The Editor User Guide is divided into chapters, as follows:
General Concepts, provides a brief overview of terms and concepts which the user should be familiar with before progressing to the rest of the manual. The section Basic editing commands provides a brief description of commands necessary to edit a file from start to finish. If you are already familiar with Emacs, you should be familiar with most of the information contained in this chapter.
Command Reference, contains full details of most of the editor commands. Details of editor variables are also provided where necessary. Not included in this chapter are commands used to facilitate the editing of Lisp programs.
Editing Lisp Programs, contains full details of editor commands (and variables where necessary) to allow for easier editing of Lisp programs.
Emulation, describes use of MS Windows style key bindings rather than Emacs style.
Advanced Features, provides information on customizing and programming the editor. The features described in this chapter allow permanent changes to be made to the editor.
A Glossary is also included to provide a quick and easy reference to editor terms and concepts.
Each editor command, variable and function is fully described once in a relevant section (for example, the command Save File is described in File handling). It is often worthwhile reading the introductory text at the start of the section, as some useful information is often provided there. The descriptions all follow the same layout convention which should be self-explanatory.
Command description layouts include the name of the command, the default Emacs binding, details of optional arguments required by the associated defining function (if any) and the mode in which the command can be run (if not global).