Emacs won't start anymore? See troubleshooting below.
Shells and subprocesses don't work? Using anti-virus software? See anti-virus problems below.
This web is mirrored at ftp.sunet.se in Sweden.
More from Eli:
It might be of interest to Windows users that this version of Emacs supports long filenames (Windows 95 only) and the Windows clipboard (all versions of MS-Windows). It also supports multiple frames, but they all overlap, like when Emacs runs on a ``glass teletype'' terminal.People who would like to run Emacs on plain DOS (as opposed to Windows) will need to download and install a DPMI host at this URL:
ftp://ftp.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/gnu/djgpp/v2misc/csdpmi3b.zip
Hisashi Miyashita <himi@bird.scphys.kyoto-u.ac.jp> maintains MULE, multilingual Emacs. You can get distributions of MULE at ftp://ftp.tokyonet.AD.JP/pub/windows/win32/mule-win32.
There are a couple of XEmacs for Windows NT/9X porting projects. See the XEmacs FAQ entry for more info.
Precompiled distributions of Emacs 20.2.1 are now available at ftp://ftp.cs.washington.edu/pub/ntemacs/20.2. For instructions on unpacking the distributions, see the section on unpacking below.
Emacs 20.2.1 has been brought up to date with respect to the Windows functionality in 19.34.6, but has had much less testing. All further development will be done starting with this version of Emacs. I anticipate that this version will get a significant amount of testing, bug fixes will get rolled into a 20.2.2, these will get tested as 20.2.3, and then, if everything appears stable, a release will be made as 20.2.4 that all users can roll forward to. But that's just a guess as to how things will work out.
A significant change between 19.34.6 and 20.2 is the way in which end-of-line characters are handled. Emacs 20 has a general mechanism for detecting code systems used in files, and part of this mechanism detects end-of-line characters. I expect there to be unexpected surprises in the interaction between assumptions made by older packages and the new mechanism.
Also, I highly recommend reading the help text for the function find-buffer-file-type-coding-system. Since this will be utterly impenetrable, I then suggest reading the Info pages on coding systems and end-of-line detection, and then taking a peak at f-b-f-t-c-s again.
One of the first things you'll notice when running Emacs 20 for the first time is that the vertical scroll bar is now on the left side of the window instead of the right. Some users might find this immediately disconcerting. So if you would like to change the scroll bar back to being on the right side, you can set the frame parameter vertical-scroll-bars to right (other options are left and nil; see the Emacs NEWS and Info file for more information). You would set this parameter in the same way you would set other frame parameters; for example, by adding
to your list of frame parameters). See the section below on customizing frames for details.(vertical-scroll-bars . right)
Emacs 19.34.5 was a series of trial versions of improvements to 19.34.4. To prevent confusion between the trial versions and final version, the successor to 19.34.4 is named 19.34.6. For information about Emacs 20, see above.
Below is an itemized list of changes between 19.34.1 and 19.34.4. For details on particular changes (particularly related to cmdproxy and raise-frame), see Andrew's descriptions.
Below is a list of known problems with Emacs 19.34.4. These problems will be fixed in a soon to be released 19.34.5.
In the same directory you should also find patch files that enable you to upgrade source distributions to the latest version. These patch files are mirrors of the ones on the FSF server at ftp://ftp.gnu.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu.
Links to precompiled versions:
I've had numerous reports from people outside North America saying that their ftp connection aborts for no apparent reason roughly a third of the way through a transfer of a full distribution. Marc Haber (s_haber@ira.uka.de) said that he suffered from the same problem, and later found that a timeout configured into his WWW proxy would cancel the transfer when the link to the US was very busy. Going around his proxy solved the problem. Andy Moreton <ajm@atml.co.uk> describes his situation when using SOCKS:
The FAQ page mentions some people have problems downloading - I may be able to shed some light on it. Our site has a reasonably secure firewall, and so all access to the outside world requires use of SOCKS based connections via a SOCKS5 server (i.e. a circuit-level gateway). When doing an FTP transfer, two connections are up - a telnet for the control connection, and the data transfer on another. As the telnet connection is idle during the file transfer, the SOCKS server disconnects it. Some FTP servers get upset by this (especially the NT FTP server), and drop the data connection if the control connection goes down.
If you do have trouble downloading the full distribution, try downloading it in the 1.44MB chunks, or try one of the mirror sites.
Mirror sites with precompiled versions:
% gunzip -c -d emacs.tar.gz | tar xvfm -(Note: Apparently the alpha version of gunzip cannot handle long file names, so you will need to rename the file to something like "emacstar.gz" before uncompressing it.)
The "-d" flag forces gunzip to decompress (its behavior depends upon the name of the executable, and sometimes it doesn't recognize that it is really gunzip), and the "-c" flag tells it to pipe its output to stdout. Similarly, the "-" flag to tar tells it to read the tar file from stdin. Unpacking the distribution this way leaves the distribution in compressed form so it takes up less space.
If for some reason you also want to have the tar file gunzipped, then invoke gunzip without the -c option:
% gunzip -d emacs.tar.gzIf you have the zip version, use unzip with the "-x" flag on all of the .zip files (note that you cannot use pkunzip on these files, as pkunzip will not preserve the long filenames):
% unzip -x emacs-_1.zip % (repeat for the remaining .zip files)You can find precompiled versions of all of the compression and archive utilities in ftp.cs.washington.edu/pub/ntemacs/utilities.
WARNING: Some utilities that handle tar files can incorrectly untar the distributions when using the default settings. If you encounter problems with Emacs, see the section below on troubleshooting these problems.
Emacs should have the following subdirectories:
bin etc lib-src lock data info lisp
If your utility failed to create the data and lock directories, then you can simply create them by hand (they are empty).
See below for information on where to place the .emacs startup file.
You should also find a file named README as a part of the distribution. Be sure to read this file for information on installing Emacs, as well as reading the section below on installing Emacs.
See the section below on troubleshooting Emacs if, after downloading a precompiled distribution and unpacking it according to the instructions above, you have trouble running Emacs.
Download and place the source distribution in a directory (say, c:\emacs). Unpack the distribution, and go to the nt subdirectory of the emacs directory that gets created in the unpacking process. Read the README and INSTALL files included with the distribution for the full details of this process.
Below are known problems with various combinations of Emacs versions and compiler versions. The problems are being addressed in later versions, and are included here so that you know to expect them and how to work around them:
win32.mak: For some reason, the MSVC 2.2 installation process does not install win32.mak, which is included by the file ntwin32.mak. You'll have to copy over the win32.mak file into the MSVC include directory before the Emacs makefiles will work.PROCESSOR_* macros: Although the PROCESSOR_* macros are defined in the manual, MSVC 2.2 no longer defines the full set of PROCESSOR_* macros in winnt.h. You'll have to comment the macros out in nt\nt.c to get nt.c to compile.
If you encounter the following error message when compiling Emacs
then also install this patch from Pat Knight.runtime error R6027 - not enough space for lowio initialization
To compile Emacs with MVSC 5.0, you need to apply this patch to the 19.34.2 source.
As with MSVC 4.2 above, if you encounter the following error message when compiling Emacs
then also install this patch from Pat Knight.runtime error R6027 - not enough space for lowio initialization
Let's assume that the directory in which you have unpacked Emacs is c:\emacs (note that it can be anything you want it to be; I just want to be able to refer to something concrete at this point). First, you will want to run the program bin\addpm.exe with the Emacs directory as an argument. In this example you would invoke it as:
c:\emacs\bin\addpm.exe c:\emacsInvoking addpm.exe will do two things. First, it will create a set of registry keys that tell Emacs where to find its support files (lisp, info, etc.). Second, it will create a folder containing an icon linked to runemacs.exe (a wrapper program for invoking Emacs).
Now, to run Emacs, simply click on the icon in the newly created folder or invoke runemacs.exe from a command prompt.
Alternate method:
Another alternative for running Emacs is to use the emacs.bat batch file in the bin directory (this is now the old method of invoking Emacs). Edit the emacs.bat file to change the emacs_dir environment variable to point to the Emacs installation directory and invoke the emacs.bat file to run Emacs. (If you use bash as your shell, you can use an equivalent bash script to emacs.bat.)
Note that, on Win95, you are likely to get "Out of environment space" messages when invoking the emacs.bat batch file. The problem is that the console process in which the script is executed runs out of memory in which to set the Emacs environment variables. To get around this problem, create a shortcut icon to the emacs.bat script. Then right click on the icon and select Properties. In the dialog box that pops up, select the Memory tab and then change the Environment memory allocation from "Auto" to "1024". Close the dialog box and then double click on the icon to start Emacs.
The INSTALL_DIR macro in the nt\makefile.def makefile determines where Emacs will get installed from the source distribution. If you want to install Emacs in the same directory as the source tree (say, c:\src\emacs), then simply set INSTALL_DIR appropriately:
INSTALL_DIR = c:\src\emacsIf you want to install Emacs in a different directory (say, c:\emacs), then set INSTALL_DIR to this directory:
INSTALL_DIR = c:\emacsAs compared with the installation process for the precompiled version, the installation process will automatically create a bin\emacs.bat file in the installation tree with the emacs_dir variable set appropriately.
You can run Emacs in a number of ways. If you installed Emacs using addpm, then you can run Emacs via the Start Menu using the "Programs->Gnu Emacs->Emacs" menu command. From the command line, you can use the program runemacs.exe.
If you didn't install Emacs using addpm, then you can run Emacs using the emacs.bat batch file in the Emacs bin directory. See the install section above for instructions on how to do this.
