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create_process failure.
strcat on HP/UX 10
(setq tab-width 6) behaves oddly.
load-path?
(face-list) to a buffer?
Save Options.
Customize?
(set-screen-width) worked in 19.6, but not in 19.13?
Emacs*EmacsScreen.geometry in `.emacs' does not work.
(global-set-key [delete-forward] 'delete-char) complain?
read-kbd-macro in more detail?
let?
setq?
setq ?
do form of cl, does it slow things down?
map-extents won't traverse all of my extents!
This is the guide to the XEmacs Frequently Asked Questions list--a compendium of questions and answers pertaining to one of the finest programs ever written. It is much more than just a Text Editor.
This FAQ is freely redistributable. I take no liability for the correctness and safety of any procedures or advice given here. This FAQ is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
If you have a Web browser, the official hypertext version is at
http://www.xemacs.org/faq/xemacs-faq.html.
This version is somewhat nicer than the unofficial hypertext versions that are archived at Utrecht, Oxford, Smart Pages, and other FAQ archives.
This document is available in several different formats:
makeinfo --no-headers
Learning XEmacs is a lifelong activity. Even people who have used Emacs for years keep discovering new features. Therefore this document cannot be complete. Instead it is aimed at the person who is either considering XEmacs for their own use, or has just obtained it and is wondering what to do next. It is also useful as a reference to available resources.
The previous maintainer of the FAQ was Anthony Rossini, who started it, after getting tired of hearing JWZ complain about repeatedly having to answer questions. Ben Wing and Chuck Thompson, the principal authors of XEmacs, then took over and Ben did a massive update reorganizing the whole thing. At which point Anthony took back over, but then had to give it up again. Some of the other contributors to this FAQ are listed later in this document.
The previous version was converted to hypertext format, and edited by Steven L. Baur. It was converted back to texinfo by Hrvoje Niksic.
The FAQ was then maintained by Andreas Kaempf, who passed it on to Christian Nybø, the current FAQ maintainer.
If you notice any errors or items which should be added or amended to this FAQ please send email to Christian Nybø. Include `XEmacs FAQ' on the Subject: line.
An alternative to GNU Emacs, originally based on an early alpha version of FSF's version 19, and has diverged quite a bit since then. XEmacs was known as Lucid Emacs through version 19.10. Almost all features of GNU Emacs are supported in XEmacs. The maintainers of XEmacs actively track changes to GNU Emacs while also working to add new features.
XEmacs 20.4 is a minor upgrade from 20.3, containing many bugfixes. It was released in February 1998.
XEmacs 19.16 was the last release of v19, released in November, 1997, which was also the last version without international language support.
The canonical source and binaries is found via anonymous FTP at:
ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/
For a detailed description of the differences between GNU Emacs and XEmacs and a detailed history of XEmacs, check out the
NEWS file
However, here is a list of some of the reasons why we think you might consider using it:
There are currently irreconcilable differences in the views about technical, programming, design and organizational matters between RMS and the XEmacs development team which provide little hope for a merge to take place in the short-term future.
If you have a comment to add regarding the merge, it is a good idea to avoid posting to the newsgroups, because of the very heated flamewars that often result. Mail your questions to xemacs-beta@xemacs.org and bug-gnu-emacs@prep.ai.mit.edu.
Probably the easiest way, if everything is installed, is to use info, by
pressing C-h i, or selecting Emacs Info from the Help Menu.
Also, M-x apropos will look for commands for you.
Try reading this FAQ, examining the regular GNU Emacs FAQ (which can be found with the Emacs 19 distribution) as well as at http://www.eecs.nwu.edu/emacs/faq/ and reading the Usenet group comp.emacs.xemacs.
If that does not help, try posting your question to comp.emacs.xemacs. Please do not post XEmacs related questions to gnu.emacs.help.
If you cannot post or read Usenet news, there is a corresponding mailing list which is available. It can be subscribed to by sending a message with a subject of `subscribe' to xemacs-request@xemacs.org for subscription information and xemacs@xemacs.org to send messages to the list.
To cancel a subscription, you must use the xemacs-request address. Send a message with a subject of `unsubscribe' to be removed.
The mailing list was archived in the directory
ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/mlists/.
However, this archive is out of date. The current mailing list server
supports an archive feature, which may be utilized.
I pronounce it `Eks eemax'.
Yes, See section 6 XEmacs on MS Windows.
There has been a port to the MachTen environment of XEmacs 19.13, but no patches have been submitted to the maintainers to get this in the mainstream distribution.
For the MacOS, there is a port of Emacs 18.59.
Carl Edman, apparently no longer at cedman@princeton.edu, did the port of GNU Emacs to NeXTstep and expressed interest in doing the XEmacs port, but never went any farther.
No, and there is no news of anyone working on it.
You'll have to print it yourself. We don't know of any companies that sell printed versions of the manual.
The FAQ is actively maintained and modified regularly. All links should be up to date.
Changes are displayed on a monthly basis. Months, for this purpose are defined as the 5th of the month through the 5th of the month. Preexisting questions that have been changed are marked as such. Brand new questions are tagged.
All submissions are welcome. E-mail submissions to Christian Nybø.
Please make sure that `XEmacs FAQ' appears on the Subject: line. If you think you have a better way of answering a question, or think a question should be included, I'd like to hear about it. Questions and answers included into the FAQ will be edited for spelling and grammar, and will be attributed. Answers appearing without attribution are either from versions of the FAQ dated before May 1996, or are from one of the four people listed at the top of this document. Answers quoted from Usenet news articles will always be attributed, regardless of the author.
Send an email message to xemacs-beta-request@xemacs.org with a subject line of `subscribe'.
Be prepared to get your hands dirty, as beta testers are expected to identify problems as best they can.
Ben Wing ben@666.com writes:
BTW if you have a wish list of things that you want added, you have to speak up about it! More specifically, you can do the following if you want a feature added (in increasing order of usefulness):
- Make a posting about a feature you want added.
- Become a beta tester and make more postings about those same features.
- Convince us that you're going to use the features in some cool and useful way.
- Come up with a clear and well-thought-out API concerning the features.
- Write the code to implement a feature and send us a patch.
(not that we're necessarily requiring you to write the code, but we can always hope :)
XEmacs is the result of the time and effort of many people.
The developers responsible for the 21.x releases are, in alphabetical order:
The developers responsible for the 19.16/20.x releases are, in alphabetical order:
The developers responsible for the 19.14 release are, in chronologic order:
Along with many other contributors, partially enumerated in the `About XEmacs' option in the Help menu.
The following people contributed valuable suggestions to building this version of the FAQ (listed in alphabetical order):
This is only a partial list, as many names were lost in a hard disk crash some time ago.
XEmacs v20 is the version of XEmacs that includes MULE (Asian-language) support. XEmacs 20.0 was released in February 1997, followed by XEmacs 20.2 in May, XEmacs 20.3 in November and XEmacs 20.4 in February 1998. When compiled without MULE support, 20.4 is approximately as stable as 19.16, and probably faster (due to additional optimization work.)
As of XEmacs 20.3, version 20 is the supported version of XEmacs. This means that 19.16 will optionally receive stability fixes (if any), but that all the real development work will be done on the v20 tree.
The incompatible changes in XEmacs 20 include the additional byte-codes,
new primitive data types (character, char-table, and
range-table). This means that the character-integer equivalence
inherent to all the previous Emacs and XEmacs releases no longer
applies.
However, to avoid breaking old code, many functions that should normally accept characters work with integers, and vice versa. For more information, see the Lisp reference manual. Here is a relevant excerpt, for your convenience.
In XEmacs version 19, and in all versions of FSF GNU Emacs, a character in XEmacs Lisp is nothing more than an integer. This is yet another holdover from XEmacs Lisp's derivation from vintage-1980 Lisps; modern versions of Lisp consider this equivalence a bad idea, and have separate character types. In XEmacs version 20, the modern convention is followed, and characters are their own primitive types. (This change was necessary in order for MULE, i.e. Asian-language, support to be correctly implemented.)
Even in XEmacs version 20, remnants of the equivalence between characters and integers still exist; this is termed the char-int confoundance disease. In particular, many functions such as
eq,equal, andmemqhave equivalent functions (old-eq,old-equal,old-memq, etc.) that pretend like characters are integers are the same. Byte code compiled under any version 19 Emacs will have all such functions mapped to theirold-equivalents when the byte code is read into XEmacs 20. This is to preserve compatibility -- Emacs 19 converts all constant characters to the equivalent integer during byte-compilation, and thus there is no other way to preserve byte-code compatibility even if the code has specifically been written with the distinction between characters and integers in mind.Every character has an equivalent integer, called the character code. For example, the character A is represented as the integer 65, following the standard ASCII representation of characters. If XEmacs was not compiled with MULE support, the range of this integer will always be 0 to 255 -- eight bits, or one byte. (Integers outside this range are accepted but silently truncated; however, you should most decidedly not rely on this, because it will not work under XEmacs with MULE support.) When MULE support is present, the range of character codes is much larger. (Currently, 19 bits are used.)
FSF GNU Emacs uses kludgy character codes above 255 to represent keyboard input of ASCII characters in combination with certain modifiers. XEmacs does not use this (a more general mechanism is used that does not distinguish between ASCII keys and other keys), so you will never find character codes above 255 in a non-MULE XEmacs.
Individual characters are not often used in programs. It is far more common to work with strings, which are sequences composed of characters.
The MULE support works OK but still needs a fair amount of work before it's really solid. We could definitely use some help here, esp. people who speak Japanese and will use XEmacs/MULE to work with Japanese and have some experience with E-Lisp.
As the fundings on Mule have stopped, the Mule part of XEmacs is currently looking for a full-time maintainer. If you can provide help here, or are willing to fund the work, please mail to xemacs-beta@xemacs.org.
See section Q1.1.2: How do I become a Beta Tester?.
See question 3.5.7 (See section Q3.5.7: How can you type in special characters in XEmacs?) in part 3 of this FAQ.
The message-catalog support has mostly been written but doesn't currently work. The first release of XEmacs 20 will not support it. However, menubar localization does work, even in 19.14. To enable it, add to your `Emacs' file entries like this:
Emacs*XlwMenu.resourceLabels: True Emacs*XlwMenu.file.labelString: Fichier Emacs*XlwMenu.openInOtherWindow.labelString: In anderem Fenster offnen
The name of the resource is derived from the non-localized entry by removing punctuation and capitalizing as above.
MORIOKA Tomohiko writes:
Original Mule supports the following input methods: Wnn4, Wnn6, Canna, SJ3 and XIM. Interfaces for Wnn and SJ3 uses the
egguser interface. Interface for Canna does not use `egg'. I don't know about XIM. It is to support ATOK, of course, it may work for another servers.Wnn supports Japanese, Chinese and Korean. It is made by OMRON and Kyôto university. It is a powerful and complex system. Wnn4 is free and Wnn6 is not free.
Canna supports only Japanese. It is made by NEC. It is a simple and powerful system. Canna uses only grammar (Wnn uses grammar and probability between words), so I think Wnn is cleverer than Canna, however Canna users made a good grammar and dictionary. So for standard modern Japanese, Canna seems cleverer than Wnn4. In addition, the UNIX version of Canna is free (now there is a Microsoft Windows version).
SJ3 supports only Japanese. It is made by Sony. XIM supports was made to use ATOK (a major input method in personal computer world). XIM is the standard for accessing input methods bundled in Japanese versions of Solaris. (XEmacs 20 will support XIM input).
Egg consists of following parts:
- Input character Translation System (ITS) layer. It translates ASCII inputs to Kana/PinYin/Hangul characters.
- Kana/PinYin/Hangul to Kanji transfer layer. It is interface layer for network Kana-Kanji server (Wnn and Sj3).
These input methods are modal, namely there are mode, alphabet mode and Kana-Kanji transfer mode. However there are mode-less input methods for Egg and Canna. `Boiled-egg' is a mode-less input method running on Egg. For Canna, `canna.el' has a tiny boiled-egg like command,
(canna-boil), and there are some boiled-egg like utilities. In addition, it was planned to make an abstraction for all transfer type input methods. However authors of input methods are busy, so maybe this plan is stopped. Perhaps after Mule merged GNU Emacs will be released, it will be continued.
MORIOKA Tomohiko writes:
MULE and XEmacs are quite different. So the application implementor must write separate code for these mule variants.
MULE and the next version of Emacs are similar but the symbols are very different--requiring separate code as well.
Namely we must support 3 kinds of mule variants and 4 or 5 or 6 kinds of emacs variants... (;_;) I'm shocked, so I wrote a wrapper package called
emuto provide a common interface.I have the following suggestions about dealing with mule variants:
(featurep 'mule)ton all mule variants(boundp 'MULE)iston only MULE. Maybe the next version of Emacs will not have this symbol.- MULE has a variable
mule-version. Perhaps the next version of Emacs will have this variable as well.Following is a sample to distinguish mule variants:
(if (featurep 'mule) (cond ((boundp 'MULE) ;; for original Mule ) ((string-match "XEmacs" emacs-version) ;; for XEmacs with Mule ) (t ;; for next version of Emacs )) ;; for old emacs variants )
Ilya Zakharevich writes:
There is a cyrillic mode in the file `mysetup.zip' in ftp://ftp.math.ohio-state.edu/pub/users/ilya/emacs/. This is a modification to Valery Alexeev's `russian.el' which can be obtained from
http://ftpsearch.ntnu.no/?query=russian.el.Z.
