Overview

GNEX is Jonathan Rees's GNU Emacs port of Kent Pitman's EMACS key bindings, mode line, and other editing support, collectively known originally as NEX.

History

The name NEX was coined by @netsettler or @BobKerns, neither is sure which, somewhere back around 1980. At the time, "NE" was the short name for "the newest stable version of Emacs", and the added "X" meant that there were a set of extensions that Kent and Bob used. Of course, "newest stable" here means "newest as of 1980" and even what's stable changes with time. Back then, Emacs was still implemented in TECO, for example.

The equivalent extensions were later rewritten in emacs-lisp for use in GNU Emacs by @jar398, who took over maintenance of what is now called "GNEX".

Features

Some useful features of the GNEX environment are shown here. This is probably not an exhaustive list.

• Alternate GNEX key bindings. There are many of these, but notable ones are:
  • Space is self-insert-or-scroll-up
  • Delete is backward
  • Control-. is tags-loop-continue
  • Control-\ is character-search-forward (as is Control-s)
  • Control-% is tags-search
  • Control-h is help-command
  • Control-i (and Control-Tab) is indent-differently.
  • Control-l is force-redisplay
  • Control-r is character-search-backward
  • Control-s is character-search-forward
• Alternate dispatch characters to select from GNEX-extended command tables:
  • Control-w is nex-meta-prefix, using nex-meta-map.
  • Control-^ uses nex-control-prefix, using nex-control-map.
  • Control-[ (a.k.a. Esc) uses nex-meta-map directly:
    • Meta-i is indent-relative.
    • Meta-s is center-line.
    • Meta-Space is just-one-space.
    • Meta-/ is dabbrev-expand.
    • Meta-| is draw-vertical-line (useful in Picture Mode).
    • Meta-, is mini-find-tag.
    • Meta-] is forward-paragraph.
    • Meta-[ is backward-paragraph.
  • Control-z is nex-control-meta-prefix, using nex-control-meta-map:
    • Control-Meta-l is switch-to-previous-buffer.
    • Control-Meta-q is scheme-indent-sexp.
    • Control-Meta-Del is backward-kill-sexp.
    • Control-Meta-; is kill-comment.
    • Control-Meta-% is tags-query-replace.
  • Control-x is nex-control-x-prefix, using nex-control-x-map:
    • Control-x i is info.
    • Control-x r is read-mail.
    • Control-x # is insert-counter (useful in keyboard macros).
    • Control-x Control-b is electric-buffer-list.
    • Control-x Control-c is suspend-emacs.
    • Control-x Control-k is kill-region.
    • Control-x Control-y is insert-file.
    • Control-x Control-\ is save-buffer (like Control-X Control-s).
• Attempted fixes for various known bugs
• Custom indentations for a number of lisp special forms.
• Use of the modlin library sets up a different look for the mode line.

Setup

Setup in Bash init files

If you like GNEX your shell init (.bashrc etc.) might want to look like this:

GNEX=~/gnex-repo-clone

Setup in Emacs init files

If you like GNEX your .emacs might want to look like this:

(load-file "$GNEX/gnex")
(gnex)
(load-file "~/.gnex")