Note: Starting with version 19.34.6, Emacs is linked with setargv.obj. This gives Emacs DOS-style wildcard expansion of its command-line arguments, which should handle the common use of wildcards. To suppress expansion by setarg.obj, enclose the argument in double quotes. Embedded double-quotes will have to be escaped using a backslash.
The only thing that Emacs changes in your system is the registry (if you used addpm to install it). Emacs does not, for example, install any files in your system directory. If you don't mind the registry settings remaining in the registry, then you don't need to do anything to uninstall Emacs.
If you want to remove the registry settings, then you can use the regedt32 program to remove the Emacs registry keys. Depending upon what kind of permissions you have, the registry entries could have been installed in either HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\GNU\Emacs or HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\GNU\Emacs.
If you feel certain that you have unpacked the distribution correctly, then you should check to make sure that the emacs_dir variable in the emacs.bat file is set correctly. If it is and you are still having trouble, make sure that it is an absolute path that includes the drive letter (or is in UNC format).
If Emacs produces an access violation when you run it, then it might be a problem with Emacs unsuccessfully interacting with other software such as HeapAgent and Starfish Internet Monitor. See the section below describing this problem and how to work around it.
If it is still not working, send me mail or send mail to the list.
The typical behavior people are encountering with this problem is that they invoke Emacs but either nothing happens or it produces an access violation -- and yet they have changed nothing in their Emacs installation, and Emacs used to work fine before this point. Most likely, the problem is due to an interaction between Emacs and some new piece of software you have just installed (the most popular culprit seems to be HeapAgent). Due to the nature in which Emacs is designed and built, Emacs is fundamentally non-relocatable: it uses an initialized heap segment that needs to be mapped in at a particular virtual address at startup time before Emacs will work correctly. It appears that programs like HeapAgent install DLLs that intrude upon Emacs' virtual address space, preventing Emacs to load its initialized heap.
If you have HeapAgent, then you can work around the problem in three ways. You can download the source and recompile, as described below. Or, you can download a version that has already been precompiled to avoid conflicts with HeapAgent (compliments of Andrew Bishop <andrew.bishop@autodesk.com>). Or, you can use editbin to change the base address at which the haloader.dll dll will be loaded (this is the dll that gets loaded into every application's address space on startup):
Otherwise, the only other workaround is to recompile Emacs on your machine so that Emacs creates and initializes its heap at a virtual address that does not conflict with software such as HeapAgent. To do this, you will need to download the source, #define the macro NTHEAP_PROBE_BASE inside the procedure src\ntheap.c:allocate_heap(), and rebuild.editbin /rebase:base=0x20000000 haloader.dll
2. Starfish Internet Monitor
Apparently, Starfish Internet Monitor interferes with Emacs'
loading of the dumped heap in a manner similar to HeapAgent. See the
discussion on HeapAgent above on how to work around this.
I just upgraded the operating system, and Emacs no longer works.
I have received reports that, after upgrading the operating system
(e.g., from NT 3.51 to NT 4.0), an installed Emacs will start but will
not accept keyboard or mouse input. Apparantly, running addpm.exe as
described in the installation section above
fixes the problem.
A number of users have reported that Dr. Solomon's WinGuard prevent shell-related commands from working properly within Emacs. Turning off "Scan all files" makes it work, though.
A similar report from Charles Curley <ccurley@wyoming.com>.
In some situations, Emacs performance can degrade. The following sections discuss these situations, why they come about, and what you can do about them.
In 19.34 the menu bar is updated more often than it needs to be, and each update can be a time consuming process. If you are using a single frame, you will likely not notice this behavior; if you are using a number of frames, you might notice slow redisplay performance. Currently the only way of fixing this is to turn menu-bar-mode off (e.g., typing "M-x menu-bar-mode", or invoking (menu-bar-mode nil)).
For more background, see Andrew's messages on the topic.
The use of transient mark mode can trigger the slow menu bar update performance described above. When the mark is set in transient mark mode, the menu bar is updated after every keystroke and command. Again, turning off menu-bar-mode is the only way to prevent the slow performance without recompiling Emacs with patches.
Kim Storm <storm@olicom.dk> tracked down the bug in the core redisplay code that causes the performance problem with transient-mark-mode enabled. See the patches section below for his patch.
The reason for this is that Emacs now has networking support built in. When Emacs starts, the winsock DLL automatically gets loaded and tries to resolve the fully qualified domain name for your machine under the name "localhost". If the system doesn't have this name mapped, it will try to query a nameserver on the internet, which is typically some host within your ISP and subsequently prompts to connect to your dialup service so that it can ask a name server for the domain name of your machine. As you know, this is very unfortunate, and was not anticipated when the networking support was added.
This problem will be fixed when 19.32 comes out, but you can work around the problem by giving the dialup support another method for figuring out the domain name of your machine. To do this, you need to edit the hosts file for your system (located in %windir%\hosts on Win95 and %windir%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts on NT) so that localhost becomes an alias for your machine name. If your system doesn't have a hosts file yet, you can easily create one by copying the sample hosts file in the same directory, hosts.sam.
For example, if my machine were named banana-fish.cs.washington.edu, then I would edit the hosts file from:
to127.0.0.1 localhost
The hostname should be the value of invoking (system-name) in the Emacs *scratch* buffer, i.e., the fully qualified domain name for your system. Note that you may also have to tell the system to look in the hosts file as well as using DNS.127.0.0.1 banana-fish.cs.washington.edu localhost
If this doesn't work for you, there are some other options (I have not tried these):
For networking support, you can use the external nttcp.exe program. Download nttcp.exe and place it in your Emacs bin directory. Also download this version of tcp.el, byte-compile it, and place it in your lisp directory. Then add the following to your .emacs:
(load-library "tcp") (setq tcp-program-name "nttcp")
To customize the size of specific frames, including the initial frame, see the section on customizing frames below.
emacs -g 80x40Note that the geometry command can be combined with the position command, as described below.
(set-frame-height (selected-frame) 40)
(set-frame-width (selected-frame) 80)
To customize the position of specific frames, including the initial frame, see the section on customizing frames below.
emacs -g +10+30To combine the size with position, first specify the size and then the position. The two examples above can be combined as follows:
emacs -g 80x40+10+30Note that you can also specify position offsets from any of the corners of the screen. See the GEOMETRY SPECIFICATIONS section of the X man page for complete details on the geometry command.
(set-frame-position (selected-frame) 10 30)
Fonts in Emacs are named using the standard X Windows format for fonts. For complete details on X Windows font names, see the FONT NAMES section of the X man page. For an explanation of what each element in a font string means and how Emacs on NT uses it, see Andrew's note.
These font names are the names that can be used as arguments on the command line or in lisp functions. To see the font name corresponding to a font chosen using the font selection dialog, execute the following elisp code in the *scratch* buffer:
(insert (prin1-to-string (win32-select-font)))To see the complete list of fonts that Emacs has access to, execute the following elisp code in the *scratch* buffer:
(insert (prin1-to-string (x-list-fonts "*")))The font support currently is a little rough around the edges. In particular, italic fonts give Emacs some problems; see below for more info about using italic fonts. Generally it performs as expected, but occasionally you might get unexpected results (e.g., Emacs didn't quite use the font you told it to use). Work is underway to fix these problems, but for now I suggest experimenting if you encounter problems.
Also, X Windows has the luxury of a set of font aliases (such as fixed) that are convenient names for referring to specific fonts. Work is underway to provide an equivalent alias mechanism under Win32 so that naming fonts does not have to be as cumbersome as it currently is.
To customize fonts for specific frames, see the section on customizing frames below.
emacs -font "-*-Courier-normal-r-*-*-13-97-*-*-c-*-*-ansi-"
To set the font of a particular face, use the set-face-font function.(set-default-font "-*-Courier-normal-r-*-*-13-97-*-*-c-*-*-ansi-")
Value Name: Emacs.FontSince the font strings are rather cumbersome, I would suggest cutting the font string into the kill-ring (which will place it in the clipboard, too) and pasting it (Ctrl-V) into the regedit dialog. (Note that you shouldn't place quotes around the font string in the registry.)
Value Type: REG_SZ
String: -*-Courier-normal-r-*-*-13-97-*-*-c-*-*-ansi-
If you have Emacs frames with specific names, you can also specify a font for that frame. For the Value Name of the entry, use the name of the frame instead of Emacs (e.g., RMAIL.Font for your RMAIL frame).
As with other windowing attributes, Emacs uses the X Windows color names for specifying colors on the command line and in elisp. One set of these names is a set of abstract color names, e.g., red, green, and blue. These names are the ones you will typically use as arguments on the command line or in elisp functions. Emacs also supports the use of numeric color names; see the COLOR NAMES section of the X man page for complete details on how to specify numeric color names and their color spaces.
To see the abstract color names that Emacs understands and the colors that they map to, use the menu command Edit->Text Properties->Display Colors, or invoke the list-colors-display function in the *scratch* buffer:
(list-colors-display)If you would like to change the mapping of color names to RGB values, or to add new color names to Emacs, then you will want to modify the alist win32-color-map. To make changes, you can simply cons new mappings onto the head of the alist:
(setq win32-color-map (cons '("snow" . 16448255) win32-color-map))The number in the element is the logical OR of three values for the red, green, and blue components: (B << 16 | G << 8 | R). In the example above, red is 255, green is 250, and blue is 250. At some point there will be support for reading in files with color mappings to make this process a little easier.