Dima Barsky writes:
There is another cyrillic mode for both GNU Emacs and XEmacs by Dmitrii (Mitya) Manin at http://kulichki-lat.rambler.ru/centrolit/manin/cyr.el.
Rebecca Ore writes:
The fullest resource I found on Russian language use (in and out of XEmacs) is http://sunsite.oit.unc.edu/sergei/Software/Software.html
The `.emacs' file is used to customize XEmacs to your tastes. No two are alike, nor are they expected to be alike, but that's the point. The XEmacs distribution contains an excellent starter example in the etc directory called `sample.emacs'. Copy this file from there to your home directory and rename it `.emacs'. Then edit it to suit.
Starting with 19.14, you may bring the `sample.emacs' into an XEmacs buffer by selecting `Help->Sample .emacs' from the menubar. To determine the location of the `etc' directory type the command C-h v data-directory RET.
Yes. The sample `.emacs' included in the XEmacs distribution will show you how to handle different versions and flavors of Emacs.
There's the XEmacs tutorial available from the Help Menu, or by typing C-h t. To check whether it's available in a non-english language, type C-u C-h t TAB, type the first letters of your preferred language, then type RET.
There's an Emacs Lisp tutorial at
ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/emacs-lisp-intro-1.04.tar.gz.
Erik Sundermann has made a tutorial web page at http://petaxp.rug.ac.be/~erik/xemacs/.
The following function does a little bit of everything useful. It does something with the prefix argument, it examines the text around the cursor, and it's interactive so it may be bound to a key. It inserts copies of the current word the cursor is sitting on at the cursor. If you give it a prefix argument: C-u 3 M-x double-word then it will insert 3 copies.
(defun double-word (count)
"Insert a copy of the current word underneath the cursor"
(interactive "*p")
(let (here there string)
(save-excursion
(forward-word -1)
(setq here (point))
(forward-word 1)
(setq there (point))
(setq string (buffer-substring here there)))
(while (>= count 1)
(insert string)
(decf count))))
The best way to see what is going on here is to let XEmacs tell you.
Put the code into an XEmacs buffer, and do a C-h f with the cursor
sitting just to the right of the function you want explained. Eg. move
the cursor to the SPACE between interactive and `"*p"' and
hit C-h f to see what the function interactive does. Doing
this will tell you that the * requires a writable buffer, and
p converts the prefix argument to a number, and
interactive allows you to execute the command with M-x.
To bind to a key do:
(global-set-key "\C-cd" 'double-word)
Or interactively, M-x global-set-key and follow the prompts.
Quoting from the Lisp Reference (a.k.a Lispref) Manual:
Macros enable you to define new control constructs and other language features. A macro is defined much like a function, but instead of telling how to compute a value, it tells how to compute another Lisp expression which will in turn compute the value. We call this expression the expansion of the macro.
Macros can do this because they operate on the unevaluated expressions for the arguments, not on the argument values as functions do. They can therefore construct an expansion containing these argument expressions or parts of them.
Do not confuse the two terms with keyboard macros, which are another matter, entirely. A keyboard macro is a key bound to several other keys. Refer to manual for details.
There's a problem with options of the form:
(add-spec-list-to-specifier (face-property 'searchm-field 'font)
'((global (nil))))
saved by a 19.13 XEmacs that causes a 19.14 XEmacs grief. You must delete these options. XEmacs 19.14 and later no longer write the options directly to `.emacs' which should allow us to deal with version incompatibilities better in the future.
Options saved under XEmacs 19.13 are protected by code that specifically requires a version 19 XEmacs. This won't be a problem unless you're using XEmacs v20. You should consider changing the code to read:
(cond
((and (string-match "XEmacs" emacs-version)
(boundp 'emacs-major-version)
(or (and (= emacs-major-version 19)
(>= emacs-minor-version 12))
(>= emacs-major-version 20)))
...
))
This is part 2 of the XEmacs Frequently Asked Questions list. This section is devoted to Installation, Maintenance and Trouble Shooting.
The `INSTALL' file says that up to 108 MB of space is needed temporarily during installation! How can I just try it out?
XEmacs will run in place without requiring installation and copying of the Lisp directories, and without having to specify a special build-time flag. It's the copying of the Lisp directories that requires so much space. XEmacs is largely written in Lisp.
A good method is to make a shell alias for xemacs:
alias xemacs=/i/xemacs-20.2/src/xemacs
(You will obviously use whatever directory you downloaded the source tree to instead of `/i/xemacs-20.2').
This will let you run XEmacs without massive copying.
Although this entry has been written for XEmacs 19.13, most of it still stands true.
Steve Baur writes:
The 45MB of space required by the installation directories can be reduced dramatically if desired. Gzip all the .el files. Remove all the packages you'll never want to use (or even ones you do like the two obsolete mailcrypts and Gnus 4 in 19.13). Remove the TexInfo manuals. Remove the Info (and use just hardcopy versions of the manual). Remove most of the stuff in etc. Remove or gzip all the source code. Gzip or remove the C source code. Configure it so that copies are not made of the support lisp. I'm not advocating any of these things, just pointing out ways to reduce the disk requirements if desired.
Now examine the space used by directory:
0 /usr/local/bin/xemacs 2048 /usr/local/bin/xemacs-19.13 1546 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/i486-miranova-sco3.2v4.2 1158 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/i486-unknown-linux1.2.13You need to keep these. XEmacs isn't stripped by default in installation, you should consider stripping. That will save you about 5MB right there.
207 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/etc/w3 122 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/etc/sounds 18 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/etc/sparcworks 159 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/etc/vm 6 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/etc/e 21 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/etc/eos 172 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/etc/toolbar 61 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/etc/ns 43 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/etc/gnusThese are support directories for various packages. In general they match a directory under ./xemacs-19.13/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/. If you do not require the package, you may delete or gzip the support too.
1959 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/etc 175 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/bytecomp 340 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/calendar 342 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/comint 517 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/dired 42 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/electric 212 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/emulators 238 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/energize 289 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/gnus 457 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/ilisp 1439 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/modes 2276 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/packages 1040 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/prim 176 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/pcl-cvs 154 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/rmail 3 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/epoch 45 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/term 860 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/utils 851 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/vm 13 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/vms 157 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/x11 19 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/tooltalk 14 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/sunpro 291 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/games 198 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/edebug 619 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/w3 229 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/eos 55 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/iso 59 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/mailcrypt 187 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/eterm 356 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/ediff 408 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/hyperbole/kotl 1262 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/hyperbole 247 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/hm--html-menus 161 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/mh-e 299 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/viper 53 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/oobr/tree-x 4 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/oobr/tree-nx/English.lproj/DocWindow.nib 3 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/oobr/tree-nx/English.lproj/InfoPanel.nib 3 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/oobr/tree-nx/English.lproj/TreeView.nib 11 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/oobr/tree-nx/English.lproj 53 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/oobr/tree-nx 466 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp/oobr 14142 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lispThese are all Emacs Lisp source code and bytecompiled object code. You may safely gzip everything named *.el here. You may remove any package you don't use. Nothing bad will happen if you delete a package that you do not use. You must be sure you do not use it though, so be conservative at first.
Possible candidates for deletion include w3 (newer versions exist, or you may just use Lynx or Netscape for web browsing), games, hyperbole, mh-e, hm--html-menus (better packages exist), vm, viper, oobr, gnus (new versions exist), etc. Ask yourself, Do I ever want to use this package? If the answer is no, then it is a candidate for removal.
First, gzip all the .el files. Then go about package by package and start gzipping the .elc files. Then run XEmacs and do whatever it is you normally do. If nothing bad happens, then delete the directory. Be conservative about deleting directories, and it would be handy to have a backup tape around in case you get too zealous.
`prim', `modes', `packages', and `utils' are four directories you definitely do not want to delete, although certain packages can be removed from them if you do not use them.
1972 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/infoThese are online texinfo sources. You may either gzip them or remove them. In either case, C-h i (info mode) will no longer work.
20778 /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13The 20MB achieved is less than half of what the full distribution takes up, and can be achieved without deleting a single file.
Giacomo Boffi provides this procedure:
Substitute `/usr/local/lib/' with the path where the xemacs tree is rooted, then use this script:
#!/bin/sh r=/usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.13/lisp cd $r ; rm -f cmpr ; touch cmpr du -s . for d in * ; do if test -d $d ; then cd $d for f in *.el ; do # compress (remove) only (ONLY) the sources that have a # corresponding compiled file --- do not (DO NOT) # touch other sources if test -f ${f}c ; then gzip -v9 $f >> $r/cmpr ; fi done cd .. fi done du -s .A step beyond would be substituting `rm -f' for `gzip -v9', but you have to be desperate for removing the sources (remember that emacs can access compressed files transparently).
Also, a good megabyte could easily be trimmed from the $r/../etc directory, e.g., the termcap files, some O+NEWS, others that I don't remember as well.
XEmacs 21.0 will unbundle the lisp hierarchy and allow the installer to choose exactly how much support code gets installed.
What is the best way to compile XEmacs with the netaudio system, since I have got the netaudio system compiled but installed at a weird place, I am not root. Also in the READMEs it does not say anything about compiling with the audioserver?
You should only need to add some stuff to the configure command line. To tell it to compile in netaudio support: `--with-sound=both', or `--with-sound=nas' if you don't want native sound support for some reason.) To tell it where to find the netaudio includes and libraries:
--site-libraries=WHATEVER --site-includes=WHATEVER
Then (fingers crossed) it should compile and it will use netaudio if you have a server running corresponding to the X server. The netaudio server has to be there when XEmacs starts. If the netaudio server goes away and another is run, XEmacs should cope (fingers crossed, error handling in netaudio isn't perfect).
BTW, netaudio has been renamed as it has a name clash with something else, so if you see references to NAS or Network Audio System, it's the same thing. It also might be found at ftp://ftp.x.org/contrib/audio/nas/.
On Linux 1.3.98 with termcap 2.0.8 and the ncurses that came with libc 5.2.18, XEmacs 20.0b20 is unable to open a tty device:
src/xemacs -nw -q Initialization error: Terminal type `xterm' undefined (or can't access database?)
Ben Wing writes:
Your ncurses configuration is messed up. Your /usr/lib/terminfo is a bad pointer, perhaps to a CD-ROM that is not inserted.
No. The name XEmacs is unfortunate in the sense that it is not an X Window System-only version of Emacs. Starting with 19.14 XEmacs has full color support on a color capable character terminal.
There have been a variety of reports of crashes due to compilers with buggy optimizers. Please see the `PROBLEMS' file that comes with XEmacs to read what it says about your platform.
I have x-faces, jpeg, xpm etc. all in different places. I've tried space-separated, comma-separated, several --site-libraries, all to no avail.
--site-libraries='/path/one /path/two /path/etc'
You are using the Linux/ELF distribution of XEmacs 19.14, and your ELF libraries are out of date. You have the following options:
Hrvoje Niksic writes:
Why not use a Perl one-liner for No. 2?
perl -pi -e 's/_h_errno\0/h_errno\0\0/g' \ /usr/local/bin/xemacs-19.14NB: You must patch `/usr/local/bin/xemacs-19.14', and not `xemacs' because `xemacs' is a link to `xemacs-19.14'; the Perl `-i' option will cause unwanted side-effects if applied to a symbolic link.
SL Baur writes:
If you build against a recent libc-5.4 (late enough to have caused problems earlier in the beta cycle) and then run with an earlier version of libc, you get a
$ xemacs xemacs: can't resolve symbol '__malloc_hook' zsh: 7942 segmentation fault (core dumped) xemacs(Example binary compiled against libc-5.4.23 and run with libc-5.4.16).
The solution is to upgrade to at least libc-5.4.23. Sigh. Drat.
All external libraries used by XEmacs can be found at the XEmacs FTP site ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/aux/.
The canonical locations (at the time of this writing) are as follows:
Not necessarily. If you have GNU sed 3.0 you should downgrade it to 2.05. From the `README' at prep.ai.mit.edu:
sed 3.0 has been withdrawn from distribution. It has major revisions, which mostly seem to be improvements; but it turns out to have bugs too which cause trouble in some common cases.
Tom Lord won't be able to work fixing the bugs until May. So in the mean time, we've decided to withdraw sed 3.0 from distribution and make version 2.05 once again the recommended version.
It has also been observed that the vfork test on Solaris will leave a core dump.
This is the result of a long-standing problem with SunOS and the fact that stock SunOS systems do not ship with DNS resolver code in libc.
Christopher Davis writes:
That's correct [The SunOS 4.1.3 precompiled binaries don't do name lookup]. Since Sun figured that everyone used NIS to do name lookups (that DNS thing was apparently only a passing fad, right?), the stock SunOS 4.x systems don't have DNS-based name lookups in libc.
This is also why Netscape ships two binaries for SunOS 4.1.x.
The best solution is to compile it yourself; the configure script will check to see if you've put DNS in the shared libc and will then proceed to link against the DNS resolver library code.
Richard Cognot writes:
Because of the way XEmacs (and every other Emacsen, AFAIK) is built. The link gives you a bare-boned emacs (called temacs). temacs is then run, preloading some of the lisp files. The result is then dumped into a new executable, named xemacs, which will contain all of the preloaded lisp functions and data.
Now, during the dump itself, the executable (code+data+symbols) is written on disk using a special unexec() function. This function is obviously heavily system dependent. And on some systems, it leads to an executable which, although valid, cannot be stripped without damage. If memory serves, this is especially the case for AIX binaries. On other architecture it might work OK.
