Re: Emacs newbie - Syntax Highlighting and Indentation

[David Rasmussen]

Peter S Galbraith wrote:
> I'm a little disappointed (but not surprised) that everyone replying
> so far says to edit the .emacs file.
>
> The simple and user-friendly answer is to use the Options menu, enable
> Syntax Highlighting and then Save Options.
>
> I'm also encouraging new users to use the custom interface rather than
> scaring them with elisp edits.

I agree completely that there's no need to do things the hard way, if 
there is an easy way. I have nothing against menu systems and such that 
makes a program more user-friendly. The only reason I wanted to know 
"the hard way", is that one of my reasons for learning emacs is that I 
want to learn to use a powerful editor that is likely to be available on 
all sorts of system, even if I am only logging in with ssh etc.
And I can't be certain that there is this nice menu on all the other 
systems that I might use emacs on. So I want to learn to use emacs 
"platform independantly".
I know that there are other editors that fills the bill, but I haven't 
found one that felt natural to me. I have tried hard to learn vim, but 
it all disappears again. Maybe the same will happen with emacs, I don't 
know. Maybe I should write my own editor :)

/David