To customize colors for specific frames, see the section on customizing frames below.
To customize colors for color syntax highlighting, see the section on font-lock.
emacs -fg yellow -bg black
The following elisp changes the background color to black:
(set-background-color "black")The following elisp changes the mode line foreground to firebrick:
(set-face-foreground 'modeline "firebrick")The following elisp changes the cursor color to purple:
(set-cursor-color "purple")
Emacs uses two alists to determine the default appearances of frames, default-frame-alist and initial-frame-alist. The default-frame-alist variable sets the basic defaults of all frames. Since it is a common Emacs usage to have the initial frame have slightly different properties than other frames (e.g., its position), you can use the initial-frame-alist variable to override properties in default-frame-alist specially for the initial frame. You should definitely read the help text for these variables (C-h v) for more details on the differences between them and how they interact with each other.
Below is an example of using default-frame-alist and initial-frame-alist to configure the appearances of the initial frame and all other frames (you would place this code in your startup file). With default-frame-alist, we set the top left corner of new frames to be at pixel offset +200+400, the width and height to be 80x40, the cursor to be white, the foreground to be yellow, the background to be black, and the font to be Courier 10. With initial-frame-alist, we override the top left corner of the initial frame to be at pixel offset +10+30, and inherit the remaining properties for the initial frame from default-frame-alist.
(setq default-frame-alist
'((top . 200) (left . 400)
(width . 80) (height . 40)
(cursor-color . "white")
(cursor-type . box)
(foreground-color . "yellow")
(background-color . "black")
(font . "-*-Courier-normal-r-*-*-13-97-*-*-c-*-*-ansi-")))
(setq initial-frame-alist '((top . 10) (left . 30)))
You can use the functions x-display-pixel-width and x-display-pixel-height to determine the resolution of your screen. For example:
(and window-system
(setq screen-width (x-display-pixel-width)
screen-height (x-display-pixel-height)))
Emacs currently requires that italic versions of fonts have the same width as the normal version of the font. However, most of the default fonts have italic and italic bold versions whose character widths are larger than the normal version (the only default font that appears to have viable italic and bold versions is Courier New). Because of this, Emacs by default disables the use of italic faces.
You can still enable the use of italic faces with Emacs by setting the variable win32-enable-italics to t in your startup file:
Although this works best with Courier New, there is still one minor glitch: the italics versions are one pixel higher than the other versions, so the line spacing is increased by a pixel when italics are enabled.(setq win32-enable-italics t) ; This must be done before font settings! (set-face-font 'italic "-*-Courier New-normal-i-*-*-11-82-c-*-*-ansi-") (set-face-font 'bold-italic "-*-Courier New-bold-i-*-*-11-82-c-*-*-ansi-")
Under NT, go to the upper left hand corner and open the "-" menu of the console window. Select "Screen Size and Position...", and use the dialog to set the window to the size you want. Be sure to check the "Save Window Size and Position" checkbox so that future invocations will retain the new window size. After closing the dialog box, resize the window itself by dragging on the edges.
Under Win95, click on the properties icon in the icon toolbar at the top of the window. Go to the "Screen" tab and select the desired window size in the "Usage" panel. Click on "OK".
To reposition Emacs, click on the title bar of the console window and drag it.
Under NT, open the "-" menu. Select "Fonts...", and use the dialog to set the window font to the one you want. Be sure to check the "Save Configuration" checkbox so that your font change will be used in future invocations. Click on "OK", and the window will get resized.
. Under Win95, simply use the popup font menu in the upper left-hand corner of the window. Or click on the font icon in the icon toolbar. Or click on the properties icon in the icon toolbar and go to the "Font" tab and choose the font that you want to use.
Under the NT interface, open the "-" menu. Select "Screen Colors...", and use the dialog to choose the colors you want to use for the window. Be sure to check the "Save Configuration" checkbox so that the colors are used in future invocations. Click on "OK". Unfortunately, the colors are not immediately used, but the changes have been made. To use the new colors, simply close the window and use the icon to start Emacs again. Emacs will then come up using the colors you chose before.
I'm not exactly sure how to change the colors on a per-console-window basis under Win95.
Your home directory is where the HOME configuration variable tells Emacs it is. As with the other Emacs configuration variables, HOME can be set in a number of ways:
The directory specified by HOME is also the directory substituted for tildes (~) in file names (so, by definition, your startup file will be in the directory "~\").
Below is a list of sample .emacs files from various people. Eventually a single sample .emacs file will be shipped with the binary distributions, but until that happens you can browse these to see what people use already.
CapsLock and Control cannot be swapped from within Emacs, and Windows does not have a convenient mechanism like xmodmap to change virtual key bindings. Instead, new keyboard layouts or device drivers can be installed, or the registry can be modified, to swap the two keys.
WARNING: If you use a new keyboard layout to switch CapsLock and Control, beware of the option to use hotkey sequences to switch keyboard layouts. This option is in Control Panel->Keyboard under the Language (Win95) or Input Locales (NT) tabs; the sequences themselves are "Left Alt+Control" and "Ctrl+Shift". If you enable one of these options, then you will likely at some point switch keyboard layouts while trying to use an Emacs key combination.
NT 4.0:
Win95: Microsoft has placed a keyboard remapping program for Win95 on their ftp site (keyremap). For more info, take a look at their Kernel Toys page.
Mark Russinovich has also written a freeware VxD that swaps CapsLock and Control under Windows 95. (I've been told that you might have to hit the real Control key once after installing the VxD to jumpstart the mapping.)
To get tab file completion in cmd.exe, use regedt32 to set the following registry entry to 0x9 (using the Edit->DWORD menu command):
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor\CompletionChar
It has been reported that this feature can randomly crash cmd.exe on occasion.
Microsoft distributes a utility called Xmouse, part of a package of utilities called PowerToys, that lets you change the focus handling so that the focus follows the mouse. The PowerToys package can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/software/powertoy.htm.
Note that not all of these utilities written on Windows 95 work on NT; reportedly, if you are on NT 4.0 you have to use the TweakUI utility to enable follow focus. Also, if you use TweakUI, reportedly it is best to set the popup delay to 0ms for focus follow to work well with Emacs.
For more info, you can flip through a collection of email messages discussing these utilities.
2) Registry
Steve Yegge <stevey@geoworks.com> reports that there is an NT registry setting that enables mouse tracking (it's unknown whether this works on versions less than 4.0). Set the following key to 0x1:
Steve also says:HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse\ActiveWindowTracking: 0x1
The two "bugs" I've found are:
- some applications (notably Netscape and Microsoft Developer
Studio) autoraise when they get the focus.
- the mouse doesn't move into the new window when you use
alt+TAB switching, so if a vibration bumps the mouse, you
may suddenly find yourself typing in the wrong window.
Some behaviors typically found in other Windows apps, such as deleting typed-over highlighted selections, are not configured by default in Emacs. You can, however, enable them by loading various packages. If you would like to highlight the region between the point and the mark, see the help text for transient-mark-mode; if you would like highlighted selections to be deleted when you type over them, see the help text for delete-selection-mode; if you would like to change the semantics of keypad keys such as "home" and "end", see the help text for pc-selection-mode.
Theodore Jump <tjump@spgs.com> has written a utility called EMWINMSG that enables elisp code to invoke a window operation on an Emacs frame (via the Windows API routine "ShowWindow"):
Although it may at first seem like the shell is buffering the output from the program, it is actually the program that is buffering output. The C runtime typically decides how to buffer output based upon whether stdout is bound to a handle to a console window or not. If bound to a console window, output is buffered line by line; if bound to a block device, such as a file, output is buffered block by block.
In a shell buffer, stdout is a pipe handle and so is buffered in blocks. If you would like the buffering behavior of your program to behave differently, the program itself is going to have to be changed; you can use setbuf and setvbuf to manipulate the buffering semantics.
Andrew Innes is working on removing this limitation. If all goes well, it should be available in 19.35.
If you are finding that running 16-bit programs as subprocesses cause your A: drive to be accessed (hanging Emacs until a timeout occurs if no floppy is in the drive), check to see if you have McAfee Virus Shield installed. Users have found that disabling Virus Shield causes the problem to go away. Also, if you have a better fix for this problem, let me know or send mail to the list.
A followup from Bill Carpenter <bill@bubblegum.net>.
19.34.4 Previously, Ctrl-C would generate a CTRL_BREAK_EVENT (SIGQUIT) in subprocesses. Now Ctrl-C generates a CTRL_C_EVENT (SIGINT). This behavior is more accurate, but may still causes problems; see Andrew's note.
19.34.1 For applications that handle Ctrl-C and Ctrl-Break events, you might notice that typing Ctrl-C in Emacs when those applications are run as subprocesses does not trigger their Ctrl-C handlers but instead triggers the Ctrl-Break handlers. Here is what is going on. Emacs in general tries to interrupt subprocesses using Unix-style kill and SIGINT. Ideally, on Win32 the kill emulation code can translate the SIGINT into a GenerateConsoleCtrlEvent with a CTRL_C_EVENT. However, doing so does not seem to propagate the CTRL_C_EVENT to the subprocess; as far as I can tell, nothing happens. So, instead of using a CTRL_C_EVENT for SIGINT, the emulation code uses a CTRL_BREAK_EVENT, which is propagated correctly to subprocesses.
If you need to handle Ctrl-C events propagated from Emacs, you'll need to use a Ctrl-Break handler for now. Andrew describes how all of this going to be handled in the future.
