Entry

Just what is Emacs, and what's in it for me?

Feb 14th, 2001 05:36
Per M Knutsen,

Emacs (to the best of my knowledge) is the most powerful text editor 
available today.  Unlike most other editors (in particular, unlike the 
standard UNIX editor, vi), Emacs is a complete working environment.
No matter what you do, you can start Emacs in the morning, work all day 
and all night, and never leave it: you can use it to edit, rename, 
delete and copy files; to compile programs, to do interactive work with 
the unix shell; to read and organize electronic mail; to access the 
internet, and so on.  Before window systems like X, were available for 
UNIX, before MacOS and MicroSoft Windows systems, Emacs was already out 
there, serving as a complete windowing system of its own. All you 
needed was a terminal, and you could live within Emacs forever. 
Emacs is also infinitely flexible; you can write your own commands, 
change keys that are associated with commands, and (if you are willing 
to take the time) do just about anything you want.