Understanding Emacs modes

Author

Marie-Hélène Burle

At the core of Emacs functioning are modes: major modes set the appearance and behaviour of Emacs for various types of texts (e.g. a Python script and a Markdown document will display different syntax highlighting and have different functions activated), while minor modes provide additional features that can be turned on or off (e.g. spell checking). Understanding how modes work is key to customizing Emacs and exploiting its strengths.

In this webinar, I will explain the functioning of Emacs modes and show how to manage and even customize them. Finally, I will demo how the package Polymode allows to embed sections of a type of text in another type (e.g. snippets of code in a Markdown document).

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