This tutorial is for anyone who is interested in adding another accessibility tool to their assistive tool chest whether they come from Windows, Mac or Linux. A lot of thought has gone into how to introduce this tool to people who are coming from GUI environments. Because of this, it will deviate from the usual path and ease you into hotkeys by first showing you the menu system of Emacs. We will also talk about movement and navigation using more common naming conventions such as the ones you would find in Gnome, Windows or Mac. This is because these days, the overwhelming majority of blind people use Windows and the screen readers that make it accessible. Gone are the days when most of us were command line users though, we have not entirely lost our love for the mighty hotkey. So, don't think the hotkeys will be ignored. Far from it since the menus in Emacs are its training wheels and you can't really start doing things quickly until you have learned at least the basic hotkeys. Learning hotkeys takes time though and, meanwhile, you actually want to DO something as in right now without having to feel like a schoolboy or girl memorizing lines for some poem or play or something like that. This is why menus will be talked about a lot.

What this tutorial will not teach you is how to use Linux in general. That topic is huge and far too encompassing to cover here. If you come across terms you don't understand or have never heard before, I want you to make extensive use of Google, info, and the man pages. If there is one lesson which is Linux-wide which I will teach you, it is this:

Linux does not hand everything to you on a silver platter ready for you to just pick up a fork and dig in. This is especially true of information. It assumes you are smart enough to learn through research and that you are capable of thinking for yourself. This is pretty much the modus operandi across all flavors of it and in much of the software that runs on it. Inevitably, it will manifest itself in the people who use it as well. In more extreme cases, some Linux users can come across as testy and unhelpful geeks from a newbie's perspective when they are asked what they feel are simple questions whose answers aren't hard to find with a little effort on the part of the inquirer. It is because they assume that you are smart enough to use a search engine, browse forums, read help files and tinker a bit to solve your problem. It is what they did, after all, and they figure you can do the same. They can usually tell when you haven't based on your questions so, research before you ask or be frank in admitting that you haven't and why because this is expected of you in this environment much more so than in Windows or Mac where you paid money therefore you have some rights when it comes to support. Many are particularly touchy about whether or not people read help files or manuals since they might have put time and effort into writing that stuff and don't feel like repeating themselves when they've made their help available to you in this form. Writing this stuff isn't easy and the overwhelming majority of those of us who write tutorials, man pages, help files and documentation don't get paid a single solitary cent for our efforts. The best pay in the world someone who puts their time and mental resources into writing an informational resource for no monetary compensation can get is for someone to use that resource thereby making their time and efforts worthwhile. "Hint hint … nudge, nudge, know what I mean?" Please tell me you know Monty Python! Ok, enough rabbit trails.

So, while this document will hold your hand in parts to some extent in order to minimize some of the infamous Emacs/Emacspeak learning curve, I will not insult your intelligence by over explaining when I know perfectly well that you are capable enough to read and research other sources on your own nor will I seek to duplicate the work done by others when there are lots of perfectly serviceable sources of information on just about any and all topics I covered here. In spite of this, you may decide that there is something missing or something can be made better and you are the one who can make that happen whereupon, you roll up your sleeves, stock up on caffeine and turn your back on Morpheus' restful embrace for a night or two while you make your contribution. If you do, then, be welcome among us for you are become one of us in truth. Free and open source software is about everyone working together towards making things better for the good of all. It is the price we gladly pay for free software.

The best way to use this tutorial is to read it using an application and in an environment you already know well such as note pad or, Internet Explorer in Windows with your favorite screen reader or a text editor like Gedit or the Firefox browser in Gnome with Orca as the screen reader or, maybe Nano or Vim in the Linux Console with Speakup. Mac users, I am sorry, I don't know Mac at all so I am afraid it'll be up to you to decide which editor works best for you on your end. If you are using a browser with a screen reader to access this in its html form, you can navigate quickly through major chapters by using whatever key your screen reader designates for level 2 headings. I do not recommend you try reading this tutorial in Emacspeak if you don't know anything about it since you'll spend most of your time trying to move around in it and won't be able to focus on the content as easily. This might cause you some frustration and the whole point of this is to make things easier on you so you don't give up when you first make contact with Emacspeak. It's got a very unique way of doing things and, it can take some getting used to at first.