If you would like to specify a different shell for Emacs to use, then you should do one of two things. You should either explicitly set the environment variable SHELL to be the shell you want to use, or, if you want to have the COMSPEC environment variable determine the shell, then you need to install Emacs using the addpm.exe program and ensure that the SHELL environment variable is not defined when you start up Emacs.
Note that sh-script.el does not recognize shell names when they have the '.exe' extension on them. If you use sh-script, you should omit the '.exe' extension when specifying the SHELL variable.
Alternatively, if you do not want to mess with the SHELL or COMSPEC variables, you can explicitly place the following in your startup file:
;; For the interactive shell (setq explicit-shell-file-name "c:/bin/tcsh.exe") ;; For subprocesses invoked via the shell (e.g., "shell -c command") (setq shell-file-name "c:/bin/tcsh.exe")
For more configuration information with bash, take a look at Jonathan Payne's <jpayne@marimba.com> setup.(setq win32-quote-process-args t) (setq shell-command-switch "-c")
WARNING:The latest version of bash sets and uses the environment variable PID. For some as yet unknown reason, if PID is set and Emacs passes it on to bash subshells, bash croaks (Emacs can inherit the PID variable if it's started from a bash shell). If you clear the PID variable in your startup file, you should be able to continue to use bash as your subshell: (12/18/97)
(setenv "PID" nil)
For a version of ksh by David Korn, take a look at http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/uwin. I haven't tried this shell with Emacs, but I'm guessing that it works under Emacs and that you need the following for it to work properly:
(setq win32-quote-process-args t) (setq shell-command-switch "-c")
If you find out otherwise, let me know and I'll update this section.
(setq win32-quote-process-args t) (setq shell-command-switch "-c")
For more configuration information with tcsh, take a look at Chris McMahan's <cmcmahan@Teknowledge.COM> setup.(setenv "SHELL" "tcsh.exe") (setq win32-quote-process-args t) (setq shell-command-switch "-cf")
Apparently the sh-script package isn't finding the shell program correctly. Peter Breton <pbreton@i-kinetics.com> says that adding a call to sh-set-shell in sh-mode-hook will fix the problem:
(add-hook 'sh-mode-hook
(defun my-sh-mode-hook-set-shell ()
;; Use whatever shell is most appropriate -- it doesn't matter
;; if the actual /bin/ksh file exists on the system or not
(sh-set-shell "/bin/ksh")))
(add-hook 'comint-output-filter-functions 'shell-strip-ctrl-m nil t)
To prevent echoed commands from being printed, you can place the following in your startup file:
If shell-mode still is not stripping echoed commands, then you'll have to explicitly tell the shell to not echo commands. You can do this by setting the explicit-SHELL-args variable appropriately, where SHELL is the value of your shell environment variable (do a "M-: (getenv "SHELL")" to see what it is currently set to). Assuming that you are on NT and that your SHELL environment variable is set to cmd.exe, then placing the following in your startup file will tell cmd.exe to not echo commands:(defun my-comint-init () (setq comint-process-echoes t)) (add-hook 'comint-mode-hook 'my-comint-init)
(setq explicit-cmd.exe-args '("/q"))
Note that this variable is case sensitive; if the value of your SHELL environment variable is CMD.EXE instead, then this variable needs to be named explicit-CMD.EXE-args instead.
The character appended to directory names when completing in shell-mode is determined by the value of the variable comint-completion-addsuffix. If the value of this variable it t, then a '/' is appended to directory names. If the value of this variable is a cons pair, then the first value of the pair is appended.
In 19.34, lisp\winnt.el initializes comint-completion-addsuffix to the cons pair '("\\" . " ") using shell-mode-hook. This means that, by default, a "\" is appended to directory names during completion in shell mode. To override this behavior, you need to change the value of comint-completion-addsuffix. You can do this by resetting it in your startup file to t or by explicitly setting it to a cons pair with "/" in it:
(add-hook 'shell-mode-hook
'(lambda () (setq comint-completion-addsuffix '("/" . "")))
t)
(add-hook 'shell-mode-hook
'(lambda () (setq comint-completion-addsuffix t))
t)
In 19.35, the default will be to append "/". If Emacs detects that you are using command.com or cmd.exe, then it will it use "\" instead.
Multiple lines for each shell are given since variable names are case sensitive and shell names can be any case (so this only handles the most common situations). If you have an entirely different shell that also complains about being given the "-i" switch, you can initialize a similarly named variable to prevent the "-i" switch from being sent to the shell.(setq explicit-command.com-args nil) (setq explicit-COMMAND.COM-args nil) (setq explicit-cmd.exe-args nil) (setq explicit-CMD.EXE-args nil)
Note that, if you would like to always pass arguments to an interactive shell when it starts up, you would change the nil value in the appropriate assignment above to the list of arguments you would like to use with your shell. For example, if you would like to invoke command.com and tell it which directory its executable resides, you could place something like the following in your startup file:
;; Determine the directory containing the shell program, explicitly making ;; certain that the directory separator is a backslash when doing so. (let ((directory-sep-char ?\\)) (setq shell-directory (file-name-directory (getenv "SHELL")))) (setq explicit-command.com-args (list shell-directory)) (setq explicit-COMMAND.COM-args (list shell-directory))
The fix for this is to either prevent any arguments from being sent to the shell when it starts up (in which case command.com will use a default, and correct, value for COMSPEC), or to have the first argument be the directory in which the shell executable resides. Examples of how to do both of these are in shown in the previous subsection.
Chris Boucher <chris@sorted.org> reports that Dr. Solomon's WinGuard prevents any shell related commands from working. He found that turning off "Scan all files" makes it work, though.
I've only tested the outgoing and incoming RMAIL setups. If you find that the suggested code for any of the other incoming mail configurations is inaccurate, please let me know.
(setq user-full-name "Your full name") (setq user-mail-address "Your email address") (setq smtpmail-default-smtp-server "Domain name of machine with SMTP server") (setq smtpmail-local-domain nil) (setq send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it) (load-library "smtpmail")
Note that if you want to change the name of the smtp server after you've loaded smtpmail.el, you'll want to change the variable smtpmail-smtp-server.
If you are using GNUS to send mail, then you will also need:
If you are experiencing problems with sending large messages, check the value of the variable smtpmail-debug-info. If it is non-nil, you should set it to nil:(load-library "message") (setq message-send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it)
(setq smtpmail-debug-info nil)
First download feedmail.el (latest updated 5/23/97), byte-compile it, and place it in your load path. You'll then need to customize it in your startup file; Fabio Somenzi <Fabio@Colorado.EDU> sent the following as an example:
Fabio also redefined the function make-auto-save-file-name to auto-save files in one local directory ($HOME/.save) and to strip out invalid characters in file names (this bug should be fixed in 19.35). Note that all files will auto-save to this directory; this allows Emacs to auto-save even when the folder files are on an inaccessible remote machine. Place the following definition of make-auto-save-file-name in your startup file to override the definition in winnt.el.(setq send-mail-function 'feedmail-send-it) (autoload 'feedmail-send-it "feedmail") (autoload 'feedmail-run-the-queue "feedmail") (setq feedmail-buffer-eating-function 'feedmail-buffer-to-smtpmail) (setq feedmail-enable-queue t) ; optional (setq feedmail-queue-chatty nil) ; optional
Lastly, if you would like to protect the primary folder from crashes while it is being written back to disk, then also place the following in your startup file (assuming you use VM):
(add-hook 'vm-mode-hook
'(lambda ()
(make-local-variable 'file-precious-flag)
(setq file-precious-flag t)))
(setenv "MAILHOST" "Domain name of machine with POP3 server")
(setq rmail-primary-inbox-list '("po:Your login") rmail-pop-password-required t)
(setq vm-spool-files
(list
(list "~/INBOX"
"POP3 server:110:pass:POP user name:*"
"~/INBOX.CRASH")))
Be sure to customize the POP user name field appropriately.(load-library "message") ;; For sending mail (setq message-send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it) ;; For reading mail (other backends can be substituted for nnml) (setq gnus-secondary-select-methods '((nnml ""))) (setq nnmail-spool-file "po:POP user name") (setq nnmail-pop-password-required t)
If you want to share your rmail folders between Unix and NT/95, you'll want to handle all your mail in binary format. This includes mail stored in folders as well as incoming mail. For mail stored in folders, you'll want to treat the directory in which you store your mail as an untranslated file system; see the section on translation below on how to do this.
For incoming mail using RMAIL, you'll need to make a small patch to rmail.el. See Don Erway's <derway@ndc.com> message describing the patch and what else he did to setup sharing between Unix and NT/95.
Mail packages often provide some way to notify you when email has arrived (a la "biff" in Unix), conveniently distracting you from getting any real work done. There are myriad ways to do this, and as people tell me them I will try to mention them here.
Franklin Lee <flee@lehman.COM> has extended the pop3 package so that you can have your mail left on the server instead of always being downloaded (it also has a biff-mode with international "barks", which can be used whether or not you download or leave your mail on the server). You'll need to download a zip archive containing a patched pop3.el and some additional elisp files:
If you unpack on Unix, be sure to use "unzip -a" to strip any carriage returns.
For instructions on how to install and configure this package so that you can leave your mail on your pop3 servers, see the instructions at the top of the epop3mail.el file.
This should potentially work with other mail packages that rely upon the pop3 elisp code. If you find that it does, or implement the glue necessary to make it work, let me know and I'll update this FAQ entry.
