Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!novavax!hcx1!shirono From: shirono@ssd.harris.com (Roberto Shironoshita) Newsgroups: comp.emacs Subject: Re: Two EMACS Questions Message-ID: Date: 8 Sep 89 18:44:03 GMT References: <574@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu> Sender: news@hcx1.UUCP Reply-To: shirono@ssd.harris.com Lines: 66 In-reply-to: eberard@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu's message of 6 Sep 89 10:39:57 GMT In article <574@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu> eberard@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu (Edward Berard) writes: [ You don't mention which Emacs. I'm going to answer with respect to GNU ] [ Emacs. I would answer for other versions as well, but my experience ] [ with them is pretty much nil. ] > 1. Is there a way in emacs to create "hanging indents" like > this one? What I would like is to be able to create a > paragraph formatted like this one, and not have to shift > each line, re-format, etc. myself. It is indeed possible to create hanging indents. I think there are a couple of major modes that do it (according to their own rules). indented-text-mode comes pretty close to what you want, except that it indents to the level of the line prior to the current one. Combining the auto-fill minor mode, you can get pretty close to WordStar (and friends). > 2. I have a large (approximately 600 lines) file. Each line in > the file looks like two strings separated by a tab. Since > the length of the first string varies, the tab is not in > the same place in each line. Is there any way to tell emacs > to take every line in the file and cause the second string > in each line to begin at the same column? Assuming the file has already been created, it is possible to tell GNU Emacs to do anything you want with it. The only problem for most non-hackers is in getting GNU Emacs to understand you (swearing and cursing don't work ;-). You could, for example, define a keyboard macro and then invoke it for each and every line in the file (or invoke it with a repeat-count). The GNU Emacs Manual for version 18 has a whole section devoted to keyboard macros. You could also write some GNU Emacs Lisp code to do exactly what you want. Unfortunately, I know of no simple way. > I actually have more, word-processing related questions. Are there > some documents on the use of emacs as a wp? What exactly do you mean by word-processing? GNU Emacs is a very powerful editor, that can be configured to do just about anything you want (including answering the phone, with the proper interfaces;-). In text-mode, you can tell it to fill (insert a newline when the current word surpasses the right-hand margin). Whatever you do, it will probably fall short of other word processors in the market (WordStar, WordPerfect, MSWord, MacWrite, etc), because it was not designed to be a word processor, but a very powerful, configurable editor. A good place to start learning about GNU Emacs is the tutorial. Enter GNU Emacs in a normal way and type C-h t (that's control-h t). The text will carry you through a good introduction to GNU Emacs. The next place is the GNU Emacs Manual, which is a fairly well-written document, good for both novice and experienced users. After that, you may want to acquire a copy of the GNU Emacs Lisp Manual (currently under development) and "earn" the honor of been called a hacker. Hope this helps some. Roberto -- ______________________________________________________________________________ || Internet: shirono@ssd.harris.com Roberto Shironoshita || Harris Corporation || ...!novavax---\ Computer Systems Division || UUCP: ...!uunet-------!hcx1!shirono || ...!mit-eddie-/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed here are my own; they in no way reflect the opinion or policies of Harris Corporation.