Another thing to note is that this document is not a replacement for reading the Emacspeak user's manual and the Emacs User's manual and certainly not for going through the Emacs Tutorial. These are all very valuable resources and you would be very well-advised to put them to use. In fact, if you are already running Linux, you can take a gander at the Emacs user's manual by typing info Emacs at the command line and browsing through it there. It'll make you want to try stuff and this is a good thing.

So, what is Emacs? I thought we were learning about Emacspeak here. Well, Emacs is the application which Emacspeak causes to talk and react in a way that is more productive and efficient for someone using speech to interact with their computer. Ok, so what is Emacs then? You will find lots and lots of definitions and descriptions of it on line claiming all sorts of things about it from calling it a superb editor, or a desktop to calling it a bloated piece of software that doesn't compare to whatever else that person thinks is awesome and cool. Honestly, though, Emacs is a text editor that got extended and enhanced to such an extent that it will now do just about anything you want to do on a machine. It will let you edit since it's never stopped being a superb text editor. It will play music for you, brows the web, send e-mail, organize your life for you, run a shell for you, help you write programs and webpages and on, and on, and on. It's because it can do all this stuff that people refer to Emacs as a desktop even though it is still at its heart an editor. That's Editor with a capital E, mind. It is probably the single most powerful editor you will ever use. If you want to take a moment to read about the many uses to which you can put Emacs, you could hop online and read the web version of the Emacs manual by following the link I just gave you.

Emacs, believe it or not, is pretty easy to learn. It has a reputation for being newbie friendly. There are tons of resources inside of it and out on the web for learning how to use it and become productive quickly. For instance, here is a nice page dedicated specifically to newbies learning their way around Emacs. When you first bring it up and, for that matter, from anywhere within it, you always have the option of typing control h t and bringing up the Emacs Tutorial. Anyone who wants to learn to use Emacs should take this tutorial at first opportunity. I cannot recommend it strongly enough. This will show you how to move around in Emacs and walk you through a few basic editing commands. Even more help can be found inside the Info Pages. Info is the system Emacs uses to store its help files. They are browseable much like webpages are with hyperlinks and the like. In fact, before we go any further, let's talk about the help system a bit.

Emacspeak is an extension of Emacs written by Dr. T. V. Raman, a blind computer scientist currently working for Google. It turns it into a self-voicing solution that renders it's output in spoken form in a way that makes it easier for interacting with it without vision. It added a lot of commands and changed the behavior of Emacs while doing it so seamlessly that, you don't realize that you are using emacspeak features which are not present in an unmodified Emacs. It is integrated into Emacs itself to such an extent that people who use it tend to blur the line between the extension and the application. While you are learning however, it is important for you to keep the two apart. If you learn your way around Emacs you will pick up things on Emacspeak little by little. Once you have the basics of Emacs down and can move around in and edit files, manipulate the contents of a directory and do a few other things, you can focus completely on Emacspeak and unlocking its more complex and delightful secrets. This learning strategy has worked out rather well for me and it is the path I suggest for someone who is completely new to Linux and has a strong background in Windows and the screen reader solutions there. The reason for this is that both will require you to learn some new concepts that are tied to how the application and the extension work under the hood. This is very important since customizing often involves tinkering with some of the stuff under the hood which can be a bit foreign to the windows user. The truth is, Windows has spoiled us by making so much of what goes on under the hood hidden from us and automated. A powerful tool like Emacspeak can be a bit daunting at times for someone used to all the pampering of the Windows environment where the software developers and distributors take it upon themselves to think for you and lock you away from the code. Sometimes, the help files themselves are a bit hard to follow without first learning this under-the-hood knowledge so, learning a few things about Emacs will help you more easily learn how Emacspeak does what it does for you.

Ok, now that the help system has been introduced, it's time to learn how to move around a large bunch of text. This is where we learn some more hotkeys. Refer to this section frequently in your adventures with Emacs since these keys are valid from virtually any environment in Emacs. You need to learn these because it is as important to know them as it was for you to learn all the key combinations Jaws, Window Eyes, or NVDA and their friends had you learn in windows to move around. If you just stick to the arrow keys, (which, of course, you can), you'll be at it for years and years and wind up giving up. so, here we go:

This section talks about how to set up how Emacspeak speaks to you and how to make it present information for you in certain ways. Before you can customize it though, you need to edit the shell script that launches Emacspeak found in /usr/bin/emacspeak. To do this, type the following at a terminal:

sudo gedit /usr/bin/emacspeak

Once that's done, arrow down till you get to the part that begins to talk about exporting to unary mode. You need to get rid of those lines. Do this either by commenting them out with a # sine or by just deleting them altogether. Unary mode isn't necessary for Emacspeak anymore and it will slow your system down some. Next, find the line that begins with execute emacs -q -l followed by a path to the emacspeak file in the /usr/share/emacs directory. You need to get rid of the -q flag since this will prevent you from being able to customize your Emacs at all. If you want to play it safe, comment the line out then select, copy and paste a copy of it underneath and just delete the -q from that one. When you are done, save your changes and you are ready to customize.

As I mentioned previously, the fastest way to customize your Emacspeak installation is by editing your .emacs file and setting all sorts of variables and instructions there. This requires that you either find a code snippet to paste into it and hope that the person who claims that it works is correct or learning Emacs LIsp yourself. A much easier, if time consuming alternative is to use the Easy Customizations section of Emacs to do this. You get there by typeing m-x customize or by hitting c-e cap b from anywhere within Emacs. c-e cap c takes you directly to the Emacspeak section of the truly massive customizations area. It's hard to explain how this thing works. You get a page with links on it representing "groups". Pressing enter on these groups takes you deeper into the section in question. You then arrow around to find the settings you want to save and do it either by hitting space bar in certain areas, setting things to t (on) or nil (off) in certain places or, in still others, by typing numbers or letters and things. Each group is read in a lower voice by Emacspeak indicating that you can press enter on it to interact with it. Most of the buffer is read- only except for the places which are usually at the end of lines where you can add values. You will use c-e c-e (move to end of line) a lot in there. Another handy thing to get real familiar with quickly is c-s and c-r. c-s is search forward and c-r is search backward. Both will start moving the cursor as you type until you land where you want to be. Hitting your arrow keys makes the search entry field go away and lets you interact with Emacs at whatever point you told it to take you to. It's the only sane way to navigate this area once you know what you are looking for. The important thing to search for is "save for future sessions". It should be obvious what that does. Please be prepared to spend a lot of time familiarizing yourself with this part of Emacs. Once you get the hang of it, though, it's pretty quick especially if you use the search functions described above.

Here's what to expect when you launch it for the first time. To access the Emacspeak-specific section of the rather large customizations area, type c-e c- cap c. You should find yourself in the customizations buffer. type c-n a bit to move down a few lines. Listen carefully to the instructions to this part of Emacs as they are pretty self-explanatory. Each item in brackets can be interacted with either by pressing enter or by typing in the field to the right of it. Use your movement commands liberally. To change speech, the [tts] group will be the place to go. Once you are done with your customizations, go to the top of the buffer with m-< and arrow or c-n down to the line that contains the option to save for current or future sessions and the exit button. Or, you could cut right to the chase by typing c-r to search backwards and then typing save for future sessions.

If you would like a much better and more in depth explanation of this feature of Emacs, I urge you to visit the chapter dedicated to Easy Customizations in the Emacs Manual.

If you don't want to mess around with the Easy Customizations section just now and just want to do some on-the-fly changing, here are some hotkeys that you can use to do this. Note that putting c-u before all of these makes the changes Emacswide. Otherwise, you'll change Emacspeak's speaking behavior local to your current buffer.

• Turn off verbal or "split" capitalization announcement: c-e d s
• Turn on capitalization announcement by pitch: c-e d c
• Turn on capitalization announcement with a short click (my favorite): c-e d cap C (the c is capitalized on this one)
• Change punctuation level: c-e d p and then type none, some most or all whichever you want.
• Change speech rate: You can do this in two ways.
  • Preset levels: c-e d and then any number from 0-9
  • Words per minute specification: c-e d r and how many words per minute you want. I keep mine at 350 so, I typed c-e d r 350 and hit enter to do this.

There are two ways to add extensions to your Emacs which we will discuss. There are more but these are the easiest. Remember, this is for newbies to learn Emacspeak. These two ways are through the synaptic package manager and through the Emacs Lisp Package archive or Elpa as it is called for short. The next two sections will show you how to add packages and extensions to your Emacs using these two solutions.

