Text Processing
Overview
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Learning ed
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Moving around the Buffer
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Inserting and Deleting Text
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Searching and Replacing
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Copying and Moving
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Running a Shell in GNU Emacs
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Trying an Existing man Page
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Writing a Sample man Page
Text processing refers to all aspects of creating, editing, and formatting textual documents. The simplest form of text processing is preparing a plaintext file, which you need to do often, because most CentOS Linux configuration files are plaintext files. For this purpose, CentOS Linux offers a choice of text editors, ranging from the UNIX standard, vi, to the very powerful GNU Emacs.
To prepare formatted text in CentOS Linux, you must use a markup language such as groff or DocBook. Using a markup language, you place special formatting commands in a plaintext file, and a formatting program processes the marked-up text file to generate the formatted document for printing or viewing. You may already be familiar with a more recent markup language, HyperText Markup Language (HTML), which is as the standard document format on the World Wide Web.
| Insider Insight |
Even if you use a Microsoft Windows- or Macintosh-based "what-you-see-is-what-you-get" application (often pronounced "whizzy-whig" for its abbreviation WYSIWYG) to prepare formatted text, you must learn the rudiments of a markup language if you want to prepare a man page-online Help text available through the man command. |
This chapter describes the text-processing facilities in Linux. The chapter starts with the ed, vi, and GNU Emacs text editors, then it describes how to use the groff text-formatting program to prepare a man page. The chapter ends with a brief overview of the SGML- and XML-based DocBook markup language for document layout.