Hemlock is an extensible Emacs-like text editor embedded in CMUCL. It follows the tradition of the Lisp Machine editor ZWEI and the ITS/TOPS-20 implementation of Emacs. Hemlock is able to display to a terminal, or use CLX for X11.

Available documentation:

• the Hemlock User Manual (176kB gzipped A4 Postscript), or in gzipped letter Postscript.
• the command implementor's manual, containing information for people who wish to extend Hemlock (120kB gzipped Postscript).

The Scribe sources for these documents are distributed with the CMUCL source code, in the src/docs/hem directory.

Experimenting with Hemlock

To start experimenting with Hemlock, load the CLX and Hemlock subsystems, then type (ed). This should open an X11 window for the editor (actually two windows; the smaller window contains the minibuffer).

   * (require :clx)
   * (require :hemlock)
   * (ed)

The keybindings in the editor are similar to those in GNU Emacs: for instance M-x enters the minibuffer, and C-x C-f opens a file for editing (enter the filename in the minibuffer). Completion in the minibuffer works with #\Space, not with #\Tab. Command names are of the form Find File rather than find-file. Dired mode is available with M-x Dired. To quit Hemlock and return to the listener, type C-x C-z.

Note that the tty code in Hemlock requires termcap (on Debian systems, you can install the termcap-compat package). For further notes on using Hemlock, see CLiki:CloserLookAtHemlock.