TEXT EDITORS

Most text files on computer systems are created using editors. We have several text editors available on our departmental computer system, among them

vi
pico
nedit (requires an X-based workstation or X-Terminal)
gemacs (also called xemacs or gnu emacs)
uemacs (also called Micro Emacs)

You can start any of these programs using the command given above (e.g., type "vi myfile.txt"). You can get more information about these programs from their man pages (e.g., type "man vi").

uemacs

I will discuss uemacs in more detail, because that's the program that I happen to be familiar with. (You might prefer one of the other editors.) A brief introduction to uemacs is given below; a much longer manual on a similar emacs program is available here:

emacs.doc (210kb textfile)

Programs almost identical to uemacs are available for MS-DOS and for Windows. (Sorry, I don't know about Macintosh yet.) You can download them here:

emacs.zip (317 kb), a compressed file which contains emacs.doc as well as emacs.exe (works with MS-DOS) and emacswin.exe (works with Windows 3.1 or Windows 95)

On our departmental Unix computers, to edit a file using uemacs, type uemacs followed by the file name. For example, to edit the file a.tex:

atlas 40 % uemacs a.tex

This will edit an existing file named "a.tex", or create a file with that name if one doesn't already exist.

In uemacs you just type what you want to put in the file. You can use the arrow keys to move around, the backspace key to delete things, and so on. The following keys are useful to know about. In this chart, "^" followed by a letter means simultaneously press the control-key and the letter.

^F	same as right arrow
^B	same as left arrow
^P	same as up arrow
^N	same as down arrow
^A	go to start of line
^E	go to end of line
^V	go down a page
^Z	go up a page
^D	delete character on top of cursor
Esc then <	go to start of file
Esc then >	go to end of file
^X then ^S	save file (^X ^S won't work on some terminal server connections)
^X then ^^	substitute for ^X ^S (^^ means hold down Ctrl and hit 6/caret key)
^X then ^C	exit from uemacs
^S	search forward (end search string with Esc) (^S won't work on some terminal server connections)
^^	substitute for ^S
^R	search backward (end search string with Esc)
^K	delete rest of line or delete a blank line