indexnotes

Great article on “Emacs introspection” basics

I recently read a great article for Emacs newbies: Emacs Teaches Emacs: The Missing README from Charlie Holland’s blog. In my opinion, a contender for the most important thing newbies should know when they start using Emacs (the step 0 to understanding the “value proposition” of Emacs, if you will) is its ability to introspect. That is, the commands and key sequences that let users learn about new parts of Emacs, understand how Emacs works, discover user options and commands, and do all of the above for arbitrary Elisp source code (e.g., from third-party packages).

Take a peak at the table of contents:

  1. Two Keys
  2. Start with M-x
  3. The Help Commands
  4. The Prefix Trick
    1. find-
    2. xref-
    3. Info-/info-
    4. apropos-
    5. customize-
  5. C-h C-h Help Cheatsheet
  6. More Magic with which-key
  7. The Coda

The article includes probably every tip I’d mention to an Emacs beginner.