Questions from a newguy

[Chris]

Hi all,

I'm a Java et al coder who'd like to give emacs a shot. After 10+ years if 
never really loving my development environment, I finally grasp what's 
possible with emacs, and it seems that if I commit to it my IDE can be as 
good as I feel like making it.

I have 3 main goals in the immediate future:

1) To make emacs a little friendlier for Java, C++, text, PHP, etc. In many 
cases this means making it more like Textpad, which is my current choice 
and is quite good off the shelf but of course isn't as flexible
2) To get my cash-strapped software team off of Textpad and using emacs 
(this is quite related to 1), and then extending it for our needs 
(JBoss/EJBs mostly)
3) To get good at this stuff and help out with the effort.

Right now, there are a couple of things preventing me from comfortably 
coding in Java with emacs. One is file navigation; the other is control of 
whitespace. For file navigation, I really miss good ol' Ctrl-Tab. KDE seems 
to eat Ctrl-Tab, but if had some idea on how to make something similar 
happen I'd be pleased. I seem to remember some help on this previously 
(maybe on this list!), and as I recall some clever manipulation of the 
buffer list is necessary for satisfactory results.

My problems with whitespace are that 1) I have no control over it -- I 
don't ever want to hit Tab and have nothing happen, 2) I don't know how to 
customize it, and 3) it looks like Emacs is not saving tabs as tabs (even 
though I thought I told it to), so that I can't pleasantly edit files that 
have been touched by Emacs.

I'm not looking for quick fixes / code samples here; I'm willing to do some 
work, but I'm having a hard time getting started. By the way, Gnu sells a 
"Introduction to Emacs Lisp Programming" (I think), that's only available 
online. I can get by in Lisp, and I've read the online reference manual, 
but it's a little dry.

Thanks all! These aren't JDE questions in some cases, but frankly in the 
months I've been lurking, I've just been very impressed with the list.

Keep up the good work!

- C