Intro

This is the home page for ErgoEmacs developers. (the ErgoEmacs home page is at ErgoEmacs.org )

ErgoEmacs is a new emacs distribution. This project's aim is to create a modernized version of emacs.

ErgoEmacs includes many enhancements to GNU Emacs. In particular, its uses a ergonomics based keyboard shortcut set, but also support modern standard ones such as Copy, Cut, Paste , undo, Save, Save As, Open, Close. ErgoEmacs modernize emacs by improving user interface, removing many emacs's 1980s terminologies, documentation, but still remain emacs-like for its superb features (For example, there will not be any emphasis or addition of pop-up dialogs.).

For some reason and issues on why this project was started, please see: http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_modernization.html

(If you came here looking for just the elisp files for ergonomic keybindings, go to its home page ErgoEmacs Keybinding or just download the file ergoemacs-keybindings-x.x.x.zip on the right side.)

Goal

• A binary download for Windows and Mac. Download, and run. Everything should work well out of the box. A average programer who never heard of emacs, read that this is a text editor, download it, use it productively the first day. The user is not expected to read about GNU philosophy, tutorials, or emacs cult.

• 100% compatibility with GNU Emacs. ErgoEmacs works primarily by having several elisp files and packages that over rides default GNU emacs behavior and user interface. Regardless how inefficient this approach may be, it is critical to be 100% compatible with GNU Emacs.

• Users are not expected to learn for the sake of learning. User shouldn't be expected to read any doc for features common in many IDEs that are already familiar to programers.

A good model of ErgoEmacs are quality software such as FireFox, Opera, Google's Software, or software from Apple. Typically, users can just download the software and use it, without needing to be a some elite coder.

Status

As of today 2009-10-01, you can download alpha release (v 1.6.1) of Windows Binary ErgoEmacs 1.6.1 Setup.exe. (much thanks David Capello)

For Mac or Linux, no binary yet, but you can download the ErgoEmacs Elisp Package ergoemacs_1.6.2.zip. This package can be easily installed on any unix-like platform that is already running Emacs, so that it contains all enhancement of ErgoEmacs.

Plan Detail And Contribution

For detailed rationale and list of items to change, see: Developer Intro. For how to get code in, see the How To Contribute in the wiki tab.

Anyone is very welcome to join in. There are a lot to do. This project is not to fork of GNU Emacs. As described above, it is just elisp files on top of GNU Emacs. All code are licensed by GPL. FSF folks are very welcome to pick out anything back to main tree.