John Dennis <jdennis@ultranet.com> has ported Metamail, a package that allows you to receive and send MIME attachments using Emacs. For details, see John's README file:
The latest version of VM works around the problems in vm-pop, but smtpmail requires a small patch. If you are encountering similar problems, then you should modify the end of smtpmail-via-smtp in smtpmail.el as follows:
;(delete-process process)
(run-at-time 3 nil 'delete-process process))))))
To read news with Emacs, you can use the Gnus package. To invoke Gnus, type "M-x gnus" and Emacs will prompt you for a news server to connect to. For more information about using Gnus, take a look at:
For more discussion and other methods of giving Gnus a password, see a discussion on the topic.(add-hook 'nntp-server-opened-hook 'nntp-send-authinfo)
See the "What other packages work with Gnus?" question of the Gnus FAQ.
To save messages untranslated (no carriage returns), you must set the default-buffer-file-type to binary:
(setq default-buffer-file-type t)
(Note: If you use anti-virus software, see the warnings above.)
MiKTeX is a native Win32 implementation of the TeX document processing system. The MiKTeX project page is at http://www.snafu.de/~cschenk/miktex. The project page has instructions on where to download the distribution and how to install it.
AUCTeX is a package for writing LaTeX files in Emacs. The AUCTeX project page is at http://sunsite.auc.dk/auctex, and has links for downloading the distribution and reading the manual. Lars Schmidt-Thieme <lschmidt@ix.urz.uni-heidelberg.de> has written instructions on how to use AucTex with MikTex and Emacs.
Willem Minten <Willem.Minten@esat.kuleuven.ac.be> has put together a page that has everything you need to get MiKTex, AucTeX, and Emacs working together. If you're starting from scratch, look here first.
For a close coupling of Emacs and MSVC, Christopher Payne <payneca@sagian.com> wrote a Visual Studio add-in that makes Emacs the default text editor. See his page for more info on what it can do and how it works. For information on how to customize your general development environment to use Emacs with MSVC, read Charles Curley's text below. For VisEmacs alpha executables, download this VisEmacs.zip distribution.
Written by Charles Curley with a lot of help from: David Biesack, Caleb T. Deupree, John Huxoll Gardner, Anders Lindgren, and John Yates.
This is an app note on how to use Microsoft Visual C++ with Emacs. The experiments done below were done with Emacs 19.34.1 on Windows 95, using Visual C++ 4.0 Standard Edition. Your mileage may vary.
This writeup assumes minimal knowledge of Emacs hacking on the part of the reader.
rem set up for MS C++ 4.0 call d:\msdevstd\bin\vcvars32.batUnder NT, you can set the HOME and other environment variables in the System applet of the Control Panel.
John Huxoll Gardner writes that
These environment variables can be set through the control panel. Control Panel->System->Environment tab set include to d:\msdev\include;d:\msdev\mfc\include (or whatever) set lib to d:\msdev\lib;d:\msdev\mfc\lib (or whatever) set MSDevDir to d:\msdevYou should now be able to compile from Emacs. Load a source file from a VC++ project. Type M-X compile. Replace the proposed command line with:
nmake -f MyProject.makYou will find that this defaults to a win 32 debug build. You can change it to a release build with:
nmake -f MyProject.mak CFG="MyProject - Win32 Release"By the way, you can scroll in the M-X command buffer with up and down arrows. You can also scroll in the compile command buffer with the up and down arrows. Both seem to be fully editable as well.
; Set up for Visual C++ compiling
(setq compile-command '("nmake -f .mak " . 10))
If you work on the same project extensively, toss that in to the default string. You can always override it when you work on another project.By the way, many if not all Microsoft command line programs now accept a dash (-) as a switch specifier as well as a slash (/). This was true as long ago as Mess-DOS 6.0, I believe. I use it because that eliminates one area where I have to remember which OS I am using. :-)
David Biesack suggests that perhaps it's easy to define Makefile in the project directory which does
PROJECT=MyProject all: debug debug: FORCE nmake /f $(PROJECT).mak CFG="$(PROJECT) - Win32 Debug" release: FORCE nmake /f $(PROJECT) CFG="$(PROJECT) - Win32 Release" FORCE:and then you can simply change compile-command to "nmake".
Caleb T. Deupree reports that on VC++ 5.0 and up, "You can also set an option on Options/Build to export a makefile every time the project is saved, which you can then use to compile with 'nmake -f project.mak'." VC++ 4.0 builds the make file every time, and there is no option.
One of the things that compile.el provides is the ability to scan the output from a compile session, and move from error message to error message. This facility depends on a series of regular expressions ("regexes") which are applied to search the compiler output. Normally, you shouldn't have to do anything. However, if you have problems with this facility, you can comment out the regexes you don't need and recompile. Search the file for "compilation-error-regexp-alist" and comment out as needed.
To recompile, make the file the active buffer. Emacs will recognize it as an elisp file, and add a pull-down menu for elisp functions. One is for compiling, the other will compile and then load.
By the way, the best (and so far, only :-) book I've seen on regular expressions is Jeffrey E. F. Friedl, *Mastering Regular Expressions*, O'Reilly & Assoc, Inc, 1997. It covers regex syntax and usage for Emacs, perl and other tools that regexes.
Occasionally, you need to add a new function or variable from the Visual C++ IDE. This means that the copy of the file in your Emacs buffer is now obsolete. The simplest thing to is a two part manual effort. First, before you leave Emacs for VC++, make sure you save all your buffers (C-X S). When you return, you can revert buffers you know have been changed with M-X revert-buffer. If you try to modify a file that has been changed from outside Emacs (say, by VC++), Emacs will warn you and offer you the chance to revert the buffer, so you can safely try modifying files after making a change from VC++.
However, this depends on the user remembering to do something, always a hazard. The obvious way to handle the problem is to automate it, which Anders Lindgren has already done. He writes:
This feature will be present in the next version of Emacs. There will be two modes, `global-auto-revert-mode' that applies to all buffers while `auto-revert-mode' can be activated for individual buffers. You can get the latest version from: http://www.csd.uu.se/~andersl/emacs.shtml Please note that this feature comes with a prize: Normally Emacs acts like an extra backup system, keeping a copy of the files you are editing. Should some external program mess up a file, you can always save the copy you're editing. When using Auto-Revert mode Emacs will happily load the corrupt file, perhaps ruining you last chance to restore the original file content! -- Anders -- ;; .signature -- File added to the end of mail, containing joke or info. (defvar me '((profession . "Compiler Designer") (company . "IAR Systems") (age . 27) (country . "Sweden") (hair . "Long") (water-skier . t))) ;; .signature ends here.(Now, *that* is an elisp hacker's sig line! :-)
The next version of Emacs to which Anders refers is, I believe, 20. I don't know when it will be released.
If you can't wait, you can scarf the source for autorevert.el in from Anders' web page. However, it is dependent on another Emacs package, Custom, which is not in the version of Emacs I have (19.34.1). Custom is available at http://www.dina.kvl.dk/~abraham/custom/. Installing the Custom package is beyond my meager elisp hacking skills, so you are on your own there. The next release will also include Custom.
Caleb T. Deupree also writes, "You might also mention a package mode-compile.el, which is a wrapper around compile mode and is available from the Emacs lisp archive or from http://www.cenatls.cena.dgac.fr/~boubaker/Emacs/index.html. It detects makefiles in directories and parses them for valid targets, performing many of the same tasks which you do in your hooks."
You should now be able to go to any source file in your project. Then, use the pull-down menu Tools->Emacs. The active file in your VC++ ide should now be front and center in Emacs, all ready to edit as you wish. If you use keystrokes to work the menus, try <alt>T A to move the file into Emacs. Binding this tool to a keystroke will be left as an exercise for the student.
If you have the option of saving files before running tools, make sure this option is set. (I don't see it on VC++ 4.0.)
If you are using NT and Emacs 19.34.6, you should be able to use your Intellimouse with Emacs without doing anything special. However, the Intellimouse support does not work for Win95. The problem is unknown, and remains to be debugged.
Support for Intellimouse events is in Emacs 19.34.4, but Emacs does not by default define a handler for the events. To define a handler, place the following in your startup file:
![[Image of Customize dialog]](ntemacs/discuss/vcpp.customize.gif){kind=link}
(defvar mouse-wheel-scroll-amount 3
"*Number of lines to scroll per click of the mouse wheel.")
(defun mouse-wheel-scroll-line (event)
"Scroll the current buffer by `mouse-wheel-scroll-amount'."
(interactive "e")
(condition-case nil
(if (< (car (cdr (cdr event))) 0)
(scroll-up mouse-wheel-scroll-amount)
(scroll-down mouse-wheel-scroll-amount))
(error nil)))
;; for scroll-in-place.el, this way the -scroll-line and -scroll-screen
;; commands won't interact
(setq scroll-command-groups (list '(mouse-wheel-scroll-line)))
(defun mouse-wheel-scroll-screen (event)
"Scroll the current buffer by `mouse-wheel-scroll-amount'."
(interactive "e")
(condition-case nil
(if (< (car (cdr (cdr event))) 0)
(scroll-up)
(scroll-down))
(error nil)))
;; Bind the mouse-wheel event:
(global-set-key [mouse-wheel] 'mouse-wheel-scroll-line)
(global-set-key [C-mouse-wheel] 'mouse-wheel-scroll-screen)
For details on the events generated by the Intellimouse wheel, see Michael Duggan's <md5i@schenley.com> description of the implementation.
Apparently, FlyWheel and Emacs Intellimouse support don't work together. You can selectively disable FlyWheel for Emacs using a registry entry; see the FlyWheel README for how to disable it for a specific application.
