Woodnotes Guide to Emacs for Writers

[RS Wood]

It's been years since I sent this link out over Usenet, so here's a reminder:

Happy to bring your attention to my 22 page "Woodnotes Guide to Emacs
for Writers, not Coders." Emacs is a fantastic weapon for subduing
long, complicated, written texts and is immediately useful for authors
with a few simple words of introduction. Heavy users of Emacs already
probably know this stuff, but authors getting ready to start a book are
surprised just to see how much better emacs facilitates their work than
most word processors.

It's available in HTML and PDF under a Creative Commons license at

http://therandymon.com/content/view/16/98/

Contents:
Contents
Introduction
License and Version History
Introduction: Why a Text Editor instead of a Word Processor?

Setting Up
Emacs on Linux/Unix, Mac OSX, and Windows
X or Console?

The Basics
Some Vocabulary
Emacs Commands
Files (Opening, Saving, Printing, etc.)
Navigating
Scrolling
Bookmarks
Selecting Text (``Regions'')
Cutting and Pasting (Killing and Yanking)
Searching and Replacing

Foreign Languages and Foreign Characters
Occasional Diacriticals
Writing in a Foreign Alphabet
Inserting Special Characters

Formatting Your Text
Word wrap
Reformatting Hard Wrapped Documents
Transposing Letters/Words/Lines
Cleaning Up Spacing
Changing Case
End of Line Characters

Multiple Windows, Buffers, and Frames
Spell Checking
Customizing your Environment
Macros
Keyboard Shortcuts
Fonts and Colors
Default Window Parameters
Menus and Toolbars
Other Environment Settings

Next Steps
Learning more about emacs
Help Menus:
On the web:
Books:
Emacs and LATEX

Acknowledgments

[Thad Floryan]

Post by RS Wood
Happy to bring your attention to my 22 page "Woodnotes Guide to Emacs
for Writers, not Coders." Emacs is a fantastic weapon for subduing
long, complicated, written texts and is immediately useful for authors
with a few simple words of introduction. Heavy users of Emacs already
probably know this stuff, but authors getting ready to start a book are
surprised just to see how much better emacs facilitates their work than
most word processors.
It's available in HTML and PDF under a Creative Commons license at
http://therandymon.com/content/view/16/98/
[...]

Great! I just re-posted your article to the Yahoo linux group:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/linux/

since so many of the folks use Emacs. I've been using Emacs since
1975.

Thad

[Thad Floryan]

Post by Thad Floryan

Post by RS Wood
Happy to bring your attention to my 22 page "Woodnotes Guide to Emacs
for Writers, not Coders." Emacs is a fantastic weapon for subduing
long, complicated, written texts and is immediately useful for authors
with a few simple words of introduction. Heavy users of Emacs already
probably know this stuff, but authors getting ready to start a book are
surprised just to see how much better emacs facilitates their work than
most word processors.
It's available in HTML and PDF under a Creative Commons license at
http://therandymon.com/content/view/16/98/
[...]

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/linux/
since so many of the folks use Emacs.
[...]

Here's something "odd". One of the members of the linux group stated
regarding "WOT" [ http://www.mywot.com/ ]

Please use caution with that link, since WOT shows it RED, for a
website with a bad reputation. Here's a link to a GREEN link, that's
a PDF that can open in Firefox.

http://wikis.uca.es/wikiformacion/images/8/81/Emacs-for-writers.pdf

This might come in handy, too:

The Woodnotes Emacs Cheat Sheet for Writers (not Coders).pdf

http://www.docjax.com/document/view.shtml?id=847465&title=The%20Woodnotes%20Emacs%20Cheat%20Sheet%20for%20Writers%20%28not%20Coders%29

to which I replied:

'esa.es' is in Spain and 'docjax.com' is in Vietnam.

Here are the links I used to download the 2 items:

wget http://therandymon.com/papers/emacs-for-writers.pdf
wget http://therandymon.com/papers/emacs-writers-cheatsheet.pdf

which are 100% SAFE regardless what "WOT" is or says.

Everything I'm seeing about "WOT" makes it just as bad as Yelp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yelp,_Inc.

http://www.yelp.com/

which can be gamed very easily to discredit competitors and whomever
along with a lot of the so-called "trustworthy" malware & spam blocking
blacklist sites that do more harm than good given nearly zero lack of
veracity on the part of the "reporters" to such sites. Caveat emptor.

WOT's dissing the Woodnotes site is just one example to attribute NO
trust to WOT.

Be forewarned.

Thad

[RS Wood]

Post by Thad Floryan
Here's something "odd". One of the members of the linux group stated
regarding "WOT" [ http://www.mywot.com/ ]
which can be gamed very easily to discredit competitors and whomever
along with a lot of the so-called "trustworthy" malware & spam blocking
blacklist sites that do more harm than good given nearly zero lack of
veracity on the part of the "reporters" to such sites. Caveat emptor.
WOT's dissing the Woodnotes site is just one example to attribute NO
trust to WOT.
Be forewarned.
Thad

Thad - thanks for reposting the Yahoo group; much obliged. It's been
years since I used a Yahoo group.