The Right Way to strip the emacs binary is to strip temacs prior to dumping xemacs. This will always work, although you can do that only if you install from sources (as temacs is `not' part of the binary kits).
Nat Makarevitch writes:
Here is the trick:
- [ ./configure; make ]
- rm src/xemacs
- strip src/temacs
- make
- cp src/xemacs /usr/local/bin/xemacs
- cp lib-src/DOC-19.16-XEmacs /usr/local/lib/xemacs-19.16/i586-unknown-linuxaout
There are known difficulties linking with Gnu ld on Solaris. A typical error message might look like:
unexec(): dlopen(../dynodump/dynodump.so): ld.so.1: ./temacs: fatal: relocation error: symbol not found: main: referenced in ../dynodump/dynodump.so
Martin Buchholz writes:
You need to specify `-fno-gnu-linker' as part of your flags to pass to ld. Future releases of XEmacs will try to do this automatically.
Problem when building xemacs-19.16 on hpux 9:
Richard Cognot writes:
make on hpux fails after linking temacs with a message:
"make: don't know how to make .y."Solution: This is a problem with HP make revision 70.X. Either use GNU make, or install PHCO_6552, which will bring make to revision 72.24.1.17.
First of all, don't panic. Whenever XEmacs crashes, it tries extremely
hard to auto-save all of your files before dying. (The main time that
this will not happen is if the machine physically lost power or if you
killed the XEmacs process using kill -9). The next time you try
to edit those files, you will be informed that a more recent auto-save
file exists. You can use M-x recover-file to retrieve the
auto-saved version of the file.
Starting with 19.14, you may use the command M-x recover-session after a crash to pick up where you left off.
Now, XEmacs is not perfect, and there may occasionally be times, or particular sequences of actions, that cause it to crash. If you can come up with a reproducible way of doing this (or even if you have a pretty good memory of exactly what you were doing at the time), the maintainers would be very interested in knowing about it. Post a message to comp.emacs.xemacs or send mail to crashes@xemacs.org. Please note that the `crashes' address is exclusively for crash reports.
If at all possible, include a stack backtrace of the core dump that was produced. This shows where exactly things went wrong, and makes it much easier to diagnose problems. To do this, you need to locate the core file (it's called `core', and is usually sitting in the directory that you started XEmacs from, or your home directory if that other directory was not writable). Then, go to that directory and execute a command like:
gdb `which xemacs` core
and then issue the command `where' to get the stack backtrace. You
might have to use dbx or some similar debugger in place of
gdb. If you don't have any such debugger available, complain to
your system administrator.
It's possible that a core file didn't get produced, in which case you're out of luck. Go complain to your system administrator and tell him not to disable core files by default. Also See section Q2.1.15: How to Debug an XEmacs problem with a debugger for tips and techniques for dealing with a debugger.
When making a problem report make sure that:
When I try to use some particular option of some particular package, I get a cryptic error in the minibuffer.
If you can't figure out what's going on, select Options/General Options/Debug on Error from the Menubar and then try and make the error happen again. This will give you a backtrace that may be enlightening. If not, try reading through this FAQ; if that fails, you could try posting to comp.emacs.xemacs (making sure to include the backtrace) and someone may be able to help. If you can identify which Emacs lisp source file the error is coming from you can get a more detailed stack backtrace by doing the following:
Depending on the version of XEmacs, you may either select Edit->Show Messages (19.13 and earlier) or Help->Recent Keystrokes/Messages (19.14 and later) from the menubar to see the most recent messages. This command is bound to C-h l by default.
I get tons of translation table syntax error messages during startup. How do I get rid of them?
There are two causes of this problem. The first usually only strikes people using the prebuilt binaries. The culprit in both cases is the file `XKeysymDB'.
How can I avoid the startup warnings about deducing proper fonts?
This is highly dependent on your installation, but try with the following font as your base font for XEmacs and see what it does:
-adobe-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
More precisely, do the following in your resource file:
Emacs.default.attributeFont: \ -adobe-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
If you just don't want to see the `*Warnings*' buffer at startup time, you can set this:
(setq display-warning-minimum-level 'error)
The buffer still exists; it just isn't in your face.
Help! I can not get XEmacs to display on my Envizex X-terminal!
Try setting the DISPLAY variable using the numeric IP address of the host you are running XEmacs from.
There have been several reports of the X server locking up under Linux.
In all reported cases removing speedo and scaled fonts from the font
path corrected the problem. This can be done with the command
xset.
It is possible that using a font server may also solve the problem.
How can I make XEmacs recognize the Alt key of my HP workstation as a Meta key?
Put the following line into a file and load it with xmodmap(1) before starting XEmacs:
remove Mod1 = Mode_switch
Natalie Kershaw writes:
I am trying to run xemacs 19.13 under X11R4. Whenever I move the mouse I get the following error. Has anyone seen anything like this? This doesn't occur on X11R5.
Signalling: (error "got (wrong-type-argument color-instance-p nil) and I don't know why!")
dinos writes:
I think this is due to undefined resources; You need to define color backgrounds and foregrounds into your `.../app-defaults/Emacs' like:
*Foreground: Black ;everything will be of black on grey95, *Background: Grey95 ;unless otherwise specified. *cursorColor: Red3 ;red3 cursor with grey95 border. *pointerColor: Red3 ;red3 pointer with grey95 border.
Natalie Kershaw adds:
What fixed the problem was adding some more colors to the X color database (copying the X11R5 colors over), and also defining the following resources:
xemacs*cursorColor: black xemacs*pointerColor: blackWith the new colors installed the problem still occurs if the above resources are not defined.
If the new colors are not present then an additional error occurs on XEmacs startup, which says `Color Red3' not defined.
The OpenWindows 3.0 server is incredibly buggy. Your best bet is to replace it with one from the generic MIT X11 release. You might also try disabling parts of your `.emacs', like enabling background pixmaps.
The following information comes from the `PROBLEMS' file that comes with XEmacs.
If you're having troubles with HP/UX it is because HP/UX defines the modifiers wrong in X. Here is a shell script to fix the problem; be sure that it is run after VUE configures the X server.
#! /bin/sh xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF keysym Alt_L = Meta_L keysym Alt_R = Meta_R EOF xmodmap - << EOF clear mod1 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol add mod1 = Meta_L keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch add mod2 = Mode_switch EOF
Dr. Ram Samudrala writes:
I just installed the XEmacs (20.4-2) RPMS that I downloaded from http://www.xemacs.org/. Everything works fine, except that when I place my mouse over the toolbar, it beeps and gives me this message:
Can't instantiate image (probably cached): [xbm :mask-file "/usr/include/X11/bitmaps/leftptrmsk :mask-data (16 16 <strange control characters> ...
Kyle Jones writes:
This is problem specific to some Chips and Technologies video chips, when running XFree86. Putting
Option "sw_cursor"in `XF86Config' gets rid of the problem.
I have xemacs 19.13 running on an alpha running OSF1 V3.2 148 and ispell would not run because it claimed the version number was incorrect although it was indeed OK. I traced the problem to the regular expression handler.
Douglas Kosovic writes:
Actually it's a DEC cc optimization bug that screws up the regexp handling in XEmacs.
Rebuilding using the `-migrate' switch for DEC cc (which uses a different sort of optimization) works fine.
See `xemacs-19_13-dunix-3_2c.patch' at the following URL on how to build with the `-migrate' flag:
http://www-digital.cern.ch/carney/emacs/emacs.html
NOTE: There have been a variety of other problems reported that are fixed in this fashion.
create_process failure.Dave Carrigan writes:
With XEmacs 19.13 and HP/UX 10.10, anything that relies on the
create_processfunction fails. This breaks a lot of things (shell-mode, compile, ange-ftp, to name a few).
Phil Johnson writes:
This is a problem specific to HP-UX 10.10. It only occurs when XEmacs is compiled for shared libraries (the default), so you can work around it by compiling a statically-linked binary (run configure with `--dynamic=no').
I'm not sure whether the problem is with a particular shared library or if it's a kernel problem which crept into 10.10.
Richard Cognot writes:
I had a few problems with 10.10. Apparently, some of them were solved by forcing a static link of libc (manually).
Ben Wing writes:
C-g does work for most people in most circumstances. If it doesn't, there are only two explanations:
- The code is wrapped with a binding of
inhibit-quittot. Ctrl-Shift-G should still work, I think.- SIGIO is broken on your system, but BROKEN_SIGIO isn't defined.
To test #2, try executing
(while t)from the `*scratch*' buffer. If C-g doesn't interrupt, then you're seeing #2.
Morten Welinder writes:
On some (but not all) machines a hung XEmacs can be revived by
kill -FPE <pid>. This is a hack, of course, not a solution. This technique works on a Sun4 running 4.1.3_U1. To see if it works for you, start another XEmacs and test with that first. If you get a core dump the method doesn't work and if you get `Arithmetic error' then it does.
If XEmacs does crash on you, one of the most productive things you can do to help get the bug fixed is to poke around a bit with the debugger. Here are some hints:
attach
command or something similar), here are some things you can do:
assert_failed().
signal_1()---this is
declared static in eval.c.
Lisp_Object. These are exactly what they appear to be,
i.e. references to Lisp objects. Printing them out with the debugger
probably won't be too useful--you'll likely just see a number. To
decode them, do this:
call debug_print (OBJECT)where OBJECT is whatever you want to decode (it can be a variable, a function call, etc.). This will print out a readable representation on the TTY from which the xemacs process was invoked.
call debug_backtrace ()
debug_print and debug_backtrace has two
disadvantages - it can only be used with a running xemacs process, and
it cannot display the internal C structure of a Lisp Object. Even if
all you've got is a core dump, all is not lost.
If you're using GDB, there are some macros in the file
`src/gdbinit' in the XEmacs source distribution that should make it
easier for you to decode Lisp objects. Copy this file to
`~/.gdbinit', or source it from `~/.gdbinit', and use
the macros defined therein. In particular, use the pobj macro to
print the internal C representation of a lisp object. This will work
with a core file or not-yet-run executable. The aliases ldp and
lbt are provided for conveniently calling debug_print and
debug_backtrace.
If you are using Sun's `dbx' debugger, there is an equivalent file
`src/dbxrc' to copy to or source from `~/.dbxrc'.
strcat on HP/UX 10>From the problems database (through http://support.mayfield.hp.com/):
Problem Report: 5003302299 Status: Open System/Model: 9000/700 Product Name: HPUX S800 10.0X Product Vers: 9245XB.10.00 Description: strcat(3C) may read beyond end of source string, can cause SIGSEGV *** PROBLEM TEXT *** strcat(3C) may read beyond the source string onto an unmapped page, causing a segmentation violation.
As with other errors, set debug-on-error to t to get the
backtrace when the error occurs. Specifically, two problems have been
reported (and fixed).
Richard Cognot writes:
For the record, compiling on hpux 10.10 leads to a hang in Gnus when compiled with optimization on.
I've just discovered that my hpux 10.01 binary was working less well than expected. In fact, on a 10.10 system,
(while t)was not interrupted by C-g. I definedBROKEN_SIGIOand recompiled on 10.10, and... the hang is now gone.As far as configure goes, this will be a bit tricky:
BROKEN_SIGIOis needed on 10.10, but not on 10.01: if I run my 10.01 binary on a 10.01 machine, withoutBROKEN_SIGIObeing defined, C-g works as expected.
Richard Cognot adds:
Apparently somebody has found the reason why there is this `poll: interrupted...' message for each event. For some reason, libcurses reimplements a
select()system call, in a highly broken fashion. The fix is to add a -lc to the link line before the -lxcurses. XEmacs will then use the right version ofselect().
Alain Fauconnet writes:
The real solution is to not link -lcurses in! I just changed -lcurses to -ltermcap in the Makefile and it fixed:
- The `poll: interrupted system call' message.
- A more serious problem I had discovered in the meantime, that is the fact that subprocess handling was seriously broken: subprocesses e.g. started by AUC TeX for TeX compilation of a buffer would hang. Actually they would wait forever for emacs to read the socket which connects stdout...
When using one of the prebuilt binaries many users have observed that XEmacs uses the timezone under which it was built, but not the timezone under which it is running. The solution is to add:
(set-time-zone-rule "MET")
to your `.emacs' or the `site-start.el' file if you can.
Replace MET with your local timezone.
This is a problem with a partially loaded hyperbole. Try adding:
(require 'hmouse-drv)
where you load hyperbole and the problem should go away.
This problem has been fixed in 19.15, and was due to a not easily reproducible race condition.
David Moore writes:
Two things you can do:
1) C level:
When you see it going mad like this, you might want to use gdb from an 'xterm' to attach to the running process and get a stack trace. To do this just run:
gdb /path/to/xemacs/xemacs ####Where
####is the process id of your xemacs, instead of specifying the core. When gdb attaches, the xemacs will stop [1] and you can type `where' in gdb to get a stack trace as usual. To get things moving again, you can just type `quit' in gdb. It'll tell you the program is running and ask if you want to quit anyways. Say 'y' and it'll quit and have your emacs continue from where it was at.2) Lisp level:
Turn on debug-on-quit early on. When you think things are going slow hit C-g and it may pop you in the debugger so you can see what routine is running. Press `c' to get going again.
debug-on-quit doesn't work if something's turned on inhibit-quit or in some other strange cases.
Movemail used to work fine in 19.14 but has stopped working in 19.15 and 20.x. I am using Linux.