From Jay Rogers <jay@rgrs.com>:
There are potentially two problems that cause the perl debugger to hang when started in emacs. One's an emacs problem while the other's a perl problem.
First, get Emacs 19.34.4 or later for 95/NT. It contains a fix that allows emacs to read all ASCII characters from the perl debugger, including the dreaded ^Z (aka EOF in DOS). It also groks the "drive:path" filename notation.
Second, some versions of the perl debugger itself need to be patched to work with emacs. They are perl versions 5.001 and less, and version 5.004_01. To fix, locate and change the code similar to the following code in lib/perl5db.pl
if (-e "/dev/tty") { $console = "/dev/tty"; $rcfile=".perldb"; } elsif (-e "con") { $console = ""; <---- change "con" to "" $rcfile="perldb.ini"; } else { $console = "sys\$command"; $rcfile="perldb.ini"; }
Doug Campbell <soup@ampersand.com> also has some suggestions for improving the interaction of perldb and Emacs.
On NT, you should be able to use hexl-mode as you would on Unix (e.g., M-x hexl-mode and you're off to the races). On Windows 95, however, you won't be able to use hexl-mode if you use command.com as your shell because it doesn't accept input from stdin. Instead, you will have to use one of the non-system shells (see the section below on shells for more info on some shells you can use). You might also have to explicitly set hexlify-command and dehexlify-command; for more info from users who have gotten it to work on their system, take a look at these suggestions.
If you are having trouble with hexl-mode and bash, see Andrew's comments on the topic.
The python-mode shipped with Python 1.5 requires a new custom.el before it can be used with Emacs 19.34. For more information, see the description of python-mode at http://www.python.org/ftp/emacs/pmdetails.html.
You will need a new version of the ftp.exe executable before ange-ftp will work with Emacs. This is due to the unfortunate fact that the ftp program shipped with Win95 and NT does not accept a password from a pipe or a redirected file (also, the version of ange-ftp.el distributed with Emacs before 19.34.6 needed some patches; if you are using a version before 19.34.6, you can upgrade or download the 19.34.6 lisp source and get ange-ftp.el from there).
Stephan Doll <stephand@vnet.IBM.COM> provided a port of the BSD ftp client. This client should work through firewalls.
Place the ftp.exe executable in a directory where you keep your local executables. Then be sure that the exec-path variable is set so that, when Emacs runs the ftp.exe program, it runs the one you downloaded (and not the default one). As an example, assuming that you placed ftp.exe in, say, %HOME%\bin, you could set exec-path as follows in your startup file:
(setq exec-path (cons (expand-file-name "~/bin") exec-path))
As another alternative, you can tell ange-ftp exactly which ftp program to use by customizing ange-ftp-ftp-program-name, e.g.:
(setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-name "c:/bin/ftp.exe")
With this method you don't have to worry about the wrong ftp program being picked up through exec-path.
You will also want to customize the temporary directory that ange-ftp uses to cache files:
(setq ange-ftp-tmp-name-template
(concat (expand-file-name (getenv "TEMP")) "/ange-ftp"))
(setq ange-ftp-gateway-tmp-name-template
(concat (expand-file-name (getenv "TEMP")) "/ange-ftp"))
Note that this particular ftp client was ported pretty much only for use with Emacs; if you're looking for a snazzier ftp client for more general use, you might want to look at the ncftp client on Chris's ftp server.
Before you can use telnet-mode from within Emacs, you need a telnet client other than the one found on the system; the system telnet is a windows app, and cannot be used as a subprocess since it does not use stdio for input and output.
Two possible telnet clients that you can use are:
Unfortunately, this telnet program requires that the host be specified on the command line, but telnet-mode wants to specify the host using the "open" command once telnet has started. Zoltan Kemenczy <zoltan@nabu.isg.mot.com> has written a version of the telnet-mode function that does this. To use it, place "(require 'telnet)" in your startup file, followed by Zoltan's new telnet-mode code.
If the new telnet-mode still does not work for you, then you will probably find it easiest to run telnet inside of a shell buffer (instead of using telnet-mode). If you use the Borland C compiler and want to do a little hacking, it would be great if you could change this telnet to be able to start up without requiring a host on the command line. The source is included in the above zip file, and Naftali has some tips for making this change.
The jtelnet page describes how to set it up for use with Emacs. For the other telnet client, you can either place the telnet.exe program in your exec-path (e.g., anywhere in your PATH, or in the Emacs bin directory) or set the telnet-program variable in your startup file to point to the executable.
To use grep with Emacs, you first need to obtain a version of grep. Many of the packages listed in the section below on Unix Tools come with a version of grep (and cousins egrep and fgrep). Once you have grep, be sure that it is in your system path or in Emacs' exec-path. Then you should be able grep from within Emacs using "M-x grep".
If you can't get access to grep, then you can use the findstr program that comes with NT and Win95 instead. It is much more limited in its searching ability, but if you have simple needs it may be adequate. Peter Breton <pbreton@i-kinetics.com> shows you how to do this.
Some users find the igrep package to be a more useful package for using grep (for example, it supports recursive greps directly). Here are some pointers from other users on what you need to do to get igrep working on your system. You can download igrep from the elisp archive at ftp://ftp.cis.ohio-state.edu/pub/gnu/emacs/elisp-archive/misc/igrep.el.gz.
To do a recursive grep, you need the help of some other utilities. Probably included in the same package that has grep will be find, a program that can recursively traverse directories and invoke programs on the files it finds. To do a recusrive grep with find, invoke "M-x grep" and run the following command:
find . -name pattern -exec grep -n string NUL {} ;
The pattern argument determines which files are matched (e.g., "*.c" for all .c files). The string argument specifies the string that you are searching for. And the NUL argument is a standard way to ensure that grep reports filenames in the matches (grep reports filenames when it is invoked on more than one file, and the NUL device is simply another file that will never contain matches; on Unix, you would use /dev/null).
If you also have the xargs program, than you can make the recursive grep more efficient. Instead of the above command, use:
find . -name pattern -print | xargs grep -n string NUL
The xargs command collects lines from its input and concentates them together as one list of arguments, and invokes the specified program with the argument list (breaking the arguments up into multiple lists and invocations if necessary). The above command first uses find to print out the set of filenames that match pattern, which then gets passed to xargs. xargs concatenates the lines of filenames into lists of arguments and invokes grep on them.
The crypt++ package doesn't yet work out of the box with Emacs on Win32. David S. Rosinger <dsrosing@fed3005.reston.ingr.com> has modified crypt++.el so that it would work on Win32; see his comments for a description of what he has changed and how to use crypt++ under Win32.
Download this patched version of crypt++.el and place it somewhere in your load-path. You'll also need the compression/uncompression utilities (look in ftp.cs.washington.edu/pub/ntemacs/utilities) in your exec-path.
You can find the original crypt++.el at ftp://archive.cis.ohio-state.edu/pub/gnu/emacs/elisp-archive/misc/crypt++.el.Z.
Then add the following commands to your startup file:
This works with the default browser on your system, whether it's IE or something else. However, you must have IE3 installed on your system for it to work with other browsers as the dll that makes this all work, WININET.DLL, only gets installed when IE3 is installed.(defvar shell-execute-helper "shelex.exe") (defun shell-execute-url (url &optional new-window) "Invoke the shell-execute-helper program to call ShellExecute and launch or re-direct a web browser on the specified url." (interactive "sURL: ") (call-process shell-execute-helper nil nil nil url)) (setq browse-url-browser-function 'shell-execute-url) (setq gnus-button-url 'shell-execute-url) ; GNUS (setq vm-url-browser 'shell-execute-url) ; VM
NOTE: More work has been done to get browse-url working well in both environments, but I haven't had a chance to update this section with the latest. See the collection of messages on this topic for more information.
NOTE: If you would like to use shelex.exe to open files in your web browser, you will have to update some registry keys. See Peter Breton's note for details on which keys to change and what to change them to.
Peter Breton <pbreton@i-kinetics.com> wrote a small package for using browse-url to do dictionary lookups, internet word searches, etc. The package is called simple-web.
Theodore Jump <tjump@cais.com> has written a package that uses Windows file associations to launch applications on files from Emacs, based upon Caleb Deupree's <cdeupree@abwh.cincom.com> shellex program. See http://www.i21.com/~tjump/files/ for more information and a distribution file.
Font-lock mode is a mode that performs color syntax highlighting for other major modes in Emacs. To use font-lock, place the following in your startup file:
(cond ((fboundp 'global-font-lock-mode)
;; Turn on font-lock in all modes that support it
(global-font-lock-mode t)
;; Maximum colors
(setq font-lock-maximum-decoration t)))
The above code uses the default faces for decoration. If you would like to customize the attributes of the faces, you can use the following startup code to get started:
(cond ((fboundp 'global-font-lock-mode)
;; Turn on font-lock in all modes that support it
(global-font-lock-mode t)
;; Maximum colors
(setq font-lock-maximum-decoration t)
;; Customize face attributes
(setq font-lock-face-attributes
;; Symbol-for-Face Foreground Background Bold Italic Underline
'((font-lock-comment-face "DarkGreen")
(font-lock-string-face "Sienna")
(font-lock-keyword-face "RoyalBlue")
(font-lock-function-name-face "Blue")
(font-lock-variable-name-face "Black")
(font-lock-type-face "Black")
(font-lock-reference-face "Purple")))
;; Create the faces from the attributes
(font-lock-make-faces)))
Also see the help text for the function global-font-lock-mode and the variable font-lock-face-attributes.