Elpa is a system Emacs uses for downloading and installing extensions. Some are very large and include several modes while others are small and may only consist of a minor mode. As you become more proficient in Emacs, you will be in a better position to pick which packages you want for your machine. In order to make Elpa available, you will need to paste a bit of lisp code into your scratch buffer. Here is the code. Cut and paste this into an empty text file for later use in case you ever have to reinstall your Emacs:

(let ((buffer (url-retrieve-synchronously "http://tromey.com/elpa/package-install.el"))) (save-excursion (set-buffer buffer) (goto-char (point-min)) (re-search-forward "^$" nil 'move) (eval-region (point) (point-max)) (kill-buffer (current-buffer)))) Ok, here's what you do:

1. Inside gnome, open up the text file you pasted this into with gedit and copy the code into your clipboard.
2. Get out of gedit and go to a gnome terminal with control alt t.
3. Kill orca with orca + q.
4. Type emacspeak and press enter to bring up emacspeak.
5. Get to the scratch buffer with c-x c-b and arrow keys, pressing enter when you hear it mentioned.
6. Press m-> to get to the bottom of the buffer.
7. Bring up the edit menu by first hitting f10 to bring up the menu bar or alt+` whichever you prefer and then arrowing down to edit. Press enter here
8. First option should be paste. Arrow up and down a couple of times because you don't want to confuse it with Paste from Kill Menu. Once you have established that it's paste, press enter.
9. Your elpa code should be there now. Go to the bottom of the buffer with m-> an press left arrow till you are placed just after the last parenthesis.
10. Press c-j to evaluate or run the code. You will then get a new buffer which is the elpa package list come up after a few moments.

Once you have elpa installed, just arrow up and down through the list of packages and type i next to the one you want to install. Do that till you have made all your choices and then type x to have it download and install them. When you are done, type c-x c-c to close Emacs and then bring it right back up again either in console or in gnome according to your preference and you should have the new packages you wanted installed and ready for use.

I am going to recommend that you install three packages right off the bat. These are Facebook, twitter and w3. Place an i before the name of each of these as instructed above and then, after the last selection, press x and give Elpa a few moments to install these. The first two are self-explanatory. The third package is a web browser for Emacs.

Let's back up a bit and describe what you can expect when you launch Emacspeak for the first time. The very first time you launch it from your console or terminal, you will hear e-speak load up first and then Emacspeak will tell you that it is "fully operational" and all its "circuits are working perfectly." You will then find yourself on a screen that is the Emacs welcome page. Move around on it a bit with c-n and c-p. You will hear it announce the Emacs Tutorial and link to Browse the Emacs Manual very early on. If you want to take this moment to explore these resources, by all means do so. You may find it very fascinating and enjoyable to explore this new application in as safe a manner as this. Whenever you are done exploring Emacspeak and just want to quit, type c-x c-c. You will get a prompt that says:

"Active processes exist. Kill anyway?"

type "yes" all the way out and, of course, without the quotation marks I'm using for grammatical effect. You will then find yourself back at the command prompt where you started.

Please note that I always show you how to use Emacspeak from a console and not from Gnome. The reason for this is that at the time of this writing, Orca and Emacspeak don't work well together due to some snafu with the gtk+ support Emacs has freezing at-spi somehow. A partial work-around is to bring Emacspeak up in xterm which Orca currently doesn't read but, it will still make Orca take a while before coming back up when you alt tab or control alt right arrow out of Emacspeak and into something else. The lock-up can be avoided by putting the -nw switch in when you bring up Emacspeak but, for some reason, the meta key is unassigned in this launch and this causes you to have to use escape as a prefix for everything you normally hold down the meta key for. I personally find it annoying and don't use it this way because it isn't very efficient. You may not find it so in which case, feel free to pull emacspeak up in xterm. To put in the switch I mentioned, bring it up like this:

1. From inside gnome, press alt f2 to be prompted which application you'd like to run.
2. At the prompt, type xterm and press enter.
3. You won't hear anything other than, perhaps the window title and Orca telling you this place is inaccessible. Hopefully, you have sound icons turned on in gnome so that pressing down arrow gives you a sort of tom-tom drum sound telling you that you are at the bottom of the terminal window.
4. Type emacspeak -nw and press enter.
5. Begin using Emacspeak as normal.

