Emacs

:This article is about the text editor. For the Apple Macintosh computer model, see eMac.

Related Topics:
Text editor - Apple - Macintosh - Computer - EMac

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Emacs is a class of text editors, possessing an extensive set of features, that is popular with computer programmers and other technically-proficient computer users. The original EMACS, a set of Editor MACroS for the TECO editor, was written in 1975 by Richard Stallman, initially together with Guy Steele. It was inspired by the ideas of TECMAC and TMACS, a pair of TECO-macro editors written by Guy Steele, Dave Moon, Richard Greenblatt, Charles Frankston, and others. Many versions of Emacs have appeared over the years, but nowadays there are two that are commonly used: GNU Emacs, written by Richard Stallman beginning in 1984, and XEmacs, a mostly-compatible fork of GNU Emacs that was started in 1991. Both use a powerful extension language, Emacs Lisp, that allows them to handle tasks ranging from writing and compiling computer programs to browsing the web.

Related Topics:
Text editor - Computer programmer - TECO - 1975 - Richard Stallman - Guy Steele - Dave Moon - Richard Greenblatt - Charles Frankston - GNU Emacs - 1984 - XEmacs - Fork - 1991 - Emacs Lisp - Writing - Compiling - Computer program - Browsing the web

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Some people make a distinction between the capitalized word Emacs, which is used to refer to editors derived from versions created by Richard Stallman (particularly GNU Emacs and XEmacs), and the lower-case word emacs, which is used to refer to the large number of independent emacs reimplementations. The word emacs is often pluralized as emacsen by analogy with oxen — for example, Debian's basic Emacs package is named emacsen-common. The only plural given by the Collins English Dictionary is emacsen.

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In Unix culture, Emacs is traditionally one of the two main contenders in the editor wars, the other being vi.

Related Topics:
Unix - Editor war - Vi

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