To see a list of colors that Emacs understands by name, select the "Edit->Text Properties->Display Colors" menu command.
For font-lock settings for Java, see the section on Java.
You can use either a two- or three-button mouse with Emacs. If you have trouble with either of these working with Emacs, see below.
Emacs assumes that you have a three-button mouse by default. However, if you have a two-button mouse, you can press both buttons at once to emulate the missing middle button expected by Emacs.
Three variables control mouse button emulation under Emacs: win32-num-mouse-buttons, win32-mouse-button-tolerance, and win32-swap-mouse-buttons. If you use help on win32-num-mouse-buttons (i.e., with "C-h v"), it will tell you how many buttons Emacs thinks your mouse has; if win32-num-mouse-buttons is less than 3, then Emacs will emulate the middle mouse button.
Emacs emulates the middle mouse button by treating simultaneous button presses of the left and right buttons as a middle button press. Since both button presses cannot really be simultaneous, Emacs compares button presses within a specified window of time to determine whether it should emulate the middle button. This window of time is controlled using win32-mouse-button-tolerance. Help on this variable will show you the value Emacs uses by default, and you can change this value to suit your needs.
Depending upon the type of two-button mouse, you may find it useful to swap the mapping of middle and right mouse buttons. By default, the middle button is mapped to mouse-2 and the right button is mapped to mouse-3. If you set win32-swap-mouse-buttons to a non-nil value, then you can swap these two mappings.
If you have a three-button mouse, Emacs should recognize and support the third (middle) button automatically. However, some people find that they have a three button mouse, but the middle mouse button does not work for them. First check to see if win32-num-mouse-buttons is set correctly. If so, then check to see whether your mouse has been installed with the proper driver (open Control Panel->Mouse to examine the driver being used). If you have the right driver, then, on NT, check if HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Busmouse\Paramete rs\NumberOfButtons is set to 3, and change it to 3 if it is not. If nothing seems to be amiss, then at the very least you can have Emacs emulate the middle button by setting win32-num-mouse-buttons to 2.
One workaround is to right-click on the desktop, and then left-click on the desktop, and the mouse should be back in its normal state.
(transient-mark-mode t)
To highlight matching parenthesis, add the following to your startup file:
(show-paren-mode 1)
Look up help for the function for a complete description of how to use the function and which sounds it recognizes.(set-message-beep 'ok)
(standard-display-european 1)Andrew Innes <andrewi@harlequin.co.uk> also has suggestions for displaying characters sets other than Latin-1.
Anders Lindgren <andersl@csd.uu.se> has written a package that will display a buffer written using a ISO 8859/1 character set using an OEM (ms-dos) font. See http://www.csd.uu.se/~andersl/emacs.shtml to get the package.
Tim Sherrill <sherritp@sagian.com> has a very informative page on 2-up (n-up) printing from Emacs. Brian Gorka <gorkab@cyberpass.net> has been maintaining and updating a version of print-NT.el (version 1.12.1 released 7/3/97).
Pascal Obry has a nice example of how to set up some variables to get printing to work on NT.
Jeff Paquette <paquette@mediaone.net> has a version of pr for use with Emacs, and instructions on how to set it up.
Vassil Peytchev <vassil@msn.fullfeed.com> has an example of how to use ghostscript to print to non-postscript printers.
Anders Lindgren <andersl@csd.uu.se> has written a lpr.bat batch file that can be subsituted transparently for lpr on NT (Win95 batch files don't redirect stdin correctly).
A number of other people have put together packages to print from Emacs. I haven't had the time to go through them and piece everything together, but I recommend that you flip through this collection of messages.
For info on 2-up printing from Emacs, take a look at these messages.
For clever tricks for specific printers, take a look at these messages.
You can use a package like gnuserv to associate files with Emacs so that opening a file outside of Emacs (e.g., by double-clicking on its icon) will create a new frame in a running Emacs displaying that file. Peter Breton <pbreton@dirac.i-kinetics.com> originally ported a version of gnuserv to NT that used named pipes, and Nico Francois <Nico.Francois@scala.nl> has continued development on gnuserv since. It now works on both NT and Win95, and has a number of useful features.
Also, be sure to place the gnuserv executables in your path (or modify your path or Emacs' exec-path to include them).
Note that you can set up file associations in Win95/NT 4.0 using Explorer by selecting the "View->Options..." menu operation, and then clicking on the "File Types" tab in the dialog that pops up. Clicking on a file type will allow you to edit it and associate the file with gnuclient.exe. Warning: Be sure to quote the %1 in the association so that filenames with blanks in them are treated as one argument when sent to Emacs.
[Discussion of other problems and solutions]
By default, gnuserv will load files into new frames. If you would rather have gnuserv load files into an existing frame, then evaluate the following in the chosen frame:
(setq gnuserv-frame (selected-frame))
Placing the above in your startup file, for example, will have gnuserv load files into the original Emacs frame. Note: one drawback of this approach is that if the frame associated with gnuserv is ever closed, gnuserv won't have a frame in which to place buffers.
NewsKey: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\mailto\shell\open\command\(Default) Value: gnudoit -q (message-mail (substring \"%1\" 7))
Edit HTMLKey: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\news\shell\open\command\(Default) Value: gnudoit -q (gnus-fetch-group (substring \"%1\" 5))
Thanks to Jason Rumney <jasonr@pec.co.nz> and Sigbjorn Finne <sigbjorn@cse.ogi.edu> for these tips.Key: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\htmlfile\shell\edit\command\(Default) Value: gnuclientw %1
You can use Emacs to view document source from Netscape 3.1. First install the gnuserv utilities, and then edit the Preferences->Apps tab. In the "View Source" field, enter "gnuclientw.exe". (It sounds like this cannot be done with 4.)
I don't know of any way to have Netscape use Emacs for mailto: and news: links as with IE above.
From Andrew:
Obvious extensions would be to add support for querying DDE servers, which would require ddeclient to start parsing the lines from stdin etc. However, this is enough for sending simple commands to servers.
An example of use from Emacs is:
(save-excursion (set-buffer (get-buffer-create " *ddeclient*")) (erase-buffer) (insert "http://www.zdnet.com/") (call-process-region (point-min) (point-max) "ddeclient" nil nil nil "Netscape" "WWW_OpenURL"))
Files that you add to the desktop are stored in a directory somewhere under your Windows directory. On NT 4.0, this directory is %USERPROFILE%\desktop (in other words, c:\winnt\profiles\(user)\desktop if you installed NT in c:\winnt).
The default outline mode in outline.el doesn't work in the NT/95 port of Emacs, reportedly due to its use of carriage returns in hiding text. Instead, use the "noutline" package that is also distributed with Emacs (found in noutline.el).
Kin Cho <kin@isi.com> has noted some differences between outline and noutline. These differences apply to all platforms, though; I've just linked in Kin's message because others might find it helpful in the transition to noutline.
To use the EDT emulation package distributed with Emacs, place the following in your startup file:
(setenv "TERM" "pc") (setq term-setup-hook 'edt-emulation-on)
You might want to also browse through the EDT emulation documentation in etc/edt-user.doc. It describes which keys are emulated, how they are mapped onto the keypad and function keys, etc.
Desktop saving refers to the ability to save and restore editing sessions (state of frames and buffers) between uses of Emacs. Kevin Greiner <kgreiner@geosys.com > has collected some elisp for using the desktop saving features of Emacs that should prove useful for others interested in the feature. .
There are a number of methods by which you can control automatic CR/LF translation in Emacs, a situation that reflects the fact that the default support isn't very robust. For a discussion of this issue, take a look at this collection of email messages on the topic.
The first method is by file extension using the alist file-name-buffer-file-type-alist. This alist contains pairs of regular expressions and booleans that determine whether a file is opened in binary (untranslated) or text (translated) mode. The alist already contains a number of pairs that you can use as examples for creating your own; do a "C-h v" on the variable name to see the help text and the default pairs.
You could add your own pairs to the alist, or change the alist entirely. For example, if you wanted to open every file in binary mode except for batch files, you could add the following to your startup file:
(setq file-name-buffer-file-type-alist '(("\\.bat$" . nil) (".*" . t)))
The first pair says anything ending with the .bat extension should be opened in text mode, and the second pair opens everything else that doesn't match the first pair in binary mode.
A second method for controlling translation is with the functions at the end of untranslate.el. These functions enable you to turn on and off translation on a filesystem basis (e.g., open anything on C: in translated mode, and anything on U: in untranslated mode). If you want to use these functions, download and place untranslate.el in your load-path and have it loaded from your startup file. Then you can place calls to add-untranslated-filesystem to selectively access filesystems in binary mode.
A third method for controlling translation is to have Emacs scan files and automatically determine whether they are binary or text by looking at the line breaks in the file (i.e., no line breaks or just linefeeds imply binary, carriage return/linefeed pairs imply text). A group effort by people on the mailing list put together a patch that implements this kind of automatic translation. To use it, place this patch in your startup file.
This method will likely be used by default in 19.35 once it is known how automatic line break detection will interact with the MULE support also being added to 19.35.
Now you can set key bindings using the alt modifier. For example,(setq win32-alt-is-meta nil)
sets the key sequence Alt-e to the function forward-sentence.(global-set-key [(alt e)] 'forward-sentence)
(setq win32-pass-alt-to-system t)
Setting this variable to true will have one noticeable side effect, though. If you press the Alt key and then release it, you will activate the menubar instead of sending Emacs the meta character. Depending on your typing style, this could make little or no difference, or it could be very annoying.
