eintr: Default Configuration
Emacs’s Default Configuration
=============================
There are those who appreciate Emacs’s default configuration. After
all, Emacs starts you in C mode when you edit a C file, starts you in
Fortran mode when you edit a Fortran file, and starts you in Fundamental
mode when you edit an unadorned file. This all makes sense, if you do
not know who is going to use Emacs. Who knows what a person hopes to do
with an unadorned file? Fundamental mode is the right default for such
a file, just as C mode is the right default for editing C code. (Enough
programming languages have syntaxes that enable them to share or nearly
share features, so C mode is now provided by CC mode, the C Collection.)
But when you do know who is going to use Emacs—you, yourself—then it
makes sense to customize Emacs.
For example, I seldom want Fundamental mode when I edit an otherwise
undistinguished file; I want Text mode. This is why I customize Emacs:
so it suits me.
You can customize and extend Emacs by writing or adapting a
‘~/.emacs’ file. This is your personal initialization file; its
contents, written in Emacs Lisp, tell Emacs what to do.(1)
A ‘~/.emacs’ file contains Emacs Lisp code. You can write this code
yourself; or you can use Emacs’s ‘customize’ feature to write the code
for you. You can combine your own expressions and auto-written
Customize expressions in your ‘.emacs’ file.
(I myself prefer to write my own expressions, except for those,
particularly fonts, that I find easier to manipulate using the
‘customize’ command. I combine the two methods.)
Most of this chapter is about writing expressions yourself. It
describes a simple ‘.emacs’ file; for more information, see 
The
Init File (emacs)Init File, and The Init File (elisp)Init File.
---------- Footnotes ----------
(1) You may also add ‘.el’ to ‘~/.emacs’ and call it a ‘~/.emacs.el’
file. In the past, you were forbidden to type the extra keystrokes that
the name ‘~/.emacs.el’ requires, but now you may. The new format is
consistent with the Emacs Lisp file naming conventions; the old format
saves typing.
Info Catalog
eintr: Emacs Initialization
eintr: Site-wide Init