This is the first I've heard of WOT and I'm not impressed. I can
guarantee you my site is safe: I run my own server, check the logs, and
have it locked down tight. Those two wget links are correct and you're
welcome to use them (although if you click on the HTML link I provided
your visit gets counted, and the increasing # of visitors makes me feel
happy and more inclined to continue updating the thing.

I think your take on this WOT thing is accurate: has high potential for
exclusion and provides a false sense of security. But I'm annoyed
anyway they've decided my fucking website isn't trustworthy. On what
basis?

I had a similar problem with Mcaffee (or however you spell that crappy
software). I run three sites on my Apache install, and I had to
contact them for each one to have them deblocked. Each time no
explanation was given and no apology rendered.

I miss Internet 1.0 or earlier. This Web 2.0 shit sucks.

Anyway, enjoy the Woodnotes guide and cheatsheet. I think they're
good. And since they're PDF created by LaTeX and (for the cheatsheet,
OpenOffice.org) on a Linux box, they are free of vulnerabilities. Have
any trouble and I'll refund the price you paid! ;)

[Thad Floryan]

Post by RS Wood

Post by Thad Floryan
[...]
Here's something "odd". One of the members of the linux group stated
regarding "WOT" [ http://www.mywot.com/ ]
which can be gamed very easily to discredit competitors and whomever
along with a lot of the so-called "trustworthy" malware & spam blocking
blacklist sites that do more harm than good given nearly zero lack of
veracity on the part of the "reporters" to such sites. Caveat emptor.
WOT's dissing the Woodnotes site is just one example to attribute NO
trust to WOT.
Be forewarned.
Thad

Thad - thanks for reposting the Yahoo group; much obliged. It's been
years since I used a Yahoo group.

Hi Randall,

You're very welcome! I'm one of the owners of the Yahoo linux group
along with Godwin Stewart and I keep the members apprised of any new
things I find. :-) Your two documents are great -- thank you for
producing them and making them available.

Post by RS Wood
This is the first I've heard of WOT and I'm not impressed.

Ditto. Any of the so-called Web2 crowdsourcing efforts are, for the
most, total crap. I was actually surprised a linux user had such a
plugin in their browser. I have several useful Firefox plugins:

Loading Image... 143kB

Post by RS Wood
I can guarantee you my site is safe: I run my own server, check the
logs, and have it locked down tight.

I believe you. As I wrote, that "WOT" is like Yelp accepting bogus
ratings from LOL'ing fecebook users whose IQs must be less than 50.

Post by RS Wood
Those two wget links are correct and you're
welcome to use them (although if you click on the HTML link I provided
your visit gets counted, and the increasing # of visitors makes me feel
happy and more inclined to continue updating the thing.

Sorry 'bout that; I use wget solely to preserve original date/time since
I have a large archive of material that I cite when posting to Usenet
and elsewhere. I copy'n'posted your announcement verbatim so it's likely
people will/would be using a browser to access the items and increase the
visit count. :-)

Post by RS Wood
I think your take on this WOT thing is accurate: has high potential for
exclusion and provides a false sense of security. But I'm annoyed
anyway they've decided my fucking website isn't trustworthy. On what
basis?

No basis as far as I can tell. It's the same thing with Reader Comments
on articles at online newspaper sites (e.g., sfgate.com) where folks will
thumb-down articles and post snarky comments solely to appear "cool" when
in fact they're low-IQ idiots (i.e., the "great unwashed") whose opinions
are worthless which is why I give NO credibility to any crowdsourcing.

Post by RS Wood
I had a similar problem with Mcaffee (or however you spell that crappy
software). I run three sites on my Apache install, and I had to contact
them for each one to have them deblocked. Each time no explanation was
given and no apology rendered.

Similar things occur with many email blacklisting sites -- their results
are flawed due to GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) from unreliable people.

Post by RS Wood
I miss Internet 1.0 or earlier. This Web 2.0 shit sucks.

Ain't that the truth. :-(

Post by RS Wood
Anyway, enjoy the Woodnotes guide and cheatsheet. I think they're
good. And since they're PDF created by LaTeX and (for the cheatsheet,
OpenOffice.org) on a Linux box, they are free of vulnerabilities. Have
any trouble and I'll refund the price you paid! ;)

Thank you again for your efforts!

Thad

[Jason K Bellew]

Post by RS Wood
I miss Internet 1.0 or earlier. This Web 2.0 shit sucks.

Agreed.

Great job on the Guide BTW. As a programmer/writer/student I keep
finding aspects of Emacs that I continue to forget. The cheat is printed
and on my front wall from now on.

[Osugi Sakae]

Post by Thad Floryan
WOT's dissing the Woodnotes site is just one example to attribute NO
trust to WOT.

I have had WOT installed for a couple of years and it has only warned
me about sites maybe three times, including therandymon.com. Those
other two times, WOT was accurate, as far as I could tell. So, maybe a
33% false-positive rate.

Anyhow, in hopes of making a difference, I rated the site good on WOT
and left a review stating that there is no reason for the poor
ratings.

BTW: Mr. Wood, thanks for the great emacs resources.