Another approach, suggested by Paul Rensing <paulr@dragonsys.com>, is to create a set of DragonDictate macros that send keystrokes instead of accessing the menu (e.g., "Open File" sends "C-xC-f"). For a good example of how to do this, see Eric S. Johansson's <esj@harvee.billerica.ma.us> macro set.
Tom M. Kroeger <tmk@cse.ucsc.edu> also has a page of his DragonDictate macro files and Emacs configuration files at http://www.cse.ucsc.edu/~tmk/dictation.
For a more general discussion of Emacs, DragonDictate, and SAPI, take a look at this collection of messages.
A discussion of using Emacs by visually impaired individuals.
The *Messages* buffer was introduced in 19.29 to, e.g., collect informational messages printed serially to the minibuffer. I find it rather useful, but if you want to get rid of the buffer place the following in your startup file:
(setq message-log-max nil) (kill-buffer "*Messages*")
The first expression disables message logging, and the second expression deletes the buffer. Also see the help text for the message-log-max variable for more information.
Francis Wright <F.J.Wright@qmw.ac.uk> has written a package called "WoMan" for viewing man pages without the need for an external program like man:
This library implements a SUBSET of the formatting performed by the Emacs `man' (or `manual-entry') command to format a UN*X manual `page' for display, but without calling any external programs. It emulates (almost) the WHOLE of the -man macro package, plus those ?roff requests that are commonly used in man pages. However, the emulation is modified to reflect the reformatting done by the Emacs `man' command. No hyphenation is performed.
You can download WoMan from his server. It is currently at version 0.25 (7/11/97).
David Lim <david@ndc.com> reports that there is man page viewer from the Congruent tools at ftp://ftp.cc.utexas.edu/microlib/nt/gnu/gnu-bin.tar.Z. You should be able to use this with the man package (man.el), although I haven't heard how well it works. Also, reportedly there is a hardcoded "/dev/null" in man.el that needs to be changed to "nul" before it will work correctly.
Theodore Jump <tjump@cais.com> has written a package to call WinHelp for context-based help. See http://www.i21.com/~tjump/files/ for more information and a distribution file.
Paul Kinnucan <paulk@mathworks.com> has written shell scripts for recursively creating TAGS files for Java source trees. You'll need versions of bash, csh, or tcsh to execute the scripts; see the section above on shells for info on where to download these shells and configure them for use with Emacs.
Paul Kinnucan <paulk@mathworks.com> has also implemented a Java Development Environment:
The JDE is an Emacs Lisp package that provides a highly configurable Emacs wrapper for command-line Java development tools, such as those provided in JavaSoft's JDK. The JDE provides menu access to a Java compiler, debugger, and API doc.
His JDE can be found at http://sunsite.auc.dk/jde/.
Jacob is a Java class browser and project manager for Emacs written by Clemens Lahme <Clemens.Lahme@gmd.de>. For details, see the Jacob project page at http://mats.gmd.de:8080/clemens/jacob/.
Here is a simple mode for editing programs written in The World's Most Sucessful Programming Language. It features indentation, font locking, keyword capitalization, and some other convenience functions.
Stan Lanning <lanning@PureAtria.COM> has written source-safe.el, a package for using SourceSafe from within Emacs.
Jacob Colman <jcolman@jnc.com> has also added menu code for Stan's VSS package.
There are a number of RCS x86 executables floating about. There is an "official" port of GNU RCS available, but it has the semantics that files are managed in CR/LF format. This causes problems if your files are shared with programs on Unix hosts (for more info, see Kai Rommel's message). The version of RCS in the Reed Kotler toolset, on the other hand, does not change the line format. Your call.
The "official" port of GNU RCS can be found in the following places:
DOS, Win95/NT and OS/2 32-bit executables (including diff), as well as formatted documentation files:
- ftp://ftp.leo.org/pub/comp/os/os2/leo/devtools/gnu/rcs57pc1.zip
- ftp://ftp.leo.org/pub/comp/os/os2/leo/devtools/gnu/rcs57pc2.zip
OS/2 16-bit executables, source code and unformatted documentation files:
The Reed Kotler toolset can be found at http://www.reedkotler.com.
If you use the pcl-cvs package, you'll need to fix a couple of things in the elisp to make it work on NT; Michael M. Schmitz <ms@ley.de> has some instructions describing what you need to do.
If you are having trouble getting vc-mode working with RCS or CVS, you should go through these messages from other users who have gotten it to work with some modifications with both the system shells and the Unix shells.
Brian Tibbetts <tibbetts@cat.rpi.edu> has done a lot of work on making ispell more Win32 friendly, and his latest version is for ispell 4.0. Check out his page at http://cat.rpi.edu/~tibbetts/ispell_toc.html (his latest update was on 2/27/97).
Note that ispell 4.0 does not have the language support of ispell 3.1 (it only handles English). See Brian's page for more details.
Anders Lindgren <andersl@csd.uu.se>, Jari Aalto <jari.aalto@poboxes.com>, and Jack Repenning <jackr@informix.com> maintain a folding mode for Emacs originally written by Jamie Lokier <Jamie@imbolc.ucc.ie>. You can download it from http://www.csd.uu.se/~andersl/emacs.shtml#folding.
There is one problem, though. If a section containing folded lines is killed and later yanked, all line endings are removed. This is a bug in Emacs that will eventually be fixed in later versions.
You can get an sql-mode package at ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/contrib. It reportedly works for both Oracle and Sybase, and runs under GNU Emacs as well as XEmacs. (Thanks to Peter Breton <pbreton@volte.i-kinetics.com> for the info.)
Note that, if you are using Oracle SQL*Plus, you'll need to change the command in sql-mode from sqlplus to plus32s.exe. I don't know for certain, but it is possible you will have to do something similar for Sybase, too.
When Emacs deletes a file, it uses the DeleteFile function. This means that once a file is deleted, it is really deleted; in particular, it does not use the Recycle Bin to save deleted files. However, if you are using a development environment that has delete and undelete support (e.g., Norton Tools, Norton Recycle, or Norton Protect), you can modify Emacs to use this support instead of the Win32 API. David Biesack <sasdjb@unx.sas.com> has written a package to leverage such an environment, demonstrating how you might go about doing this.
There is also a PC Magazine utility for Win95 for redirecting deletes to the Recycle Bin; see the article on BigBin for details.
Emacs on NT has slightly different mappings for keypad keys than on Unix. When NumLock is active, they have the same mappings (e.g., Emacs sees '4' on the keypad as 'kp-4'). When NumLock is not active, however, they differ. On NT, the keypad keys map to the keypad functions (e.g., Emacs sees '4' on the keypad as 'kp-left'), but on Unix the keypad keys are the same as when NumLock is active.
The standard distribution does not yet support popup menus like the Unix version does. Michael Duggan <md5i@schenley.com> has implemented popup menu support that conforms to the Unix/X windows semantics. This support will appear in 19.34.3, but you can apply his patches to the 19.34.2 source if you want to use it now. See the section below on patches to 19.34.2 to get the patches.
In time I will grow this list to be a more comprehensive list of bugs.
(global-set-key [delete] "\C-d")
(global-set-key [M-delete] "\M-d")
(global-set-key [M-backspace] [?\M-\177])
(setq backup-by-copying t)(Note that this workaround only works for autosave files, though.)
To get around this problem, create a shortcut icon to the emacs.bat script. Then right click on the icon and select Properties. In the dialog box that pops up, select the Memory tab and then change the Environment memory allocation from Auto to 1024. Close the dialog box and then double click on the icon to start Emacs.
The UWIN project at AT&T Research is another project whose goal is to enable UNIX applications to build and run with little or no modification on Windows NT/95. Part of the UWIN project includes a port of ksh done by David Korn. For more information, see http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/uwin.
An older set of the GNU tools that I have seen offered on ftp sites for NT and Win95 have been based on the Congruent tools (I have heard mixed reviews of these ports, so use with your own discretion). An ftp site that seems to offer the full set of these tools is ftp.cc.utexas.edu/microlib/nt/gnu.
Microsoft also has a collection of tools for use with NT, including Unix tools such as cron, ps, kill, and nice, as well as a number of NT specific tools. A list of these tools is at http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/tools/Maintnce.htm.
If you're a perl user, then you probably want the port of perl to Win32. Check out HIP Communication's port of perl 5 for Win32.
David Wihl is maintaining a FAQ about porting Unix applications to NT. It can be found at http://www.nentug.org/unix-to-nt.
Chris Szurgot is also collecting and implementing Unix style tools for Windows 95 (and presumably NT). See http://www.itribe.net/virtunix.
Jeff Paquette <paquette@mediaone.net> has a collection of the GNU text utilities for Win32. See http://atnetsend.ne.mediaone.net/~paquette/WinProgramming.html.
Reed Kotler <reed@reedkotler.com> and Budi Sutardja have created a toolset of Unix tools (shells, bin and text utils, and one of his packages even includes a precompiled version of Emacs). See http://www.reedkotler.com.
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The list ntemacs-users@cs.washington.edu is a forum for discussion related to using GNU Emacs on Windows NT and Windows 95. Please feel free to ask and/or answer any questions related to Emacs on NT or Win95 as you see fit, although I ask that questions regarding general use of Emacs be directed to the Emacs Info files and the general Emacs news groups, such as comp.emacs and gnu.emacs.help.I will also be sending announcements about new releases and bug fixes to this list. These announcements should be relatively infrequent, however.