3 How to Get Started

Start up Emacs and enter M-x edt-emulation-on to begin the emulation. After initialization is complete, the following message will appear below the status line informing you that the emulation has been enabled: “Default EDT keymap active”.

You can have the EDT Emulation start up automatically, each time you initiate an Emacs session, by adding the following line to your .emacs file:

(add-hook 'emacs-startup-hook 'edt-emulation-on)

A reference sheet is included (later on) listing the default EDT Emulation key bindings. This sheet is also accessible on line from within Emacs by pressing PF2, GOLD-H, or ‘HELP’ (when in the EDT Default Mode).

It is easy to customize key bindings in the EDT Emulation (see Customizing Emulation). Customizations are placed in a file called edt-user.el. The Emacs etc/ directory contains an example. If edt-user.el is found in your Emacs load path during EDT Emulation initialization, then the following message will appear below the status line indicating that the emulation has been enabled, enhanced by your own customizations: “User EDT custom keymap active”.

Once enabled, it is easy to switch back and forth between your customized EDT Emulation key bindings and the default EDT Emulation key bindings. (Look at the binding to GOLD-Z in the sample edt-user.el file.) It is also easy to turn off the emulation (via the command edt-emulation-off). Doing so completely restores the original key bindings in effect just prior to invoking the emulation.

Emacs binds keys to ASCII control characters and so does the real EDT. Where EDT key bindings and Emacs key bindings conflict, the default Emacs key bindings are retained by the EDT emulation by default. If you are a die-hard EDT user you may not like this. The Enabling EDT Control Key Sequence Bindings section explains how to change this so that the EDT bindings to ASCII control characters override the default Emacs bindings.