SL Baur writes:
Movemail on Linux used to default to using flock file locking. With 19.15 and later versions it now defaults to using
.lockfile locking. If this is not appropriate for your system, edit src/s/linux.h and uncomment the line that reads:#define MAIL_USE_FLOCK
This is part 3 of the XEmacs Frequently Asked Questions list. This section is devoted to Customization and screen settings.
How can `.emacs' determine which of the family of Emacsen I am using?
To determine if you are currently running GNU Emacs 18, GNU Emacs 19, XEmacs 19, XEmacs 20, or Epoch, and use appropriate code, check out the example given in `etc/sample.emacs'. There are other nifty things in there as well!
For all new code, all you really need to do is:
(defvar running-xemacs (string-match "XEmacs\\|Lucid" emacs-version))
I know I can evaluate Elisp expressions from *scratch* buffer
with C-j after the expression. How do I do it from another
buffer?
Press M-: (the default binding of eval-expression), and
enter the expression to the minibuffer. In XEmacs prior to 19.15
eval-expression used to be a disabled command by default. If
this is the case, upgrade your XEmacs.
(setq tab-width 6) behaves oddly.
If you put (setq tab-width 6) in your `.emacs' file it does
not work! Is there a reason for this? If you do it at the EVAL prompt
it works fine!! How strange.
Use setq-default instead, since tab-width is
all-buffer-local.
load-path?Here are two ways to do that, one that puts your directories at the front of the load-path, the other at the end:
;;; Add things at the beginning of the load-path, do not add
;;; duplicate directories:
(pushnew "bar" load-path :test 'equal)
(pushnew "foo" load-path :test 'equal)
;;; Add things at the end, unconditionally
(setq load-path (nconc load-path '("foo" "bar")))
keith (k.p.) hanlan writes:
To add directories using Unix shell metacharacters use `expand-file-name' like this:
(push (expand-file-name "~keithh/.emacsdir") load-path)
Use the following elisp:
(fboundp 'foo)
It's almost always a mistake to test emacs-version or any similar
variables.
Instead, use feature-tests, such as featurep, boundp,
fboundp, or even simple behavioural tests, eg.:
(defvar foo-old-losing-code-p
(condition-case nil (progn (losing-code t) nil)
(wrong-number-of-arguments t)))
There is an incredible amount of broken code out there which could work much better more often in more places if it did the above instead of trying to divine its environment from the value of one variable.
(face-list) to a buffer?
It would be good having it in a buffer, as the output of
(face-list) is too wide to fit to a minibuffer.
Evaluate the expression in the `*scratch*' buffer with point after the rightmost paren and typing C-j.
If the minibuffer smallness is the only problem you encounter, you can simply press C-h l to get the former minibuffer contents in a buffer.
Save Options.For XEmacs 19.14 and previous:
John Mann writes:
You have to go to Options->Menubar Appearance and unselect `Frame-Local Font Menu'. If this option is selected, font changes are only applied to the current frame and do not get saved when you save options.
For XEmacs 19.15 and later:
Implement the above as well as set the following in your `.emacs'
(setq options-save-faces t)
Vin Shelton writes:
(setq initial-frame-plist '(minibuffer nil))
(setq default-frame-plist '(minibuffer nil))
(setq default-minibuffer-frame
(make-frame
'(minibuffer only
width 86
height 1
menubar-visible-p nil
default-toolbar-visible-p nil
name "minibuffer"
top -2
left -2
has-modeline-p nil)))
(frame-notice-user-settings)
NOTE: The single minibuffer frame may not be to everyone's taste, and there any number of other XEmacs options settings that may make it difficult or inconvenient to use.
Customize?Starting with XEmacs 20.2 there is new system 'Customize' for customizing XEmacs options.
You can access Customize from the Options menu
or invoking one of customize commands by typing eg.
M-x customize, M-x customize-face,
M-x customize-variable or M-x customize-apropos.
Starting with XEmacs 20.3 there is also new `browser' mode for Customize. Try it out with M-x customize-browse
Search through the `NEWS' file for `X Resources'. A fairly comprehensive list is given after it.
In addition, an `app-defaults' file is supplied, `etc/Emacs.ad' listing the defaults. The file `etc/sample.Xdefaults' gives a set of defaults that you might consider. It is essentially the same as `etc/Emacs.ad' but some entries are slightly altered. Be careful about installing the contents of this file into your `.Xdefaults' or `.Xresources' file if you use GNU Emacs under X11 as well.
You can test the return value of the function (device-class), as
in:
(when (eq (device-class) 'color) (set-face-foreground 'font-lock-comment-face "Grey") (set-face-foreground 'font-lock-string-face "Red") .... )
(set-screen-width) worked in 19.6, but not in 19.13?
In Lucid Emacs 19.6 I did (set-screen-width characters) and
(set-screen-height lines) in my `.emacs' instead of
specifying Emacs*EmacsScreen.geometry in my
`.Xdefaults' but
this does not work in XEmacs 19.13.
These two functions now take frame arguments:
(set-frame-width (selected-frame) characters) (set-frame-height (selected-frame) lines)
Emacs*EmacsScreen.geometry in `.emacs' does not work.
In XEmacs 19.11 I specified Emacs*EmacsScreen.geometry in
my `.emacs' but this does not work in XEmacs 19.15.
We have switched from using the term screen to using the term frame.
The correct entry for your `.Xdefaults' is now:
Emacs*EmacsFrame.geometry
I'd like the icon to just say `XEmacs', and not include the name of the current file in it.
Add the following line to your `.emacs':
(setq frame-icon-title-format "XEmacs")
I'd like to have the window title area display the full directory/name of the current buffer file and not just the name.
Add the following line to your `.emacs':
(setq frame-title-format "%S: %f")
A more sophisticated title might be:
(setq frame-title-format
'("%S: " (buffer-file-name "%f"
(dired-directory dired-directory "%b"))))
That is, use the file name, or the dired-directory, or the buffer name.
When I run `xterm -name junk', I get an xterm whose class name according to xprop, is `junk'. This is the way it's supposed to work, I think. When I run `xemacs -name junk' the class name is not set to `junk'. It's still `emacs'. What does `xemacs -name' really do? The reason I ask is that my window manager (fvwm) will make a window sticky and I use XEmacs to read my mail. I want that XEmacs window to be sticky, without having to use the window manager's function to set the window sticky. What gives?
`xemacs -name' sets the application name for the program (that is,
the thing which normally comes from `argv[0]'). Using `-name'
is the same as making a copy of the executable with that new name. The
WM_CLASS property on each frame is set to the frame-name, and the
application-class. So, if you did `xemacs -name FOO' and then
created a frame named BAR, you'd get an X window with WM_CLASS =
( "BAR", "Emacs"). However, the resource hierarchy for this
widget would be:
Name: FOO .shell .container .BAR Class: Emacs .TopLevelEmacsShell.EmacsManager.EmacsFrame
instead of the default
Name: xemacs.shell .container .emacs Class: Emacs .TopLevelEmacsShell.EmacsManager.EmacsFrame
It is arguable that the first element of WM_CLASS should be set to the application-name instead of the frame-name, but I think that's less flexible, since it does not give you the ability to have multiple frames with different WM_CLASS properties. Another possibility would be for the default frame name to come from the application name instead of simply being `emacs'. However, at this point, making that change would be troublesome: it would mean that many users would have to make yet another change to their resource files (since the default frame name would suddenly change from `emacs' to `xemacs', or whatever the executable happened to be named), so we'd rather avoid it.
To make a frame with a particular name use:
(make-frame '((name . "the-name")))
When I start up XEmacs using `-iconic' it doesn't work right.
Using `-unmapped' on the command line, and setting the
initiallyUnmapped X Resource don't seem to help much either...
Ben Wing writes:
Ugh, this stuff is such an incredible mess that I've about given up getting it to work. The principal problem is numerous window-manager bugs...
How can I set the most commonly used color options from my `.emacs' instead of from my `.Xdefaults'?
Like this:
(set-face-background 'default "bisque") ; frame background (set-face-foreground 'default "black") ; normal text (set-face-background 'zmacs-region "red") ; When selecting w/ ; mouse (set-face-foreground 'zmacs-region "yellow") (set-face-font 'default "*courier-bold-r*120-100-100*") (set-face-background 'highlight "blue") ; Ie when selecting ; buffers (set-face-foreground 'highlight "yellow") (set-face-background 'modeline "blue") ; Line at bottom ; of buffer (set-face-foreground 'modeline "white") (set-face-font 'modeline "*bold-r-normal*140-100-100*") (set-face-background 'isearch "yellow") ; When highlighting ; while searching (set-face-foreground 'isearch "red") (setq x-pointer-foreground-color "black") ; Adds to bg color, ; so keep black (setq x-pointer-background-color "blue") ; This is color ; you really ; want ptr/crsr
Note that you should use `Emacs.' and not `Emacs*' when setting face values.
In `.Xdefaults':
Emacs.default.attributeFont: -*-*-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-m-*-*-* Emacs*menubar*font: fixed Emacs.modeline.attributeFont: fixed
This is confusing because modeline is a face, and can be found listed
with all faces in the current mode by using M-x set-face-font
(enter) ?. It uses the face specification of attributeFont,
while menubar is a normal X thing that uses the specification
font. With Motif it may be necessary to use fontList
instead of font.
How can I set the background/foreground colors when highlighting a region?
You can change the face zmacs-region either in your
`.Xdefaults':
Emacs.zmacs-region.attributeForeground: firebrick Emacs.zmacs-region.attributeBackground: lightseagreen
or in your `.emacs':
(set-face-background 'zmacs-region "red") (set-face-foreground 'zmacs-region "yellow")
I'm using Netscape (or another color grabber like XEmacs); is there anyway to limit the number of available colors in the color map?
XEmacs 19.13 didn't have such a mechanism (unlike netscape, or other color-hogs). One solution is to start XEmacs prior to netscape, since this will prevent Netscape from grabbing all colors (but Netscape will complain). You can use the flags for Netscape, like -mono, -ncols <#> or -install (for mono, limiting to <#> colors, or for using a private color map). Since Netscape will take the entire colormap and never release it, the only reasonable way to run it is with `-install'.
If you have the money, another solution would be to use a truecolor or direct color video.
Starting with XEmacs 19.14, XEmacs uses the closest available color if the colormap is full, so it's O.K. now to start Netscape first.
XEmacs tries to automatically determine whether your tty supports color, but sometimes guesses wrong. In that case, you can make XEmacs Do The Right Thing using this Lisp code:
(if (eq 'tty (device-type))
(set-device-class nil 'color))
Juan Villacis writes:
There are several ways to do it. For example, you could specify a default pixmap image to use in your `~/.Xresources', e.g.,
Emacs*EmacsFrame.default.attributeBackgroundPixmap: /path/to/image.xpmand then reload ~/.Xresources and restart XEmacs. Alternatively, since each face can have its own pixmap background, a better way would be to set a face's pixmap within your XEmacs init file, e.g.,
(set-face-background-pixmap 'default "/path/to/image.xpm") (set-face-background-pixmap 'bold "/path/to/another_image.xpm")and so on. You can also do this interactively via M-x edit-faces.
(set-specifier has-modeline-p nil)
Starting with XEmacs 19.14 the modeline responds to mouse clicks, so if you haven't liked or used the modeline in the past, you might want to try the new version out.
Add the following line to your `.emacs' file to display the line number:
(line-number-mode 1)
Use the following to display the column number:
(column-number-mode 1)
Or select from the Options menu
Customize->Emacs->Editing->Basics->Line Number Mode
and/or
Customize->Emacs->Editing->Basics->Column Number Mode
Or type M-x customize RET editing-basics RET.
Add the following line to your `.emacs' file to display the time:
(display-time)
See Customize from the Options menu for customization.
With AUC TeX, fast typing is hard because the current chapter, section etc. are given in the modeline. How can I turn this off?
It's not AUC TeX, it comes from func-menu in `func-menu.el'.
Add this code to your `.emacs' to turn it off:
(setq fume-display-in-modeline-p nil)
Or just add a hook to TeX-mode-hook to turn it off only for TeX
mode:
(add-hook 'TeX-mode-hook '(lambda () (setq fume-display-in-modeline-p nil)))
David Hughes writes:
If you have 19.14 or later, try this instead; you'll still get the function name displayed in the modeline, but it won't attempt to keep track when you modify the file. To refresh when it gets out of synch, you simply need click on the `Rescan Buffer' option in the function-menu.
(setq-default fume-auto-rescan-buffer-p nil)
You can use something like the following:
(add-hook 'lisp-mode-hook
(lambda ()
(set-face-background 'modeline "red" (current-buffer))))
Then, when editing a Lisp file (i.e. when in Lisp mode), the modeline colors change from the default set in your `.emacs'. The change will only be made in the buffer you just entered (which contains the Lisp file you are editing) and will not affect the modeline colors anywhere else.
Notes:
-hook. eg. c-mode-hook,
c++-mode-hook, emacs-lisp-mode-hook (used for your `.emacs' or a
`xx.el' file), lisp-interaction-mode-hook (the `*scratch*'
buffer), text-mode-hook, etc.
add-hook, not (setq c-mode-hook xxxx),
otherwise you will erase anything that anybody has already put on the
hook.
(set-face-font 'modeline font),
eg. (set-face-font 'modeline "*bold-r-normal*140-100-100*"
(current-buffer)) if you wish the modeline font to vary based on the
current mode.