Don't use gnome terminal unless you are turning your orca off because they will both talk at once. If you are going to do that, kill orca while you run Emacspeak and don't bother with the -nw switch. I've used Emacspeak this way a couple of times but I like having Orca around for x-windows stuff so, I run my Emacspeak in a virtual console, tty1 to be exact. I also like to use speakup in the pure console environment so, I have tty2 logged in and brought up as well with speakup not toggled off in it. I typically have a Gnu Screen session going in there so I can multitask inside the console but that is another topic for another day. Bottom line is, don't ever ever let one good tool cheat you out of being able to use another. Avoid the silly romanticized emotional loyalties people tend to develop for doing things one way and with one thing. Watch out for the pernicious tendencies people have of turning their noses up at perfectly good software just because they don't like the interface, don't believe in how the developer deals with his code or other such foolishness most end users could care less about. If you are using Emacspeak, it is because you are visually impaired. This means that your options for what kind of software you can use are limited enough as it is. Don't hamper yourself further by turning your back on any tool you can use to get the job done. We just can't afford that kind of thinking. Use the best tool for the job as much as time, resources and inclinations allow and leave philosophy and idealism to people like Plato and politicians. Ok, I'll get off my soap box now.

Bringing up Emacspeak in the console is nice because you can still have speakup running though in the background and it can be called upon to read the screen in a traditional screen-reader manner with the number pad. To keep speakup from talking over emacspeak, simply hold down the numpad insert and press numpad enter. To make it speak the screen as it changes again, just press that key combination a second time and it'll toggle speakup back on for you. All right, now, without further adieu, let's get started!

In This section will show you how to create and edit your first plain text file. If you are used to windows, then you are probably used to people looking a scance at plain text since there are so many word processors and other types of solutions for making text look and behave a certain way. In Windowsland, you have .rtf's, .doc's, .wpd's, .pdf's, and all sorts of other extensions denoting all sorts of files which can only be read by one sort of program or changed by one sort of program. The humble .txt file is seen as unsophisticated. It isn't and these programs use plain text too but with tons of markup which they hide from you in all sorts of convoluted ways that take away your control of the file. In Linux, however, plain text is used extensively and markups and such are always available for you to see and understand due to the prevalence of free software and open source thinking. The text file can be put to many uses. We'll really see one of these uses when we write our first webpage using Emacs's org-mode but, for now, let's just make a text file. It will get you used to editing and movement commands within Emacs.

From the command prompt. do the following:

1. Make a directory from which to work. So type this:

   
       mkdir learn-emacspeak
   
   

2. Now, move to it in order to work from there by typing:

   
       cd learn-emacspeak
   
   

3. Now, we can begin. Turn Speakup to quiet mode by holding down the numpad insert and pressing enter. Espeak will say "You turned me off!" It will hang around in the background and can be accessed using your number key pad but it won't announce changes in the screen anymore. If you just want Speakup out of the picture, press print-screen and it wil kill it. Press print screen again to bring it back to life.
4. The moment of truth is upon us! We're going to bring Emacspeak up with a text file. You do this by typing the following into a command prompt in the console:

emacspeak firstfile.txt

Emacspeak will come up and you will be in an empty file buffer. Type a few lines. For instance:

Mary had a little lamb
Whose fleece was white as snow.
And everywhere that mary went,
The lamb was sure to go!

Use the movement keys taught to you in prior chapters of this tutorial to move around this file. Move around by character, word, and sentence. If you decided to type many more lines, you can move by screenful by scrolling vertical with c-v and m-v. Here are a few editing commands for you:

• Delete character: c-d
• Delete word: m-d
• Delete or kill line: c-k
• Paste what you just deleted back into another part of the document: c-y (y stands for yank)

Other exercises:

• Press m-< and m-> to go to the top and bottom of your file.
• Use c-e B to read your entire buffer. it will ask you if you want to read the whole thing or read from start to point or from point to end. It's pretty self explanatory. To use fewer keystrokes, you can use c-e n to read from point forward.
• Press c-n a few times to go to a line of your file further down and practice reading the prior line with c-e up arrow. Read the current line with c-e l. Find out the current line number with c-e e-l.
• Explore the menus in plain text mode to find other functionality.

One thing to note is that Emacs has word wrapping set to off by default. If you are going to write a lot of pros, you'll want to access the options menu and arrow down to "Auto fill in text modes" and press enter. Your lines will wrap from that point on. Don't get taken in by the actual word wrapping features because they just wordwrap for visual effect. Emacspeak won't be fooled and will treat your text as single line paragraphs.

