Emacs ... text editor history

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Emacs, originally named EMACS, is a family of text editors that are characterized by their extensibility. The manual for the most widely used variant, GNU Emacs, describes it as "the extensible, customizable, self-documenting, real-time display editor"


The following descriptions come from the information accessible via the Emacs M-x info command. To run the following Emacs amusement programs, press the Meta key (which is often the Esc key), press x, then enter the name of the program.

• If you are a little bit bored, you can try M-x hanoi. Sit back and watch.
• When you are frustrated, try the famous Eliza program by entering M-x doctor. End each input by pressing Enter twice.
• When you are feeling strange, enter M-x yow .
• Enter M-x psychoanalyze-pinhead for a program that cleverly combines the doctor and yow programs. (Press C-g to stop Zippy's psychoanalysis.)
• If you press M-x dissociated-press, the program will "dissociate" the text of the current buffer.

Using Emacs19 or newer, you can see a few more amusements:

• For a more interactive amusement, try M-x gomoku, which plays the five-in-a-row game Go Moku with you.
• If you enter M-x blackbox and M-x mpuz , you will get a puzzle to solve. The blackbox program challenges you to determine the location of objects inside a box by tomography. The mpuz program displays a multiplication puzzle with letters standing for digits in a code that you must guess. To guess a value, type a letter, followed by the digit you think it stands for.
• Enter M-x dunnet to run an adventure-style exploration game, which is a bigger sort of puzzle.

To personally commemorate this history I lived through. I'm giving away a Zippy the Pinhead sticker to the first premium member to PM me.

YoW! Are we having fun yet?

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