This works in 19.15 as well, but there are additional modeline faces,
modeline-buffer-id, modeline-mousable, and
modeline-mousable-minor-mode, which you may want to customize.
The support for this was revamped for 19.14. Use the command M-x make-frame-on-display. This command is also on the File menu in the menubar.
XEmacs 19.14 and later also have the command make-frame-on-tty
which will establish a connection to any tty-like device. Opening the
TTY devices should be left to gnuclient, though.
If you're not running at least XEmacs 19.14, you can't. Otherwise check
out the gnuattach program supplied with XEmacs. Starting with
XEmacs 20.3, gnuattach and gnudoit functionality is
provided by gnuclient.
Also See section Q5.0.12: How do I disable gnuserv from opening a new frame?.
As an example, say you want the paste key on a Sun keyboard to insert the current Primary X selection at point. You can accomplish this with:
(define-key global-map [f18] 'x-insert-selection)
However, this only works if there is a current X selection (the
selection will be highlighted). The functionality I like is for the
paste key to insert the current X selection if there is one,
otherwise insert the contents of the clipboard. To do this you need to
pass arguments to x-insert-selection. This is done by wrapping
the call in a 'lambda form:
(global-set-key [f18] (lambda () (interactive) (x-insert-selection t nil)))
This binds the f18 key to a generic functional object. The interactive spec is required because only interactive functions can be bound to keys.
For the FAQ example you could use:
(global-set-key [(control ?.)] (lambda () (interactive) (scroll-up 1))) (global-set-key [(control ? ;)] (lambda () (interactive) (scroll-up -1)))
This is fine if you only need a few functions within the lambda body. If you're doing more it's cleaner to define a separate function as in question 3.5.3 (See section Q3.5.3: How do I bind C-. and C-; to scroll one line up and down?).
Add the following line to your `.emacs' file:
(setq next-line-add-newlines nil)
This has been the default setting in XEmacs for some time.
Add the following (Thanks to Richard Mlynarik and Wayne Newberry) to `.emacs':
(defun scroll-up-one-line () (interactive) (scroll-up 1)) (defun scroll-down-one-line () (interactive) (scroll-down 1)) (global-set-key [(control ?.)] 'scroll-up-one-line) ; C-. (global-set-key [(control ? ;)] 'scroll-down-one-line) ; C-;
The key point is that you can only bind simple functions to keys; you can not bind a key to a function that you're also passing arguments to. (See section 3.5: The Keyboard for a better answer).
I cannot manage to globally bind my Delete key to something other than the default. How does one do this?
(defun foo () (interactive) (message "You hit DELETE")) (global-set-key 'delete 'foo)
However, some modes explicitly bind Delete, so you would need to
add a hook that does local-set-key for them. If what you want to
do is make the Backspace and Delete keys work more PC/Motif-like, then
take a look at the `delbs.el' package.
New in XEmacs 19.14 is a variable called key-translation-map
which makes it easier to bind Delete. `delbs.el' is a
good example of how to do this correctly.
Also See section Q3.5.10: Can I turn on sticky modifier keys?.
Can the cursor keys scroll the screen a line at a time, rather than the default half page jump? I tend it to find it disorienting.
Try this:
(defun scroll-one-line-up (&optional arg) "Scroll the selected window up (forward in the text) one line (or N lines)." (interactive "p") (scroll-up (or arg 1))) (defun scroll-one-line-down (&optional arg) "Scroll the selected window down (backward in the text) one line (or N)." (interactive "p") (scroll-down (or arg 1))) (global-set-key [up] 'scroll-one-line-up) (global-set-key [down] 'scroll-one-line-down)
The following will also work but will affect more than just the cursor keys (i.e. C-n and C-p):
(setq scroll-step 1)
Starting with XEmacs-20.3 you can also change this with Customize.
Select from the Options menu
Customize->Emacs->Environment->Windows->Scroll Step... or type
M-x customize RET windows RET.
The following works in GNU Emacs 19:
(global-set-key [help] 'help-command);; Help
The following works in XEmacs 19.15 with the addition of shift:
(global-set-key [(shift help)] 'help-command);; Help
But it doesn't work alone. This is in the file `PROBLEMS' which should have come with your XEmacs installation: Emacs ignores the help key when running OLWM.
OLWM grabs the help key, and retransmits it to the appropriate
client using
XSendEvent. Allowing Emacs to react to synthetic
events is a security hole, so this is turned off by default. You can
enable it by setting the variable x-allow-sendevents to t. You
can also cause fix this by telling OLWM to not grab the help key, with
the null binding OpenWindows.KeyboardCommand.Help:.
One way is to use the package x-compose. Then you can use
sequences like Compose " a to get ä, etc.
Another way is to use the iso-insert package, provided in XEmacs
19.15 and later. Then you can use sequences like C-x 8 " a to get
ä, etc.
Glynn Clements writes:
It depends upon your X server.
Generally, the simplest way is to define a key as Multi_key with xmodmap, e.g.
xmodmap -e 'keycode 0xff20 = Multi_key'You will need to pick an appropriate keycode. Use xev to find out the keycodes for each key.
[NB: On a `Windows' keyboard, recent versions of XFree86 automatically define the right `Windows' key as Multi_key'.]
Once you have Multi_key defined, you can use e.g.
Multi a ' => á Multi e " => ë Multi c , => çetc.
Also, recent versions of XFree86 define various AltGr-<key> combinations as dead keys, i.e.
AltGr [ => dead_diaeresis AltGr ] => dead_tilde AltGr ; => dead_acuteetc.
Running `xmodmap -pk' will list all of the defined keysyms.
(global-set-key [delete-forward] 'delete-char) complain?
Why does (define-key global-map [ delete-forward ] 'delete-char)
complain of not being able to bind an unknown key?
Try this instead:
(define-key global-map [delete_forward] 'delete-char)
and it will work.
What you are seeing above is a bug due to code that is trying to check for GNU Emacs syntax like:
(define-key global-map [C-M-a] 'delete-char)
which otherwise would cause no errors but would not result in the expected behavior.
This bug has been fixed in 19.14.
With XEmacs-20.2 use the delbs package:
(require 'delbs)
This will give you the functions delbs-enable-delete-forward to
set things up, and delbs-disable-delete-forward to revert to
"normal" behavior. Note that delbackspace package is obsolete.
Starting with XEmacs-20.3 better solution is to set variable
delete-key-deletes-forward to t. You can also change this with
Customize. Select from the Options menu
Customize->Emacs->Editing->Basics->Delete Key Deletes Forward or
type M-x customize RET editing-basics RET.
Also See section Q3.5.4: Globally binding Delete?.
Yes, with (setq modifier-keys-are-sticky t). This will give the
effect of being able to press and release Shift and have the next
character typed come out in upper case. This will affect all the other
modifier keys like Control and Meta as well.
Ben Wing writes:
One thing about the sticky modifiers is that if you move the mouse out of the frame and back in, it cancels all currently "stuck" modifiers.
Say you want to map C-right to forward-word:
Sam Steingold writes:
; both XEmacs and Emacs (define-key global-map [(control right)] 'forward-word)or
; Emacs only (define-key global-map [C-right] 'forward-word)or
; ver > 20, both (define-key global-map (kbd "C-<right>") 'forward-word)
I'd like to have the bar cursor a little thicker, as I tend to "lose" it often.
For a 1 pixel bar cursor, use:
(setq bar-cursor t)
For a 2 pixel bar cursor, use:
(setq bar-cursor 'anything-else)
Starting with XEmacs-20.3 you can also change these with Customize.
Select from the Options menu
Customize->Emacs->Environment->Display->Bar Cursor... or type
M-x customize RET display RET.
You can use a color to make it stand out better:
Emacs*cursorColor: Red
(setq bar-cursor nil)
Starting with XEmacs-20.3 you can also change this with Customize.
Select from the Options menu
Customize->Emacs->Environment->Display->Bar Cursor... or type
M-x customize RET display RET.
If you are running a version of XEmacs older than 19.14, no. Otherwise you can do the following:
(blink-cursor-mode)
This function toggles between a steady cursor and a blinking cursor. You may also set this mode from the menu bar by selecting `Options => Frame Appearance => Blinking Cursor'. Remember to save options.
I keep hitting the middle mouse button by accident and getting stuff pasted into my buffer so how can I turn this off?
Here is an alternative binding, whereby the middle mouse button selects
(but does not cut) the expression under the mouse. Clicking middle on a
left or right paren will select to the matching one. Note that you can
use define-key or global-set-key.
(defun mouse-set-point-and-select (event) "Sets the point at the mouse location, then marks following form" (interactive "@e") (mouse-set-point event) (mark-sexp 1)) (define-key global-map [button2] 'mouse-set-point-and-select)
Use, for instance, [(meta button1)]. For example, here is a common
setting for Common Lisp programmers who use the bundled ilisp
package, whereby meta-button1 on a function name will find the file where
the function name was defined, and put you at that location in the source
file.
[Inside a function that gets called by the lisp-mode-hook and ilisp-mode-hook]
(local-set-key [(meta button1)] 'edit-definitions-lisp)
I do C-x C-b to get a list of buffers and the entries get highlighted when I move the mouse over them but clicking the left mouse does not do anything.
Use the middle mouse button.
The following code will replace the default popup on button3:
(global-set-key [button3] 'popup-buffer-menu)
We don't know. It's a bug. There does seem to be a work-around, however. Try running xclipboard first. It appears to fix the problem even if you exit it. (This should be mostly fixed in 19.13, but we haven't yet verified that).
By default XEmacs pastes X selections where the mouse pointer is. How do I disable this?
Examine the function mouse-yank, by typing C-h f mouse-yank
RET.
To get XEmacs to paste at the text cursor, add this your `.emacs':
(setq mouse-yank-at-point t)
Starting with XEmacs-20.2 you can also change this with Customize.
Select from the Options menu
Customize->Emacs->Editing->Mouse->Yank At Point... or type
M-x customize RET mouse RET.
Just select the region normally, then use the rectangle commands (e.g.
kill-rectangle on it. The region does not highlight as a
rectangle, but the commands work just fine.
To actually sweep out rectangular regions with the mouse you can use
mouse-track-do-rectangle which is assigned to M-button1.
Then use rectangle commands.
You can also do the following to change default behavior to sweep out rectangular regions:
(setq mouse-track-rectangle-p t)
Starting with XEmacs-20.2 you can also change this with Customize.
Select from the Options menu
Customize->Emacs->Editing->Mouse->Track Rectangle... or type
M-x customize RET mouse RET.
mouse-track-do-rectangle: (event) -- an interactive compiled Lisp function. Like `mouse-track' but selects rectangles instead of regions.
It actually doesn't. It leaves the region visible for a second so that you can see what area is being yanked. If you start working, though, it will immediately complete its operation. In other words, it will only delay for a second if you let it.
If you are running XEmacs 19.13 and earlier, add this command to your `.emacs'.
(set-menubar nil)
Starting with XEmacs 19.14 the preferred method is:
(set-specifier menubar-visible-p nil)
For an extensive menubar, add this line to your `.emacs':
(load "big-menubar")
If you'd like to write your own, this file provides as good a set of examples as any to start from. The file is located in `lisp/packages/big-menubar.el' in the XEmacs installation directory.
Buffers List?Add the following to your `.emacs' (suit to fit):
(setq buffers-menu-max-size 20)
For no limit, use an argument of `nil'.
Starting with XEmacs-20.3 you can also change this with Customize.
Select from the Options menu
Customize->Emacs->Environment->Menu->Buffers Menu->Max Size... or
type M-x customize RET buffers-menu RET.
Emacs*menubar*font are not working?
I am trying to use a resource like Emacs*menubar*font to set the
font of the menubar but it's not working.
If you are using the real Motif menubar, this resource is not recognized; you have to say:
Emacs*menubar*fontList: FONT
If you are using the Lucid menubar, the former resource will be recognized only if the latter resource is unset. This means that the resource
*fontList: FONT
will override
Emacs*menubar*font: FONT
even though the latter is more specific.
Try something like:
(defun my-toggle-toolbar ()
(interactive)
(set-specifier default-toolbar-visible-p
(not (specifier-instance default-toolbar-visible-p))))
(global-set-key "\C-xT" 'my-toggle-toolbar)
There are redisplay bugs in 19.14 that may make the preceding result in a messed-up display, especially for frames with multiple windows. You may need to resize the frame before XEmacs completely realizes the toolbar is really gone.
Thanks to Martin Buchholz for the correct code.
To disable them for all frames, add the following line to your `.Xdefaults':
Emacs.scrollBarWidth: 0
Or select from the Options menu Frame Appearance->Scrollbars.
Remember to save options.
To turn the scrollbar off on a per-frame basis, use the following function:
(set-specifier scrollbar-width 0 (selected-frame))
You can actually turn the scrollbars on at any level you want by substituting for (selected-frame) in the above command. For example, to turn the scrollbars off only in a single buffer:
(set-specifier scrollbar-width 0 (current-buffer))
In XEmacs versions prior to 19.14, you had to use the hairier construct:
(set-specifier scrollbar-width (cons (selected-frame) 0))
Here's a recap of how to use resources to change your scrollbar colors:
! Motif scrollbars Emacs*XmScrollBar.Background: skyblue Emacs*XmScrollBar.troughColor: lightgray ! Athena scrollbars Emacs*Scrollbar.Foreground: skyblue Emacs*Scrollbar.Background: lightgray
Note the capitalization of Scrollbar for the Athena widget.
