Working with Xemacs

Xemacs is a graphically-based text editor that has nice interactive compiling and formating for many languages including Java, Fortran, C, and LaTeX.

Although xemacs can be intimidating at first, it has many of the icon buttons and pulldown menus common to most of the Word Processors that you might find on a PC. There are two ways to start learning about Xemacs. Either open up xemacs, by typing xemacs and a tutorial is found under the Help pulldown menu then the Basics submenu. Also, there is documentatation at the Xemacs Home Page .

Making Editing Easier

One of the nicest features of Xemacs is the auto-formatting, color formatting and built-in compiling tools for many languages including Java, Fortran, C, and LaTeX. However Xemacs does not do this by default. A bundle of setup files has been created that turns on many of the font colors and compiling options. To do this
  1. Download the xemacs_setup.tar file and put it in your home directory.
  2. type tar xf xemacs_setup.tar.
  3. type xemacs & to open xemacs. Any C, Fortran, Java, Matlab or Latex file will open up in a mode with various pulldown menus and nice syntax.