The environment has a text editor which is designed specifically to make writing Lisp source code easier. By default it emulates the GNU Emacs text editor, and you should refer to the LispWorks Editor User Guide supplied with your software, for a full description of the extensive range of functions and commands available. It can also emulate a Microsoft Windowsstyle text editor.
The Editor features a comprehensive set of menus, as well as a number of different views, and its interface is consistent with the other tools in the environment. This chapter gives a complete description of these aspects of the Editor, as well as giving you a general overview of how the Editor is used. If you have not used Emacs before, this chapter tells you all you need to know to get started.
The Editor is integrated with the other tools and offers a wide range of operations. The most commonly used of these can accessed using menu commands. The full range of editor commands is accessed via the keyboard commands described in more detail in the LispWorks Editor User Guide . These operations range from simple tasks such as navigating around a file, to more complex actions which have been specifically designed to ease the task of writing Lisp code.
By becoming familiar with the menu commands available, you can learn to use the Editor effectively in a very short space of time, before moving on to more advanced operations.
Like many other tools, the Editor offers a number of different views, which you can switch between using the tabs at the top of the Editor window. Unlike other tools, one view in particular is used more often than any other.
You can create an Editor using any of the following methods:
in the toolbar, and choose a filename in the dialog that appears.
Ctrl+X Ctrl+F
. Type in the name of a file that you want to edit. If the file is not in the current directory, enter the full pathname, including its drive. UNC pathnames are also recognized.
or 
to display source code in an Editor tool.
Note: this chapter assumes you are using the default Emacs emulation. Thus one way to open a file is with the keystrokes
Ctrl+X Ctrl+F
as described above. If you use Microsoft Windows keys, you would use instead the keystroke
Ctrl+O
.
You can always discover which key to use for a particular editor command, or conversely which command is invoked by a particular key. See Help with editing for details.
A further way to edit a file is to drag it (using the mouse) from another drag and drop enabled application such as the Windows Explorer, and drop it into the an Editor tool. This functionality is disabled by default because it requires loading of modules. You can enable it as described in The window options.
LispWorks IDE User Guide (Windows version) - 25 Nov 2011