All Unicode (UTF-8) characters, and ASCII characters between hexadecimal 20 and 7E (blank through tilde), are self-inserting. They are inserted into the buffer at the current location of dot, and dot moves 1 character to the right.

The Tab (or C-I) key is also self-inserting. By default, ce has fixed tab settings at columns 9, 17, 25, and so on, but you can change the tab width using the set-tab-size command.

Any self-inserting character can be given an argument. This argument is used as a repeat count, and the character is inserted that number of times. This is useful for creating lines of * characters of a specific length, and other pseudo-graphic things.

Self-inserting keys are all bound to the function ins-self. As with any key, these keys can be rebound to other functions, but this is not always advisable.

C-M, Return (ins-nl)

The Return key works just like you would expect it to work; it inserts a newline character. Lines can be split by moving into the middle of the line, and inserting a newline.

C-J (ruby-indent)

This command attempts to indent according to commonly accepted Ruby conventions. It inserts a new line, and then inserts enough tabs and spaces to produce the proper indentation based on the previous line. If the previous line starts with { or one of the many block-start keywords, or an argument of four (i.e. a single Ctrl-U) is specified, increase indentation by two spaces. If an argument of 16 (i.e. two Ctrl-Us) is specified, reduce indentation by two spaces. Otherwise retain the same indentation.

C-O (ins-nl-and-backup)

This command creates blank lines. To be precise, it inserts a newline by doing a C-M, and then backs up by doing a C-B. If dot is at the start of a line, this will leave dot sitting on the first character of a new blank line.

C-Q (quote)

Characters which are special to ce can be inserted by using this command. The next character after the C-Q is stripped of any special meaning. It is simply inserted into the current buffer. Any argument specified on the C-Q command is used as the insert repeat count.

C-T (twiddle)

Exchange the two characters on either side of the dot. If the the dot is at the end of the line, twiddle the two characters before it. Does nothing if the dot is at the beginning of the line. This command is supposedly useful for correcting common letter transpositions while entering new text.

M-Tab (set-tab-size)

Set the tab size to the value of the argument, which must be a positive number greater than 1 (the default tab size is 8). This only affects the how ce displays tabs on the screen; it does not affect how tabs are saved when a file is written to disk. To change how ce handles tabs when saving a file, see the set-save-tabs command.

M-I (set-save-tabs)

By default, ce preserves tabs when it writes a file to disk. If you pass a zero argument to this command, ce will convert tabs to spaces when writing a file; the number of spaces is determined by the tab size (which you can set using set-tab-size). If you pass a non-zero argument to this command, ce will revert back to the default behavior, which is to preserve tabs.