emacs trouble
 

Hello! I'm very new to Linux and its programs. I was trying out emacs basically for the first time and what happened was that after I'd played around for a while, typing, saving and moving files around.
Now I'm unable to save anything when I start emacs.
It tells me that the "Minibuffer window is not active" and that's about it. I have no idea where to go from there.
I'd really appreciate your help.
thanks

Hi, and welcome to LQ!

Are you running emacs X or nox?

Can you click to focus on the minibuffer?


Cheers,
Tink

thank you!
Well you see, I really have no idea. It merely says GNU emacs. I suppose it's whatever red hat 9 uses as standard.
I can't even see a minibuffer. When I click C-x C-f it does add another option right next to Tools and Help that says minibuf, but I don't know what to do with it.
However I can save by creating the name of the file at the same time as I kick off emacs in the terminal, then when I close emacs it asks if I want to save.
But I am unable to just start emacs, write stuff and then type in the bar bellow the location and name of the file I just created. once I click the box that's when it tells me "minibuffer window is not active". please help a noob in need

Oh, I see. Well, when you're done typing your text you press C-x C-w
and then just start typing. Emacs will automatically take you to the
minibuffer (that's the bit where you type the name) after the 'w' in
'C-x C-w'.

'C-x C-f' will let you OPEN an existing file, not save it.



Cheers,
Tink

Thank you very much! I only have one further question though. Before I could just click the minibuffer.
Do I really have to do C-x C-w every time?

C-x C-w is a keyboard shortcut for Save Buffer As, identical to Save As in most office type programs. This command is also available in the file menu, and via a button in the toolbar (floppy disk with a pen pointed at it). The Minibuffer at the bottom of emacs is used for many useful things, search/replace for example, so at different times it will have different uses, and clicking on it could have ambiguous meaning, hence the need for commands.

Also, after a while, I honestly believe you'll find keyboard commands to be the easiest method controlling many Linux programs (be glad you started with emacs and not vi which uses the mouse for almost nothing)

Hope this helps.

Eventhough not everyone would agree, I beleive "orie0943" is right. You can go around emacs with the click of a mouse.

The more you will be working with emacs, the more you will see the possibilities that it offers. Then you might want to do other stuff that you can't click to it.

You are probably better to learn the basic shortcuts of emacs right away. This way, you will not be limited by the click of a mouse in the future. And, you will find that you gain alot of time with the shortcuts.

Cheers

I'll keep that in mind! And once again thank you very much for your excellent support.