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### 2.10 Useful Packages

Some Emacs packages are mentioned here as an aid to the new Viper user, to indicate what Viper is capable of. A vast number comes with the standard Emacs distribution, and many more exist on the net and on the archives.

This manual also mentions some Emacs features a new user should know about. The details of these are found in the GNU Emacs Manual.

The features first. For details, look up the Emacs Manual.

‘`Make`’
  Makes and Compiles can be done from the editor. Error messages will be parsed and you can move to the error lines.
‘`Shell`’
  You can talk to Shells from inside the editor. Your entire shell session can be treated as a file.
‘`Mail`’
  Mail can be read from and sent within the editor. Several sophisticated packages exist.
‘`Language Sensitive Editing`’
  Editing modes are written for most computer languages in existence. By controlling indentation, they catch punctuation errors.

The packages, below, represents a drop in the sea of special-purpose packages that come with standard distribution of Emacs.

‘`Transparent FTP`’
  `ange-ftp.el` can ftp from the editor to files on other machines transparent to the user.
‘`RCS Interfaces`’
  `vc.el` for doing RCS commands from inside the editor
‘`Directory Editor`’
  `dired.el` for editing contents of directories and for navigating in the file system.
‘`Syntactic Highlighting`’
  `font-lock.el` for automatic highlighting various parts of a buffer using different fonts and colors.
‘`Saving Emacs Configuration`’
  `desktop.el` for saving/restoring configuration on Emacs exit/startup.
‘`Spell Checker`’
  `ispell.el` for spell checking the buffer, words, regions, etc.
‘`File and Buffer Comparison`’
  `ediff.el` for finding differences between files and for applying patches.

Emacs Lisp archives exist on ‘`archive.cis.ohio-state.edu`’ and ‘`wuarchive.wustl.edu`’