¥ The emacs package provides a set of key bindings that mimic those used in 
the Emacs editor.  The emacs editor enjoys wide-spread popularity on unix 
systems.  Pete Keleher acknowledges it as part of the inspiration for 
Alpha.

¥ The procedures and commands that get key bindings through this package 
primarily deal with: navigation in the text (buffer), text manipulation, 
and window appearance & positioning for the most part (aside: the use of 
the word "buffer" to refer to a text containing window probably comes from 
emacs).

¥ A lot of the key bindings are unusual compared to those used in 'normal' 
Machintosh editor/word processors, so it if fair to wonder what the 
advantages of these bindings are for those not already used to emacs.  
Well, the primary advantage is in keeping your hands close to the home 
keys, you rarely have to move away from the alpha-numeric portion of the 
keyboard into the arrow, keypad or function key areas if you use this 
package.

¥ Since the bindings/functionality used by emacs may not yet be second 
nature to you, you can have this package include a submenu under 'Edit' 
that can serve as a handy reference to jog your memory, and as an 
alternative method of invoking a desired operation.  The inclusion of this 
submenu is the default behaviour of this package, if they are already 
second nature to you, or, become so, you can remove it by unchecking 'Use 
Emacs Menu' under the 'Miscellanous' section of the globals dialog.

¥ The control modifier is used in a lot of these bindings, this modifier is 
rarely used in other Machintosh applications, but was the first 
non-ordinary modifier available on early keyboards.  Those keyboards had 
only one control key, and it was located where the caplock key is today.  
This kept your hands even more tightly concentrated than the current 
arrangement, you only needed to stretch your little finger over a tiny bit 
and then you could make all your control combinations with ease.  Today's 
keyboards are pretty well standardize with the two control keys in the 
lower corners.  This configuration makes these control combinations a 
little less convenient, it's more of a stretch away from the home row 
postion and makes the use of one hand to press both the control key and the 
'regular' key a difficult stretch for some combinations.  The reason the 
control keys have assumed their current configuration is that programmers 
form a pretty small subset of the people who use computers so the keyboard 
makers moved those mysterious and "useless" keys out of harms way.  Perhaps 
Pete will one day add the ability to swap the cop-lock and lefthand control 
key functionality while you are using alpha.  The keyboard I use (a 
Datadesk Switchboard) allows you to do this physically, I find the emacs 
bindings even more time saving in that configuration.

¥ If do get used to the control key combinations, there is a bonus as 
regards scrollinglist dialogs that you may not be aware of, as long as 
there is a selection in the list, the following key combinations will work:
control'-' (i.e. control-minus) == downArrow,
control-L == pageDown,
control-K == pageUP.

¥ The other modifier keys that emacs had to work with on early keyboards 
was the escape key, and, if the keyboard provide it, an additional modifier 
key that emacs refers to as the "meta" key.  Not all keyboards had such a 
modifier, and, if they did, rarely called it the same thing.  In this emac 
mimicking keyset, the option key is used as the emac "meta" key.

¥ NEW OPTION: In the Config:Global:Preferences:MiscellaneousÉ invoked 
dialog, there is a flag called " 'emac'Last Word If Touching ", if this 
flag is checked, the behaviour of a few emac-bound procedures changes. 
Those procedures are:
   upcaseWord
   downcaseWord
   capitalizeWord
   hiliteWord
   
Those procedures behave as normal except when the cursor is right at the 
end of a word. In that case they effect the word they are "touching". I 
find this convenient as after I have typed a word is the usual point at 
which I realize that I should have capitalized it. Ditto for the others.

¥ NEW PROC AND KEY-BINDING: There is one navigation binding that was not in 
the previous emacs packages, that was a binding for 
"beginningOfLogicalLine", what that proc does is get you to the first 
non-white character of the current line. Its emac-like binding is 
<escape>-m.