When you are done with your file, Press c-x c-s to save your changes.

I am now going to teach you how to write your own homepage using Emacspeak without knowing a single solitary lick of css or html code. Your homepage wil be accesible, structured and usable with just about any browser out there. You'll be able to save it to a thum drive and put it onto any machine you use regardless of platform and it will work for you no matter what screen reader you use. And, my friend, we will do this in just a few short minutes. Don't believe me? Watch and learn!

We are going to use a built-in mode of Emacs called org-mode. It is used for all kinds of things like planning agendas, scheduling, writing notes and authoring. You can take what you write in this mode and have it spit it out to a structured ascii text file, an html file, a LaTx file a pdf file and, of course, an html file which is what we will be doing. Let's get started! Note: You can get more information about org-mode and all its many uses by browsing the online manual by following this link: online version of the Org-Mode Manual. If you are in Emacs, you can also, of course browse this documentation using info. From the command prompt. do the following:

1. If you haven't already, make a directory from which to work. So type this:

   mkdir learn-emacspeak
   

2. Now, move to it in order to work from there by typing:

   cd learn-emacspeak
   

3. Now, we can begin. Turn Speakup to quiet mode by holding down the numpad insert and pressing enter. Espeak will say "You turned me off!" It will hang around in the background and can be accessed using your number key pad but it won't announce changes in the screen anymore. If you just want Speakup out of the picture, press print-screen and it wil kill it. Press print screen again to bring it back to life.
4. Type emacspeak myhomepage.org at the command prompt and press enter.

You are in an empty buffer in Emacs running org-mode. Before we write a single line of text, let's turn autofill mode on by going to the options menu with either alt plus grave or f10 and arrowing down to it. Autofill should be one of the first things you hear while arrowing down. This will word wrap our lines for us. Now, on to our homepage!

Let's first create the structure of our page. We will use 3 headings, personal, technical, and other. We can do this in three ways.

• Using the menu bar: Press f10 or alt+` to bring up the menu bar and arrow down to org mode's menu. Press enter. From here, arrow down to "new Heading" and press enter. Now, type your heading name and press enter.
• With a hotkey: Press c-j and then type your heading name. When you are done, press enter.
• Markup tags: This is my favorite way as I can do it quickly and on the fly. Type an asterisk and then space twice. Then, type in your heading name and press enter.

Pick a method and create the heading names I assigned you above.

No document pretending to explain to someone how to use Emacs and Emacspeak would be complete, in my opinion, without some instructions on coding. Writing programs is one of Emacs' primary function among many of its users. It's got a mode for just about every language. For our purposes, we will use the c-mode which is the one for c and c++ and other languages related to it. Don't worry if your language is different, all of the concepts I wil explore in this brief tutorial are common to all programming languages. I just happen to know c++ so, it's what I used. If you know Python, Perl, Shell Script, Java or something like that Emacs has you covered. Just replace the .cpp extension with the one corresponding to your language and chances are, Emacs will have a mode for it pre-installed and come up for you in that mode. Here we go:

If you write code, I'm going to assume you know how to use a command line. If you don't and you want to code in Linux, learn it as soon as you can. This section has the least amount of hand holding since, if you program, you need to be willing to explore more than your average user.

1. Make a directory called learn-emacspeak in your home directory.
2. Navigate to that directory from inside a console.
3. Toggle speakup off with numpad enter.
4. Launch emacspeak with the command emacspeak program1.cpp.

You are now inside an empty buffer in Emacs's c-mode. Emacspeak will act rather differently here than in other environments. Let's write a short program to demonstrate. We wil have some comments, some include or, what you might know as import statements, a fiew variables and a function. Notice how emacspeak's voice changes according to context. Write these lines exactly as shown here:

//  This is a comment in c++
// It should be spoken in a monotone voice.
// You can't miss it.
// notice how it treats header file inclusions next
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
// Here's our function
int main ()
{
// Now, an object of type string and its initialization
std::string howdy = "Howdy, partner.  This is emacspeak talking to you!";
int a, b, c;  // Some variable declarations.
a = 1, b = 2, c = 3;  // Assigning them values
std::cout << howdy << "\n Let's count to three: \n" 
<< a << b << c;
// Print some text using console out in c++.
return 0;  //  We end our program.
}

To save our work, we type c-x c-s. Now, explore the file using c-p and c-n and then go by words with m-f and m-b. Some new keys that are specific to this mode are m-p and m-n which move you to the previous and next statement respectively. Make some changes to the comments. Use c-d for character deletion, m-d for word deletion and c-k for deleting a whole line. c-y "yanks" the line back from being killed. It's Emacs talk for paste.

