Reviews
Learning GNU Emacs by Marc Loy, James Elliott, Eric S. Raymond, Debra Cameron, Bill Rosenblatt
obione_tdg's review against another edition
2.0
Quite obsolete, and probably too brief to be useful.
caisah's review against another edition
5.0
I found this book listed as a reference for Emacs on /r/emacs so I was curious about what it cloud offer. Aside from the intro tutorial one gets when pressing C-h t, this book is the best thing an Emacs beginner could get.
Although it covers an older version (21.3) most of the subjects are still relevant. I have been using Emacs for about a year (when I started reading it) and I still got a lot out of it. I have found the power of narrowing and of rectangles, some basic info about major modes (I have not yet used) and version control.
At a first glance the book looks way too verbose but as one digs deeper, there are subjects that can easily be skipped (if you are already knowledgeable). Also a lot of paragraphs just reiterate the command shortcuts or tables with general explanations. So the length of the book shouldn't be something to scare anybody.
The 3rd edition covers all the major subjects starting with text editing, finding & replacing, using buffers, macros, specialized text formatting, customization, how to use help, and also some popular major modes. Something that's missing is org mode. But that requires another new book.
All in all, it was a pleasant and informative read, and I recommend this book to any beginner (going to intermediate).
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