When I move the scrollbar in an XEmacs window, it moves the point as well, which should not be the default behavior. Is this a bug or a feature? Can I disable it?
The current behavior is a feature, not a bug. Point remains at the same buffer position as long as that position does not scroll off the screen. In that event, point will end up in either the upper-left or lower-left hand corner.
This cannot be changed.
By the same token, how can I turn it off in specific modes?
To do this, add to your `.emacs' file:
(require 'auto-show)
Then do (setq truncate-lines t) in the mode-hooks for any modes
in which you want lines truncated.
More precisely: If truncate-lines is nil, horizontal scrollbars
will never appear. Otherwise, they will appear only if the value of
scrollbar-height for that buffer/window/etc. is non-zero. If you
do
(set-specifier scrollbar-height 0)
then horizontal scrollbars will not appear in truncated buffers unless the package specifically asked for them.
Automatic horizontal scrolling is now standard, starting with 19.14.
The zmacs mode allows for what some might call gratuitous
highlighting for selected regions (either by setting mark or by using
the mouse). This is the default behavior. To turn off, add the
following line to your `.emacs' file:
(setq zmacs-regions nil)
Starting with XEmacs-20.2 you can also change this with Customize. Select
from the Options menu Customize->Emacs->Editing->Basics->Zmacs
Regions or type M-x customize RET editing-basics RET.
To change the face for selection, look at Options->Customize on
the menubar.
I want to change things so that if I select some text and start typing, the typed text replaces the selected text, similar to Motif.
You want to use something called pending delete. Pending delete is what happens when you select a region (with the mouse or keyboard) and you press a key to replace the selected region by the key you typed. Usually backspace kills the selected region.
To get this behavior, add the following line to your `.emacs':
(turn-on-pending-delete)
Note that this will work with both Backspace and Delete.
I do not like my text highlighted while I am doing isearch as I am not able to see what's underneath. How do I turn it off?
Put the following in your `.emacs':
(setq isearch-highlight nil)
Starting with XEmacs-20.2 you can also change this with Customize. Type M-x customize-variable RET isearch-highlight RET.
Note also that isearch-highlight affects query-replace and ispell.
Instead of disabling isearch-highlight you may find that a better
solution consists of customizing the isearch face.
Put this in your .emacs:
(setq zmacs-regions nil)
Warning: This command turns off all region highlighting.
Also See section 3.10: Text Selections.
This has been fixed by default starting with XEmacs-20.3.
With older versions you can turn this feature (if it indeed is a feature) off like this:
(defadvice scroll-up (around scroll-up freeze)
(interactive "_P")
(let ((zmacs-region-stays t))
(if (interactive-p)
(condition-case nil
ad-do-it
(end-of-buffer (goto-char (point-max))))
ad-do-it)))
(defadvice scroll-down (around scroll-down freeze)
(interactive "_P")
(let ((zmacs-region-stays t))
(if (interactive-p)
(condition-case nil
ad-do-it
(beginning-of-buffer (goto-char (point-min))))
ad-do-it)))
Thanks to T. V. Raman for assistance in deriving this answer.
This is part 4 of the XEmacs Frequently Asked Questions list. This section is devoted to major XEmacs subsystems.
Use vm-spool-files, like this for example:
(setq vm-spool-files '("/var/spool/mail/wing"
"netcom23.netcom.com:110:pass:wing:MYPASS"))
Of course substitute your actual password for MYPASS.
One possibility is to use procmail to split your mail before it gets to VM. I prefer this personally, since there are many strange and wonderful things one can do with procmail. Procmail may be found at ftp://ftp.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/pub/packages/procmail/.
Also see the Mail Filtering FAQ at: ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/mail/filtering-faq.
John Turner writes:
Use the following:
(setq vm-auto-get-new-mail 60)
Obsolete question, left blank to avoid renumbering.
(setq mail-archive-file-name "~/outbox")
I have various addresses at which I receive mail. How can I tell VM to ignore them when doing a "reply-all"?
Set vm-reply-ignored-addresses to a list, like
(setq vm-reply-ignored-addresses
'("wing@nuspl@nvwls.cc.purdue.edu,netcom[0-9]*.netcom.com"
"wing@netcom.com" "wing@666.com"))
Note that each string is a regular expression.
VM has both a homepage and a FAQ.
VM has its own newsgroups gnu.emacs.vm.info and gnu.emacs.vm.bug.
My mailbox lives at the office on a big honkin server. My regular INBOX lives on my honkin desktop machine. I now can PPP to the office from home which is far from honking... I'd like to be able to read mail at home without storing it here and I'd like to use xemacs and VM at home... Is there a recommended setup?
Joseph J. Nuspl Jr. writes:
There are several ways to do this.
- Set your display to your home machine and run dxpc or one of the other X compressors.
- NFS mount your desktop machine on your home machine and modify your pop command on your home machine to rsh to your desktop machine and actually do the pop get's.
- Run a POP server on your desktop machine as well and do a sort of two tiered POP get.
William Perry adds:
Or you could run a pop script periodically on your desktop machine, and just use ange-ftp or NFS to get to your mailbox. I used to do this all the time back at IU.
Quoting the XEmacs PROBLEMS file:
rmail and VM get new mail from `/usr/spool/mail/$USER' using a program called
movemail. This program interlocks with/bin/mailusing the protocol defined by/bin/mail.There are two different protocols in general use. One of them uses the
flocksystem call. The other involves creating a lock file;movemailmust be able to write in `/usr/spool/mail' in order to do this. You control which one is used by defining, or not defining, the macroMAIL_USE_FLOCKin `config.h' or the m- or s- file it includes.IF YOU DON'T USE THE FORM OF INTERLOCKING THAT IS NORMAL ON YOUR SYSTEM, YOU CAN LOSE MAIL!
If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in `/usr/spool/mail', you may need to make
movemailsetgid to a suitable group such as `mail'. You can use these commands (as root):chgrp mail movemail chmod 2755 movemailIf your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in `/usr/spool/mail', you may need to make
movemailsetgid to a suitable group such aschgrp mail movemail chmod 2755 movemailInstallation normally copies movemail from the build directory to an installation directory which is usually under `/usr/local/lib'. The installed copy of
movemailis usually in the directory `/usr/local/lib/emacs/VERSION/TARGET'. You must change the group and mode of the installed copy; changing the group and mode of the build directory copy is ineffective.
John.John S Cooper writes:
; Don't use multiple frames (setq vm-frame-per-composition nil) (setq vm-frame-per-folder nil) (setq vm-frame-per-edit nil) (setq vm-frame-per-summary nil)
For mh-e use the following:
(add-hook 'mh-show-mode-hook '(lambda ()
(smiley-region (point-min)
(point-max))))
WJCarpenter writes: For VM use the following:
(autoload 'smiley-region "smiley" nil t)
(add-hook 'vm-select-message-hook
'(lambda ()
(smiley-region (point-min)
(point-max))))
For tm use the following:
(autoload 'smiley-buffer "smiley" nil t) (add-hook 'mime-viewer/plain-text-preview-hook 'smiley-buffer)
giacomo boffi writes:
The meta-answer is to look into the file `vm-vars.el', in the vm directory of the lisp library.
`vm-vars.el' contains, initializes and carefully describes, with examples of usage, the plethora of user options that fully control VM's behavior.
Enter vm-vars,
forward-searchfor toolbar, find the variables that control the toolbar placement, appearance, existence, copy to your `.emacs' or `.vm' and modify according to the detailed instructions.The above also applies to all the various features of VM: search for some keywords, maybe the first you conjure isn't appropriate, find the appropriate variables, copy and experiment.
W3 is an advanced graphical browser written in Emacs lisp that runs on XEmacs. It has full support for cascaded style sheets, and more...
It has a home web page at http://www.cs.indiana.edu/elisp/w3/docs.html.
There is a long, well-written, detailed section in the W3 manual that describes how to do this. Look in the section entitled "Firewalls".
Yes, and much more. W3, as distributed with the latest XEmacs is a full-featured web browser.
The Gnus numbering issues are not meant for mere mortals to know them. If you feel you must enter the muddy waters of Gnus, visit the excellent FAQ, maintained by Justin Sheehy, at:
http://www.ccs.neu.edu/software/contrib/gnus/
See also Gnus home page
http://www.gnus.org/
Obsolete question, left blank to avoid renumbering.
The toolbar code to start Gnus opens the new frame--and it's a feature rather than a bug. If you don't like it, but would still like to click on the seemly icon, use the following code:
(defun toolbar-news () (gnus))
It will redefine the callback function of the icon to just call
gnus, without all the fancy frame stuff.
How do I change the From: line? I have set gnus-user-from-line
to
Gail Gurman <gail.gurman@sybase.com>
, but XEmacs Gnus doesn't use it. Instead it uses
Gail Mara Gurman gailg@deall
and then complains that it's incorrect. Also, as you perhaps can see, my Message-ID is screwy. How can I change that?
Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen writes:
Set
user-mail-addressto `gail.gurman@sybase.com' ormail-host-addressto `sybase.com'.
VM supports MIME natively.
You probably want to use the Tools for MIME (tm). See section Q4.3.2: What is TM and where do I get it? for details.
Trey Jackson has an Emacs & MIME web page at http://bmrc.berkeley.edu/~trey/emacs/mime.html.
Another possibility is RMIME. You may find RMIME at http://www.cinti.net/~rmoody/rmime/index.html.
TM stands for Tools for MIME and not Tiny MIME. TM integrates with all major XEmacs packages like Gnus (all flavors), VM, MH-E, and mailcrypt. It provides totally transparent and trouble-free MIME support. When appropriate a message will be decoded in place in an XEmacs buffer.
TM now comes as a package with XEmacs 19.16 and XEmacs 20.2.
TM was written by MORIOKA Tomohiko and KOBAYASHI Shuhei.
It is based on the work of UMEDA Masanobu, the original writer of GNUS.
The following information is from the `README':
tm is a MIME package for GNU Emacs. tm has following functions:
tm is available from following anonymous ftp sites:
Don't let the installation procedure & instructions stop you from trying this package out--it's much simpler than it looks, and once installed, trivial to use.
movemail program working?Ben Wing ben@666.com writes:
It wasn't chown'ed/chmod'd correctly.
Steve Baur writes:
Yes. Always use the movemail installed with your XEmacs. Failure to do so can result in lost mail.
Please refer to Jamie Zawinski's notes at http://home.netscape.com/eng/mozilla/2.0/relnotes/demo/movemail.html. In particular, this document will show you how to make Netscape use the version of movemail configured for your system by the person who built XEmacs.
pstogif is part of the latex2html package.
Jan Vroonhof writes:
latex2html is best found at the CTAN hosts and their mirrors in `tex-archive/support/latex2html'.
CTAN hosts are:
There is a good mirror at ftp.cdrom.com; ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/tex/ctan/support/latex2html/.
John Turner writes:
SPARCworks is SunSoft's development environment, comprising compilers (C, C++, FORTRAN 77, Fortran 90, Ada, and Pascal), a debugger, and other tools such as TeamWare (for configuration management), MakeTool, etc.
See http://www.sun.com/software/Developer-products/ for more info.
EOS stands for "Era on SPARCworks", but I don't know what Era stands for.
EOS is the integration of XEmacs with the SPARCworks debugger. It allows one to use an XEmacs frame to view code (complete with fontification, etc.), set breakpoints, print variables, etc., while using the SPARCworks debugger. It works very well and I use it all the time.
Chuck Thompson writes:
Era stood for "Emacs Rewritten Again". It was what we were calling the modified version of Lucid Emacs for Sun when I was dragged, er, allowed to work on this wonderful editor.
Martin Buchholz writes:
EOS is being replaced with a new graphical development environment called Sun WorkShop, which is currently (07/96) in Alpha Test. For more details, check out http://www.sun.com/software/Products/Developer-products/programs.html.
David N Gray writes:
The files in `lisp/energize' are to enable Emacs to interface with the "Energize Programming System", a C and C++ development environment, which was a product of Lucid, Inc. Tragically, Lucid went out of business in 1994, so although Energize is still a great system, if you don't already have it, there isn't any way to get it now. (Unless you happen to be in Japan; INS Engineering may still be selling it there. Tartan bought the rights to sell it in the rest of the world, but never did so.)
InfoDock is an integrated productivity toolset, mainly aimed at technical people. It is developed and supported by InfoDock Associates, a firm that offers custom support and development for InfoDock, XEmacs and GNU Emacs. ( http://www.infodock.com, info@infodock.com, +1 408 243 3300).
InfoDock is built atop the XEmacs variant of GNU Emacs and so has all of the power of Emacs, but with an easier to use and more comprehensive menu-based user interface. The bottom portion of this text describes how it differs from XEmacs and GNU Emacs from the Free Software Foundation.
InfoDock is aimed at people who want a free, turn-key productivity environment. Although InfoDock is customizable, it is not intended for people who like basic versions of Emacs which need to be customized extensively for local use; standard Emacs distributions are better for such uses. InfoDock is for those people who want a complete, pre-customized environment in one package, which they need not touch more than once or twice a year to update to new revisions.
InfoDock is pre-built for SPARC SunOS/Solaris systems, PA-RISC HP-UX, and Intel Linux systems. It is intended for use on a color display, although most features will work on monochrome monitors. Simply unpack InfoDock according to the instructions in the ID-INSTALL file and you are ready to run.
