.TH MG 1
.SH NAME
mg \- Micro Gnu emacs
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B mg
[
.I files
]
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B Mg
is intended as a micro version of Gnu Emacs.  It is intended primarily
for use on PC's of various kinds, where it may not be practical to
run Gnu Emacs because of its size.  However it is also useful on
larger systems for some purposes.  Because it is about 1/10 the size
of Gnu Emacs, it starts much faster, and is much less likely to
cause paging.
.LP
Normal editing commands should be identical to Gnu Emacs.  It differs
primarily in not having special modes for tasks other than straight
editing, e.g. mail and news, and in not having special modes that
support various programming languages.  It does have text justification
and auto-fill mode.  It is written directly in C, so there is no
language in which you can write extensions.  However you can rebind
keys and change some parameters.  There are no limits to line length
or format.  Command, buffer, and file name completion and listing can
be done using space and ? respectively.
.LP
.B Mg
is close enough to Gnu Emacs that you can learn it the same way:
using the program
.BR teach-emacs .
.B Teach-emacs
will invoke Gnu Emacs, however the features that it teaches should
work identically on
.BR mg .
.LP
The one major difference is in configuration files.  Gnu Emacs uses
a configuration file 
.IR .emacs ,
which is written in Lisp.
.B Mg
uses its own configuration files, which contain extend mode Emacs
commands (i.e. commands that you could type after doing m-x).
There are two configuration files, 
.IR .mg ,
and
.IR .mg-TERM .
TERM here represents the name of you terminal type.  E.g. if
your terminal type is set to vt100,
.B mg
will use
.I .mg-vt100
as a startup file.  The terminal type startup file is used
first.  If either of these files does not exist, 
.B mg
will look for a file by the same name (but without the leading
dot) in
.IR /usr/local/lib/mg .
.LP
See the manual for a full list of the commands that can
go in the files. The most commonly  
used ones are probably key binding.  The following example is
part of a configuration file used to set make
.B mg
respond to the keypad on a Microport SV/AT system.  The normal
keys send a sequence of the form <ESC> [ <letter>.  I also
want to use keys prefixed by <ESC> as having different meaning.
In order to deal with multi-character sequences, the initial
subsequences must be defined as prefixes.  To allow for this,
three prefixes are left undefined in the initial setup.  They
are called "extra prefix 1", etc.
.br
  ;allow normal pad
.br
  global-set-key ^[[ "extra prefix 1"
.br
  ;allow prefixed pad
.br
  global-set-key ^[^[ "extra prefix 2"
.br
  global-set-key ^[^[[ "extra prefix 3"
.br
  ;keypad
.br
  global-set-key ^[[A previous-line
.br
  global-set-key ^[[H scroll-down
.br
  ...etc
.br
  ;escaped keypad
.br
  global-set-key ^[^[[A exchange-point-and-mark
.br
  global-set-key ^[^[[H beginning-of-buffer
.br
  ...etc
.LP
Here's another example sequence that you may find useful.  By default ()
and [] are recognized as brackets, so bracket matching can be done.
The following defines {} as brackets, and turns on the mode that causes
the cursor to "blink" to show you matching brackets.
.br
  global-set-key } blink-matching-paren-hack
.br
  blink-matching-paren
.br
  set-default-mode blink
.SH ARGUMENTS
.B Mg
does not take any options.  The only arguments you can pass it are
file names.  It will do a find-file on each one, reading it into
a buffer.  It will leave the last buffer on the screen.  If you call
.B mg
from
.BR vnews ,
both the original article and your reply will be in separate buffers.
The original article will be showing.  Use "c-x b" to switch to the
buffer for your reply.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR gnuemacs (1),
.BR teach-emacs (1)
.SH BUGS
When you type ? to list possible file names, buffer names, etc.,
a help buffer is created for the possibilities.  In Gnu Emacs,
this buffer goes away the next time you type a real command.
In
.BR mg ,
you must use "m-x 1" to get rid of it.
.SH FILES
.LP
.mg -  normal startup file
.LP
.mg-TERM - terminal-specific startup file
.LP
/usr/local/lib/mg - directory for system-wide startup files.  Files in
this directory do not have the leading dot.
.LP
/usr/doc/mg.doc - full manual