Have a look at the c-mode menus that are added to the menu bar by hitting f10 or alt + grave. When you do the next exercise, notice how they are different in the mode for your own language. The cc-mode has a lot of other functionality but it is something best explored on your own since it is only of interest to you if you code in c++ and explanations of how that is done are way beyond the scope of this tutorial. Another thing to look at is the list of hotkeys specific to it by typing c-h m and then moving to the help buffer with c-x o. Incidentally, c-h b will give you a more compact list of hotkeys.

Chatting with Emacspeak is truly a breeze. You won't believe how easy it is. The best way to illustrate that is to show you how you would chat on the Vinux irc channel. Here's what you do:

1. Launch Emacspeak from the command prompt with speakup toggled off by pressing insert + numpad enter.
2. Once it's up, press m-x and then type erc and press enter. Note the spelling, please, it's not a typo.
3. Answer the prompts such as the irc server, the port (best left as default) and then the nickname you want to log in complete with any applicable password. Press enter after each entry. This will get you onto the irc server from which you can then join a channel of your choosing.

Example:

Give it a few moments and it should tell you that you are on the server you chose. At this point, things get pretty straightforward because now, you can use the menu bar which can be reached with f10 or alt grave accent and arrow to the erc-mode menu and press enter. Choose an option such as joining a channel and then type in the channel you want to join. Another way to do this is to just type /join #channelName as you would in any other irc client. All the usual irc commands work here. the menu bar contains a few helpful shortcuts for when you don't know them but you can get away without ever visiting it.

In the words of Emacspeak's author DR. T. V. Raman, "There are many solutions for browsing the web in Emacspeak neither of them entirely satisfactory." For most simple html and css pages, you can definitely have a very pleasing browsing experience with Emacs w3, the closest thing Emacs has to a a native browser. W3 doesn't have a _javascript_ interpreter so, anything containing _javascript_ wil have to be accessed through other solutions. I will leave it up to you to explore these as this is merely a tutorial for getting your feet wet. W3 is a nice little browser which should fulfill a large percentage of your browsing needs. When it comes to more complex ones, however, you will really want to use another tool like Firefox through Orca. Since Orca currently has some slowness issues with regard to browsing, though it is good to know that, at least, for some of your browsing, you can indeed turn to Emacspeak and quickly go through web content. Here's how to get started doing this. The plugin you will need is an emacs-native browser called Emacs w3. It's not shipped with Emacs and its development has stagnated in recent years but it's still a nice browser as long as you aren't trying to nview web pages with lots of _javascript_. It's even got support for aural css which is a rather neat feature. I'll et you Google what this is since discussions on it can get lengthy. Anyway, Emacs w3 can be put on through Elpa. Refer to the section in this tutorial that discusses how to set it up and how to install packages using this tool. For the rest of this section, I'm going to assume that you followed these instructions and have Emacs w3 installed. Another thing you may wish to consider is making it so that all html documents which are rendered and pulled up as webpages instead of source code get pulled up in w3 and not something else like Firefox. This can be done in the customizations area. Type c-h cap B then arrow up to the appropriate subsection and navigate to where this can be done. The setting you want to change is labeled "browse url."

To bring it up, simply press m-x and then type w3. It should bring up a homepage for itself on the gnu.org site. To move around the web, here are the basic commands. Note the capitalization of these commands:

Moving forward and backward through the available links on a page

tab and alt tab respectively

Selecting a link

Enter or return as it's called hereabouts

Open a url

c-o (this one should be no sweat)

top and bottom of document

< and > respectively

Scroll down a page

space bar

Scroll up a page

del key

Reload page

r

Back to your previous page

cap B

Forward to the next page

cap F.

View html source of the page you are on

s

quit

q

These commands should get you started. If you want more, remember, you always have c-h m to consult. It will bring up a list of all the hotkeys for you. There are many many more than the ones I mentioned. Also, please note that w3 has it's own menu bar. You should find it pretty easy to follow since it's very similar to other browsers' menu bars.

