning to use Emacs, Help!

[Allan <mu8ja0i@earthlink.net>]

Sean Ochoa <WakieWakie@gmail.com> writes:

> 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
`c-' = <ctrl>, `M-' = <alt> . Do the tutorial to get used to the keystrokes for basic editing. You can also use the scroll bar and the Edit tab on the menu bar.
> 2.  How to enter a command like ftp mysite.net user:admin@mysite.net
> password:admin_password, so that I can work on files from my web
> server (as a side note, does emacs support ftp 'save-as' to server?)?
I don't know; I use an FTP client such as Filezilla and edit on my machine then upload.
> 3.  What exactly is 'Dired Mode'?
>
> A note for any answers:  I've already read through what I could find
> the the user manual, and I'm still stuck.
If you don't understand something in the manual at first skip it and read something else; there is a lot there. You may need some reference books on Lisp as well if you are not familiar with Lisp at all. Fortunately I have some old textbooks from the early eighties that are still relevent to elisp.
>
> Thanks for any additional assistance!
>
>  - Sean