The InfoDock Manual is concise, yet sufficient as a user guide for users who have never used an Emacs-type editor before. For users who are already familiar with Emacs, it supplements the information in the GNU Emacs Manual.
InfoDock menus are much more extensive and more mature than standard Emacs menus. Each menu offers a `Manual' item which displays documentation associated with the menu's functions.
Four types of menubars are provided:
Most modes also include mode-specific popup menus. Additionally, region and rectangle popup menus are included.
`Hyperbole', the everyday information manager, is a core part of InfoDock. This provides context-sensitive mouse keys, a rolodex-type contact manager, programmable hypertext buttons, and an autonumbered outliner with embedded hyperlink anchors.
The `OO-Browser', a multi-language object-oriented code browser, is a standard part of InfoDock.
InfoDock saves a more extensive set of user options than other Emacs versions.
InfoDock inserts a useful file header in many file types, showing the author, summary, and last modification time of each file. A summary program can then be used to summarize all of the files in a directory, for easy MANIFEST file creation.
Your working set of buffers is automatically saved and restored (if you answer yes to a prompt) between InfoDock sessions.
Refined color choices for code highlighting are provided for both dark and light background display frames.
The C-z key prefix performs frame-based commands which parallel the C-x key prefix for window-based commands.
The Smart Menu system is included for producing command menus on dumb terminals.
Lisp libraries are better categorized according to function.
Extensions and improvements to many areas of Emacs are included, such as: paragraph filling, mail reading with Rmail, shell handling, outlining, code highlighting and browsing, and man page browsing.
InfoDock questions, answers and discussion should go to the mail list infodock@infodock.com. Use infodock-request@infodock.com to be added or removed from the list. Always include your InfoDock version number when sending help requests.
InfoDock is available across the Internet via anonymous FTP. To get it, first move to a directory into which you want the InfoDock archive files placed. We will call this <DIST-DIR>.
cd <DIST-DIR>
Ftp to ftp.xemacs.org (Internet Host ID = 128.174.252.16):
prompt> ftp ftp.xemacs.org
Login as `anonymous' with your own <user-id>@<site-name> as a password.
Name (ftp.xemacs.org): anonymous 331 Guest login ok, send your complete e-mail address as password. Password: -<your-user-id>@<your-domain> 230 Guest login ok, access restrictions apply.
Move to the location of the InfoDock archives:
ftp> cd pub/infodock
Set your transfer mode to binary:
ftp> bin 200 Type set to I.
Turn off prompting:
ftp> prompt Interactive mode off.
Retrieve the InfoDock archives that you want, either by using a `get <file>' for each file you want or by using the following to get a complete distribution, including all binaries:
ftp> mget ID-INSTALL ftp> mget id-*
Close the FTP connection:
ftp> quit 221 Goodbye.
Read the `ID-INSTALL' file which you just retrieved for step-by-step installation instructions.
AUC TeX is a package written by Per Abrahamsen. Starting with XEmacs 19.16, AUC TeX is bundled with XEmacs. The following information is from the `README' and website.
AUC TeX is an extensible package that supports writing and formatting TeX files for most variants of GNU Emacs. Many different macro packages are supported, including AMS TeX, LaTeX, and TeXinfo.
The most recent version is always available by ftp at ftp://sunsite.auc.dk/packages/auctex/auctex.tar.gz.
In case you don't have access to anonymous ftp, you can get it by an email request to ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com.
WWW users may want to check out the AUC TeX page at http://sunsite.auc.dk/auctex/.
Yes. Check out dismal (which stands for Dis' Mode Ain't Lotus) at ftp://cs.nyu.edu/pub/local/fox/dismal/.
Georges Brun-Cottan writes:
When byte compiling auctex-9.4g, you must use the command:
xemacs -batch -l lpath.el
Jan Vroonhof writes:
AUC TeX works fine on both stock Emacs and XEmacs has been doing so for a very very long time. This is mostly due to the work of Per Abrahamsen (clap clap) in particular his `easymenu' package. Which leads to what is probably the problem...
Most problems with AUC TeX are one of two things:
locate-library and remove old versions to make sure it
only finds the one that came with XEmacs.
The reason for an Emacs package not to be included in XEmacs is usually one or more of the following:
Is there any way I can get syntax highlighting for MatLab .m files? Can I "teach" emacs what words are MatLab commands, comments, etc. ?
Ulrich Elsner writes:
One way to do this (and much more) is by using the matlab mode.
Instructions on how to install this mode are included in this file.
This is part 5 of the XEmacs Frequently Asked Questions list. This section is devoted to anything that doesn't fit neatly into the other sections.
For most modes, font-lock is already set up and just needs to be turned on. This can be done by M-x font-lock-mode, or by having XEmacs automatically start it by adding lines like:
(add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook 'turn-on-font-lock) (add-hook 'dired-mode-hook 'turn-on-font-lock)
to your `.emacs'. See the file `etc/sample.emacs' for more examples.
See also Syntax Highlighting from the Options menu.
Remember to save options.
Well, first off, consider if you really want to do this. cc-mode is
much more powerful than the old c-mode. If you're having trouble
getting your old offsets to work, try using c-set-offset instead.
You might also consider using the package cc-compat.
But, if you still insist, add the following lines to your `.emacs':
(fmakunbound 'c-mode) (makunbound 'c-mode-map) (fmakunbound 'c++-mode) (makunbound 'c++-mode-map) (makunbound 'c-style-alist) (load-library "old-c-mode") (load-library "old-c++-mode")
This must be done before any other reference is made to either c-mode or c++-mode.
Use the following code in your `.emacs':
(setq-default font-lock-maximum-decoration t)
In versions of XEmacs prior to 19.14, you had to use a kludgy solution like this:
(setq c-font-lock-keywords c-font-lock-keywords-2
c++-font-lock-keywords c++-font-lock-keywords-2
lisp-font-lock-keywords lisp-font-lock-keywords-2)
It will work for C, C++ and Lisp.
See also Syntax Highlighting from the Options menu.
Remember to save options.
Put the following line in your `.emacs':
(setq indent-line-function 'indent-relative-maybe)
If you want to get fancy, try the filladapt package available
standard with XEmacs. Put this into your `.emacs':
(require 'filladapt) (add-hook 'text-mode-hook 'turn-on-filladapt-mode) ;;; and others ...
You can customize filling and adaptive filling with Customize.
Select from the Options menu
Customize->Emacs->->Editing->Fill->Fill...
or type M-x customize RET fill RET.
Note that well-behaving text-lookalike modes will run
text-mode-hook by default (e.g. that's what Message does). For
the nasty ones, you'll have to provide the add-hooks yourself.
Please note that the fa-extras package is no longer useful.
Try the following lisp in your `.emacs':
(setq default-major-mode 'text-mode) (setq text-mode-hook 'turn-on-auto-fill)
WARNING: note that changing the value of
default-major-mode from fundamental-mode can break a large
amount of built-in code that expects newly created buffers to be in
fundamental-mode. (Changing from fundamental-mode to
text-mode might not wreak too much havoc, but changing to
something more exotic like a lisp-mode would break many Emacs packages).
Note that Emacs by default starts up in buffer *scratch* in
initial-major-mode, which defaults to
lisp-interaction-mode. Thus adding the following form to your
Emacs init file will cause the initial *scratch* buffer to be put
into auto-fill'ed text-mode:
(setq initial-major-mode
(lambda ()
(text-mode)
(turn-on-auto-fill)))
Note that after your init file is loaded, if
inhibit-startup-message is nil (the default) and the
startup buffer is *scratch* then the startup message will be
inserted into *scratch*; it will be removed after a timeout by
erasing the entire *scratch* buffer. Keep in mind this default
usage of *scratch* if you desire any prior manipulation of
*scratch* from within your Emacs init file. In particular,
anything you insert into *scratch* from your init file will be
later erased. Also, if you change the mode of the *scratch*
buffer, be sure that this will not interfere with possible later
insertion of the startup message (e.g. if you put *scratch* into
a nonstandard mode that has automatic font lock rules, then the startup
message might get fontified in a strange foreign manner, e.g. as code in
some programming language).
In the *shell* buffer:
M-x rename-buffer RET *shell-1* RET M-x shell RET
This will then start a second shell. The key is that no buffer named
`*shell*' can exist. It might be preferable to use M-x
rename-uniquely to rename the *shell* buffer instead of M-x
rename-buffer.
I'm using the Emacs M-x shell function, and I would like to invoke and use a telnet session within it. Everything works fine except that now all `^M''s are filtered out by Emacs. Fixes?
Use M-x rsh or M-x telnet to open remote sessions rather
than doing rsh or telnet within the local shell buffer. Starting with
XEmacs-20.3 you can also use M-x ssh to open secure remote session
if you have ssh installed.
We don't know, but you can use tpu-edt emulation instead, which works fine and is a little fancier than the standard edt emulation. To do this, add the following line to your `.emacs':
(tpu-edt)
If you don't want it to replace C-h with an edt-style help menu add this as well:
(global-set-key [(control h)] 'help-for-help)
Our recommended VI emulator is viper. To make viper-mode the default, add this to your `.emacs':
(viper-mode)
Michael Kifer writes:
This should be added as close to the top of `.emacs' as you can get it, otherwise some minor modes may not get viper-ized.
Obsolete question, left blank to avoid renumbering
Filladapt 2.x is included in 19.15. In it filladapt is now a minor mode and minor modes are traditionally off by default. The following added to your `.emacs' will turn it on for all buffers:
(setq-default filladapt-mode t)
Use turn-on-filladapt-mode to turn Filladapt on in particular
major modes, like this:
(add-hook 'text-mode-hook 'turn-on-filladapt-mode)
If you set the gnuserv-frame variable to the frame that should be
used to display buffers that are pulled up, a new frame will not be
created. For example, you could put
(setq gnuserv-frame (selected-frame))
early on in your `.emacs', to ensure that the first frame created is the one used for your gnuserv buffers.
Starting in 19.15, there is an option to set the gnuserv target to
the current frame. See
Options->"Other Window" Location->Make current frame gnuserv target
Starting with XEmacs-20.3 you can also change this with Customize.
Select from the Options menu
Customize->Emacs->Environment->Gnuserv->Gnuserv Frame... or type
M-x customize RET gnuserv RET.
Put the following in your `.emacs' file to start the server:
(gnuserv-start)
Start your first XEmacs as usual. After that, you can do:
gnuclient randomfilename
from the command line to get your existing XEmacs process to open a new frame and visit randomfilename in that window. When you're done editing randomfilename, hit C-x # to kill the buffer and get rid of the frame.
See also man page of gnuclient.
Sometimes (i.e. it's not repeatable, and I can't work out why it happens) when I'm typing into shell mode, I hit return and only a portion of the command is given to the shell, and a blank prompt is returned. If I hit return again, the rest of the previous command is given to the shell.
Martin Buchholz writes:
There is a known problem with interaction between
cshand thefilecoption and XEmacs. You should add the following to your `.cshrc':if ( "$TERM" == emacs || "$TERM" == unknown ) unset filec
Barry A. Warsaw writes:
This can be had from http://www.python.org/ftp/emacs/.
auto-show-mode controls whether or not a horizontal scrollbar
magically appears when a line is too long to be displayed. This is
enabled by default. To turn it off, put the following in your
`.emacs':
(setq auto-show-mode nil) (setq-default auto-show-mode nil)
You can't. The info package does not provide for multiple info buffers.
Mark Daku writes:
It turns out I was using an older version of gnuserv. The installation didn't put the binary into the public bin directory. It put it in `lib/xemacs-19.14/hppa1.1-hp-hpux9.05/gnuserv'. Shouldn't it have been put in `bin/hppa1.1-hp-hpux9.0'?
David Kastrup writes:
The standard TeX modes leave much to be desired, and are somewhat leniently maintained. Serious TeX users use AUC TeX (See section 4.7: Other Unbundled Packages).
Jan Vroonhof writes:
Here is one of the solutions, we have this in a script called `etc/editclient.sh'.
#!/bin/sh if gnuclient -batch -eval t >/dev/null 2>&1 then exec gnuclient ${1+"$@"} else xemacs -unmapped -f gnuserv-start & until gnuclient -batch -eval t >/dev/null 2>&1 do sleep 1 done exec gnuclient ${1+"$@"} fiNote that there is a known problem when running XEmacs and 'gnuclient -nw' on the same TTY.
Erik Naggum writes;
Emacs has a legacy of keyboards that produced characters with modifier bits, and therefore map a variety of input systems into this scheme even today. XEmacs is instead optimized for X events. This causes an incompatibility in the way key sequences are specified, but both Emacs and XEmacs will accept a key sequence as a vector of lists of modifiers that ends with a key, e.g., to bind M-C-a, you would say
[(meta control a)]in both Emacsen. XEmacs has an abbreviated form for a single key, just (meta control a). Emacs has an abbreviated form for the Control and the Meta modifiers to string-characters (the ASCII characters), as in `\M-\C-a'. XEmacs users need to be aware that the abbreviated form works only for one-character key sequences, while Emacs users need to be aware that the string-character is rather limited. Specifically, the string-character can accommodate only 256 different values, 128 of which have the Meta modifier and 128 of which have not. In each of these blocks, only 32 characters have the Control modifier. Whereas[(meta control A)]differs from[(meta control a)]because the case differs, `\M-\C-a' and `\M-\C-A' do not. Programmers are advised to use the full common form, both because it is more readable and less error-prone, and because it is supported by both Emacsen.