While you browse, Emacspeak will announce links in a lower pitch voice and will also modulate its voice depending on headings, quotes and other attributes of the document you are browsing. But, you may ask, are there no specific Emacspeak commands? There are many and I will let you explore them as you get used to Emacs itself. But, there is one priceless gem you will find quite useful which I will discuss in the next subsection.

If you have a setup on your linux box that enables you to send and receive mail system wide, Emacs can also be used as a mail client. If you don't have this set up yet, I will warn you that it is a pretty technical and advanced thing to do and will consume some time if you have never done it before. You will need to acquire and configure Fetchmail, Procmail and either Postfix or Sendmail. These are programs that handle different aspects of sending and receiving e-mail at a system level. Emacs then pulls the incoming messages from your system mail box usually located in /var/mail/username whereX user name is your login name on your machine. Outgoing mail gets sent out through whatever you are using as an outgoing mail handling program such as Sendmail or Postfix. There is a lot of information out there on the net on how to set this stuff up on your machine. I suggest you have a good look at it before attempting this.

Assuming you got it set up, here's how you send and receive e-mail with Emacs. We will use the basic mail-mode. There are two other more complex ones that ship with Emacs called Gnus and mh-e which can be used for this purpose which you are encouraged to investigate. There are others which can be gotten through synaptic or by visiting webpages containing them on the net and installing them directly by hand. Dr. Raman states in the user manual for Emacspeak that he is partial to VM.

First, reading your e-mail is as easy as typing m-x rmail. The interface is a bit old fashioned so you will get a ton of header file information that most other clients just hide from you. Use c-n to get past all of that stuff and you will get to the body of your message. You can use either c-e B (note the capital b), to tell Emacspeak to read the whole buffer from point to you or you can read the mesage by screenful with c-v. m-n will take you to the next messsage once you are done reading it. As usual, there's also a menu bar that contains many more features and c-h b or c-h m will give you more hotkeys if you don't want to fool with the menu bar. To exit the mail mode, hit q for quit.

Sending e-mail is done by typing c-x m. You are at a" to:" prompt. Just type the e-mail address of your recipieent and hit down arrow to get to subject. Type in the subject and arrow down twice because there's a line of dashes you have to get past. Type your message and then c-c c-c to send it out and exit mail. Again, you are encouraged to explore the other features by using the menu bar and the hotkey lists.

This tutorial was written for users of the Vinux distribution of Linux which, as of version 3.01, comes with Emacspeak pre-installed for you. However, if you are using another distribution or, you just want to build it up yourself, the following supplemental sections wil walk you through doing just that.

"Give someone a fish, and you have fed them for a meal. Teach them to fish and you have fed them for life."–Somebody very smart.

Now that you have gotten your feet wet with Emacspeak, it's time for you to expand your knowledge. Here are some links you can visit that should help you with that.

A Gentle Introduction to Emacspeak

This is an old tutorial which still holds valuable information. Just watch out for outdated links in it. It was written way back in good old y2k.

The Emacs Beginners Howto

An Excelent document written to introduce people to Emacs.

Emacspeak User's Manual Second Edition

There are two Emacspeak Users Guides that can be found online, this is the link to the most recent.

Emacspeak Users Guide

This is the older document mentioned previously. There are still many valuable pieces of information in there so, I still think it is worth posting here.

The Emacs Manual

Not to be confused with the Emacspeak manual, this link takes you to the user's manual for Emacs itself. It is big, exhaustive, and very well-written. It covers just about anything you'd ever want to know about Emacs.

The Emacs Wiki

Extremely valuable resource! There is a ton of information to be found here on just about everything.

Online Gnu Emacs Manuals

This page contains links to manuals for many of the modes and extensions discussed in this tutorial and then some.

An Introduction to Emacs Lisp

Eventually, if you use it enough, you'll want to learn how to really tweak Emacs to your specifications. You might even write an extension yourself. This link takes you to a resource for learning how to do just that. At that point, you are officially an Emacs guru.

Finally, Emacspeak has a mailing list to whichyou can subscribe. The subscription address is emacspeak-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx and the address to post messages is emacspeak@xxxxxxxxxxxxx. To browse the list archives, the url is http://www.cs.vassar.edu/~priestdo/emacspeak/.

Now, go fish!

THE END!