Word Hacks [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Hack 80 Emulate Emacs with VBacs

You've already learned all
those Emacs commands, so you might as well use them. This set of
freeware macros replicates many common Emacs keyboard shortcuts
within Word.

Emacs, a text editor usually
associated with the Unix
operating system (though it's available on most any
platform), is in most ways the polar opposite of Word. No one just
sits down with Emacs, expecting to hunt around a few menus to find
the commands they need. While you can learn simple commands quickly,
true Emacs mastery is a lifelong love affair for hackers around the
world.

Emacs was born at a time when a window still meant something you
opened to let in fresh air. You had to use the keyboard to issue
every command, and often they required complex key combinations, such
as Ctrl-X, Ctrl-S (the command to save the current file).

Though versions of Emacs have since been developed that include menus
and even toolbars, most Emacs users rarely take their hands off the
keyboard. So when someone who's mastered all those
Emacs commands switches to Word, it can be a frustrating experience.

Fortunately, the
free VBacs
template, available for download at http://rath.ca/Misc/VBacs, modifies
Word's key bindings to more closely match the native
ones in Emacs and can make Word feel a little more like home.

Word does support two-stage key bindings (such as Alt-L, S), but you can use the Ctrl key only in the first stage. This makes it impossible to recreate many Emacs commands, such as Ctrl-X, Ctrl-S. In these cases, VBacs gets as close as Word will permit; for example, Ctrl-X, S lets you save.

9.2.1 Installing VBacs

VBacs is offered as a standard
.dot template file, released under the
GNU Lesser Public License.
Here's how to install the VBacs template as a global
template that will automatically load every time you start Word.

First, download the VBacs template to your computer. Make sure you
close Word and any other applications that may access Word, such as
Outlook.

Next, locate your Word Startup folder, which is usually the
following:

C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Word\STARTUP

If you're not sure where your
STARTUP folder is located, you can open Word and
select ToolsOptions, click the File Locations tab, and make
a note of the folder listed under STARTUP.

After you put VBacs.dot into your
STARTUP folder, its key bindings will take
effect the next time you start Word.

9.2.2 Using VBacs

Table 9-1 summarizes the VBacs commands
and their key bindings. Some
aren't actually Emacs commands or differ slightly
from their Emacs counterparts.

With VBacs installed, several editing and navigation tasks become
immediately easier. For example, Ctrl-X, 2 splits the active window
vertically, as shown in Figure 9-1.

Figure 9-1. Quickly split a window with Ctrl-X, 2 in VBacs

The shortcut Ctrl-O (open line above) creates a new line above the
cursor and then moves the cursor to the beginning of the new line.
One more notable gem: Ctrl-K deletes from the cursor to the end of a
line. In Word, navigating and editing by lineas opposed to by
paragraphcan be tricky. With VBacs, it becomes a lot more
manageable.

If you want to temporarily
remove
the VBacs key bindings, select ToolsTemplates and Add-ins
and uncheck VBacs.dot in the list of installed
add-ins. When you click the OK button, Word will unload the template,
and your key bindings will return to Word's default
settings. VBacs will return the next time you start Word. To
uninstall VBacs, just remove it from Word's
STARTUP folder.

For more information on Emacs, check out http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacsl and Learning GNU Emacs (O'Reilly).

Christopher Rath