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      How to learn Emacs :: OS X
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        <h1>How to learn Emacs</h1>
        <p>By <a href="http://david.rothlis.net">David Röthlisberger</a>.<br/>
        Comments welcome at <a href="&#x6d;&#x61;&#x69;&#108;&#x74;&#x6f;&#x3a;&#100;&#97;&#118;&#105;&#x64;&#64;&#x72;&#x6f;&#116;&#x68;&#x6c;&#105;&#115;&#46;&#110;&#x65;&#x74;?subject=How%20to%20learn%20Emacs">&#100;&#97;&#x76;&#x69;&#x64;&#64;&#114;&#111;&#x74;&#x68;&#x6c;&#x69;&#x73;&#46;&#x6e;&#x65;&#x74;</a>.<br/>
        Last updated 3 Jul 2012.</p>
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<ul>
  <li><a href='howtolearn.html'>1. About this guide to Emacs</a></li>
  <li><a href='why.html'>2. Why Emacs</a></li>
</ul>
<p>—Basic usage—</p>
<ul>
  <li><a href='install.html'>3. Install the right Emacs</a></li>
  <li><a href='tutorial.html'>4. The very basics</a></li>
  <li><a href='basic_c.html'>5. Basic Unix/C workflow</a></li>
</ul>
<p>—Basic customisation—</p>
<ul>
  <li><a href='customize_c.html'>6. cc-mode customization</a></li>
  <li><a href='customize_colors.html'>7. Fix that awful color scheme</a></li>
  <li><a href='customize_general.html'>8. General customization</a></li>
</ul>
<p>—Miscellaneous—</p>
<ul>
  <li><a href='info.html'>9. Info documentation</a></li>
  <li><a href='contribute_emacs.html'>10. Contributing to Emacs</a></li>
</ul>
<p>—Appendices—</p>
<ul>
  <li><a href='ergonomics.html'>A. Ergonomics</a></li>
  <li class='current'>B. OS X</li>
  <li><a href='contribute_guide.html'>C. Contributing to this guide</a></li>
  <li><a href='glossary.html'>D. Glossary</a></li>
</ul>
      </div>
      <p>Copyright © 2012 <a href="http://david.rothlis.net">David Röthlisberger</a>.<br/>
      This guide is released under the<br/>
      <a rel="license" href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html">GNU
      Free Documentation License</a>.</p>
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<h1>OS X</h1>
<h2>Control and Command keys</h2>
<p>Mac keyboards conveniently have separate Control, Meta (a.k.a. Option or Alt)
and Command (⌘) keys. You have the traditional Emacs bindings on Control and
Meta, and the OS X bindings on Command.</p>

<p>As recommended previously, you should strongly consider re-binding Caps Lock
to Control, system-wide. Go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Modifier Keys.</p>

<p>On a laptop&rsquo;s smaller keyboard there is no Control key for the right hand. Good
ergonomic practice is to use a right-hand Control key with a left-hand normal
key, instead of stretching your left hand. You can use the open-source
<a href="http://pqrs.org/macosx/keyremap4macbook/index.html">KeyRemap4MacBook</a> to bind
your Return key to an additional Control—but only when held down; hitting it
once still registers as Return. Try it! It&rsquo;s not as crazy as it sounds.
KeyRemap4MacBook, despite its name, works on any recent Mac.</p>

<p>After you have passed the initial learning curve and are used to the Emacs
bindings for opening, saving, copying, cutting, pasting, and undo, you may want
to re-bind the Command keys to be additional Meta keys, simply to offer a
larger target for your fingers:</p>
<div class='titlebar'><p>init.el</p></div>
<div class='window'>(setq mac-command-modifier 'meta)&#x000A;(global-set-key (kbd <span class="string">"M-`"</span>) 'other-frame)&#x000A;</div>
<p>(The second line keeps the very useful ⌘-` behavior.)</p>
<p>Rebinding Command in this way won&rsquo;t work when running Emacs inside a terminal,
as the terminal program will intercept the Command keybindings.</p>

<p>If you choose to leave the Command modifier alone, you might want to rebind
<code>⌘-q</code> because it is so close to the frequently-used <code><a class='glossary' href='glossary.html#keys'>M-q</a></code>. Or at least make
Emacs prompt before quitting:</p>
<div class='window'>(setq confirm-kill-emacs 'y-or-n-p)&#x000A;</div>
<h2>System-wide PATH</h2>
<p>When you start Emacs.app from the Finder (or the Dock, or Spotlight) the
environment doesn&rsquo;t contain customizations from your <code>.bash_profile</code> or
<code>.bashrc</code> files. If you run a shell inside Emacs (<code><a class='glossary' href='glossary.html#keys'>M-x shell</a></code>) that shell
<em>will</em> load your <code>.bashrc</code>, but other Emacs commands like <code>shell-command</code>,
<code>grep</code> and <code>compile</code> won&rsquo;t.</p>

<p>You can modify Emacs&rsquo;s environment directly in your init file:</p>
<div class='window'>(setenv <span class="string">"PATH"</span> (concat (getenv <span class="string">"HOME"</span>) <span class="string">"/bin:"</span>&#x000A;                       <span class="string">"/opt/local/bin:"</span>&#x000A;                       (getenv <span class="string">"PATH"</span>)))&#x000A;</div>
<p>You can also set environment variables to apply to any OS X application in your
login session, by creating the file <code>~/.MacOSX/environment.plist</code>:</p>
<div class='titlebar'><p>~/.MacOSX/environment.plist</p></div>
<div class='window'>&lt;?xml <span class="bold">version</span>=<span class="string">"1.0"</span> <span class="bold">encoding</span>=<span class="string">"UTF-8"</span>?&gt;&#x000A;&lt;!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC <span class="string">"-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"</span>&#x000A;                       <span class="string">"http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"</span>&gt;&#x000A;&lt;<span class="bold">plist</span> <span class="bold">version</span>=<span class="string">"1.0"</span>&gt;&#x000A;&lt;<span class="bold">dict</span>&gt;&#x000A;        &lt;<span class="bold">key</span>&gt;PATH&lt;/<span class="bold">key</span>&gt;&#x000A;        &lt;<span class="bold">string</span>&gt;/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin&lt;/<span class="bold">string</span>&gt;&#x000A;&lt;/<span class="bold">dict</span>&gt;&#x000A;&lt;/<span class="bold">plist</span>&gt;&#x000A;&#x000A;</div>
<h2>Running Emacs from the command line</h2>
<p>If you&rsquo;re using Emacs.app installed by macports, you can find the command-line
version in <code>/Applications/MacPorts/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs</code>. (Useful
when you need to run Emacs with certain command-line switches, like <code>-Q</code>).</p>
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