Another (even safer) way to be sure of the key-sequences is to use the
read-kbd-macro function, which takes a string like `C-c
<up>', and converts it to the internal key representation of the Emacs
you use. The function is available both on XEmacs and GNU Emacs.
I wonder if there is an interactive function that can generate fake keyboard events. This way, I could simply map them inside XEmacs.
This seems to work:
(defun cg--generate-char-event (ch) "Generate an event, as if ch has been typed" (dispatch-event (character-to-event ch))) ;; Backspace and Delete stuff (global-set-key [backspace] (lambda () (interactive) (cg--generate-char-event 127))) (global-set-key [unknown_keysym_0x4] (lambda () (interactive) (cg--generate-char-event 4)))
read-kbd-macro in more detail?
The read-kbd-macro function returns the internal Emacs
representation of a human-readable string (which is its argument).
Thus:
(read-kbd-macro "C-c C-a") => [(control ?c) (control ?a)] (read-kbd-macro "C-c C-. <up>") => [(control ?c) (control ?.) up]
In GNU Emacs the same forms will be evaluated to what GNU Emacs
understands internally--the sequences "\C-x\C-c" and [3
67108910 up], respectively.
The exact human-readable syntax is defined in the docstring of
edmacro-mode. I'll repeat it here, for completeness.
Format of keyboard macros during editing:
Text is divided into words separated by whitespace. Except for the words described below, the characters of each word go directly as characters of the macro. The whitespace that separates words is ignored. Whitespace in the macro must be written explicitly, as in foo SPC bar RET.
- The special words RET, SPC, TAB, DEL, LFD, ESC, and NUL represent special control characters. The words must be written in uppercase.
- A word in angle brackets, e.g.,
<return>,<down>, or<f1>, represents a function key. (Note that in the standard configuration, the function key<return>and the control key RET are synonymous.) You can use angle brackets on the words RET, SPC, etc., but they are not required there.- Keys can be written by their ASCII code, using a backslash followed by up to six octal digits. This is the only way to represent keys with codes above \377.
- One or more prefixes M- (meta), C- (control), S- (shift), A- (alt), H- (hyper), and s- (super) may precede a character or key notation. For function keys, the prefixes may go inside or outside of the brackets:
C-<down>==<C-down>. The prefixes may be written in any order: M-C-x == C-M-x. Prefixes are not allowed on multi-key words, e.g., C-abc, except that the Meta prefix is allowed on a sequence of digits and optional minus sign: M--123 == M-- M-1 M-2 M-3.- The
^notation for control characters also works: ^M == C-m.- Double angle brackets enclose command names:
<<next-line>>is shorthand for M-x next-line RET.- Finally,
REMor;;causes the rest of the line to be ignored as a comment.Any word may be prefixed by a multiplier in the form of a decimal number and
*:3*<right>==<right> <right> <right>, and10*foo==foofoofoofoofoofoofoofoofoofoo.Multiple text keys can normally be strung together to form a word, but you may need to add whitespace if the word would look like one of the above notations:
; ; ;is a keyboard macro with three semicolons, but;;;is a comment. Likewise,\ 1 2 3is four keys but\123is a single key written in octal, and< right >is seven keys but<right>is a single function key. When in doubt, use whitespace.
let?
In most cases, not noticeable. Besides, there's no avoiding
let---you have to bind your local variables, after all. Some
pose a question whether to nest lets, or use one let per
function. I think because of clarity and maintenance (and possible
future implementation), let-s should be used (nested) in a way to
provide the clearest code.
setq?defvar your global variable to a default
value, and use setq to set it later.
It is never a good practice to setq user variables (like
case-fold-search, etc.), as it ignores the user's choice
unconditionally. Note that defvar doesn't change the value of a
variable if it was bound previously. If you wish to change a
user-variable temporarily, use let:
(let ((case-fold-search nil)) ... ; code with searches that must be case-sensitive ...)You will notice the user-variables by their docstrings beginning with an asterisk (a convention).
let, which will unbind them (or restore their
previous value, if they were bound) after exiting from the let
form. Change the value of local variables with setq or whatever
you like (e.g. incf, setf and such). The let form
can even return one of its local variables.
Typical usage:
;; iterate through the elements of the list returned by
;; `hairy-function-that-returns-list'
(let ((l (hairy-function-that-returns-list)))
(while l
... do something with (car l) ...
(setq l (cdr l))))
Another typical usage includes building a value simply to work with it.
;; Build the mode keymap out of the key-translation-alist
(let ((inbox (file-truename (expand-file-name box)))
(i 0))
... code dealing with inbox ...
inbox)
This piece of code uses the local variable inbox, which becomes
unbound (or regains old value) after exiting the form. The form also
returns the value of inbox, which can be reused, for instance:
(setq foo-processed-inbox
(let .....))
setq ?
A typical misuse is probably setqing a variable that was meant to
be local. Such a variable will remain bound forever, never to be
garbage-collected. For example, the code doing:
(defun my-function (whatever) (setq a nil) ... build a large list ... ... and exit ...)
does a bad thing, as a will keep consuming memory, never to be
unbound. The correct thing is to do it like this:
(defun my-function (whatever)
(let (a) ; default initialization is to nil
... build a large list ...
... and exit, unbinding `a' in the process ...)
Not only is this prettier syntactically, but it makes it possible for
Emacs to garbage-collect the objects which a used to reference.
Note that even global variables should not be setqed without
defvaring them first, because the byte-compiler issues warnings.
The reason for the warning is the following:
(defun flurgoze nil) ; ok, global internal variable ... (setq flurghoze t) ; ops! a typo, but semantically correct. ; however, the byte-compiler warns. While compiling toplevel forms: ** assignment to free variable flurghoze
do form of cl, does it slow things down?It shouldn't. Here is what Dave Gillespie has to say about cl.el performance:
Many of the advanced features of this package, such as
defun*,loop, andsetf, are implemented as Lisp macros. In byte-compiled code, these complex notations will be expanded into equivalent Lisp code which is simple and efficient. For example, the forms(incf i n) (push x (car p))are expanded at compile-time to the Lisp forms
(setq i (+ i n)) (setcar p (cons x (car p)))which are the most efficient ways of doing these respective operations in Lisp. Thus, there is no performance penalty for using the more readable
incfandpushforms in your compiled code.Interpreted code, on the other hand, must expand these macros every time they are executed. For this reason it is strongly recommended that code making heavy use of macros be compiled. (The features labelled Special Form instead of Function in this manual are macros.) A loop using
incfa hundred times will execute considerably faster if compiled, and will also garbage-collect less because the macro expansion will not have to be generated, used, and thrown away a hundred times.You can find out how a macro expands by using the
cl-prettyexpandfunction.
Yes. Emacs byte-compiler cannot do much to optimize recursion. But think well whether this is a real concern in Emacs. Much of the Emacs slowness comes from internal mechanisms such as redisplay, or from the fact that it is an interpreter.
Please try not to make your code much uglier to gain a very small speed gain. It's not usually worth it.
Here is a solution that will insert the glyph annotation at the beginning of buffer:
(make-annotation (make-glyph '([FORMAT :file FILE]
[string :data "fallback-text"]))
(point-min)
'text
(current-buffer))
Replace `FORMAT' with an unquoted symbol representing the format of
the image (e.g. xpm, xbm, gif, jpeg, etc.)
Instead of `FILE', use the image file name
(e.g.
`/usr/local/lib/xemacs-20.2/etc/recycle.xpm').
You can turn this to a function (that optionally prompts you for a file
name), and inserts the glyph at (point) instead of
(point-min).
map-extents won't traverse all of my extents!
I tried to use map-extents to do an operation on all the extents
in a region. However, it seems to quit after processing a random number
of extents. Is it buggy?
No. The documentation of map-extents states that it will iterate
across the extents as long as function returns nil.
Unexperienced programmers often forget to return nil explicitly,
which results in buggy code. For instance, the following code is
supposed to delete all the extents in a buffer, and issue as many
`fubar!' messages.
(map-extents (lambda (ext ignore)
(delete-extent ext)
(message "fubar!")))
Instead, it will delete only the first extent, and stop right there --
because message will return a non-nil value. The correct code
is:
(map-extents (lambda (ext ignore)
(delete-extent ext)
(message "fubar!")
nil))
My elisp program is horribly slow. Is there an easy way to find out where it spends time?
zHrvoje Niksic writes:
Under XEmacs 20.4 and later you can use M-x profile-key-sequence, press a key (say RET in the Gnus Group buffer), and get the results using M-x profile-results. It should give you an idea of where the time is being spent.
Add the following line to your `.emacs':
(setq bell-volume 0) (setq sound-alist nil)
That will make your XEmacs totally silent -- even the default ding sound (TTY beep on TTY-s) will be gone.
Starting with XEmacs-20.2 you can also change these with Customize.
Select from the Options menu
Customize->Emacs->Environment->Sound->Sound... or type
M-x customize RET sound RET.
Make sure your XEmacs was compiled with sound support, and then put this in your `.emacs':
(load-default-sounds)
The sound support in XEmacs 19.14 was greatly improved over previous versions.
See section Q2.0.3: Compiling XEmacs with Netaudio. for an explanation of the Network Audio System.
I'm having some trouble with sounds I've downloaded from sunsite. They
play when I run them through showaudio or cat them directly to
`/dev/audio', but XEmacs refuses to play them.
Markus Gutschke writes:
[Many of] These files have an (erroneous) 24byte header that tells about the format that they have been recorded in. If you cat them to `/dev/audio', the header will be ignored and the default behavior for /dev/audio will be used. This happens to be 8kHz uLaw. It is probably possible to fix the header by piping through
soxand passing explicit parameters for specifying the sampling format; you then need to perform a 'null' conversion from SunAudio to SunAudio.
I'd like XEmacs to indent all the clauses of a Common Lisp if the
same amount instead of indenting the 3rd clause differently from the
first two.
One way is to add, to `.emacs':
(put 'if 'lisp-indent-function nil)
However, note that the package cl-indent that comes with
XEmacs sets up this kind of indentation by default. cl-indent
also knows about many other CL-specific forms. To use cl-indent,
one can do this:
(load "cl-indent") (setq lisp-indent-function (function common-lisp-indent-function))
One can also customize `cl-indent.el' so it mimics the default
if indentation then indented more than the else.
Here's how:
(put 'if 'common-lisp-indent-function '(nil nil &body))
Also, a new version (1.2) of `cl-indent.el' was posted to comp.emacs.xemacs on 12/9/94. This version includes more documentation than previous versions. This may prove useful if you need to customize any indent-functions.
When I try to edit a postscript file it gets stuck saying: `fontifying 'filename' (regexps....)' and it just sits there. If I press C-c in the window where XEmacs was started, it suddenly becomes alive again.
This was caused by a bug in the Postscript font-lock regular expressions. It was fixed in 19.13. For earlier versions of XEmacs, have a look at your `.emacs' file. You will probably have a line like:
(add-hook 'postscript-mode-hook 'turn-on-font-lock)
Take it out, restart XEmacs, and it won't try to fontify your postscript files anymore.
Font-lock looks nice. How can I print (WYSIWYG) the highlighted document?
The package ps-print, which is now included with XEmacs, provides
the ability to do this. The source code contains complete instructions
on its use, in
`<xemacs_src_root>/lisp/packages/ps-print.el'.
My printer is a Postscript printer and lpr only works for
Postscript files, so how do I get M-x lpr-region and M-x
lpr-buffer to work?
Put something like this in your `.emacs':
(setq lpr-command "a2ps")
(setq lpr-switches '("-p" "-1"))
If you don't use a2ps to convert ASCII to postscript (why not, it's free?), replace with the command you do use. Note also that some versions of a2ps require a `-Pprinter' to ensure spooling.
You can specify what paths to use by using a number of different flags when running configure. See the section MAKE VARIABLES in the top-level file INSTALL in the XEmacs distribution for a listing of those flags.
Most of the time, however, the simplest fix is: do not specify
paths as you might for GNU Emacs. XEmacs can generally determine the
necessary paths dynamically at run time. The only path that generally
needs to be specified is the root directory to install into. That can
be specified by passing the --prefix flag to configure. For a
description of the XEmacs install tree, please consult the `NEWS'
file.
Kai Großjohann writes:
C-x C-i indents the region by one space. C-u 4 2 C-x C-i indents by 42 spaces. C-u - 4 2 C-x C-i UNindents by 42 spaces (i.e. moves block to the left).
Also, you can insert an arbitrary prefix with C-x r t
(string-rectangle). Please look at the documentation of
C-x r t before using it. You can look it up using
Info-goto-emacs-key-command-node like this: C-h C-k C-x r t.
Say, with: `[END]'?
Try this:
(let ((ext (make-extent (point-min) (point-max)))) (set-extent-property ext 'start-closed t) (set-extent-property ext 'end-closed t) (set-extent-property ext 'detachable nil) (set-extent-end-glyph ext (make-glyph [string :data "[END]"])))
Since this is XEmacs, you can specify an icon to be shown on
window-system devices. To do so, change the make-glyph call to
something like this:
(make-glyph '([xpm :file "~/something.xpm"]
[string :data "[END]"]))
You can inline the XPM definition yourself by specifying
:data instead of :file. Here is such a full-featured
version that works on both X and TTY devices:
(let ((ext (make-extent (point-min) (point-max))))
(set-extent-property ext 'start-closed t)
(set-extent-property ext 'end-closed t)
(set-extent-property ext 'detachable nil)
(set-extent-end-glyph ext (make-glyph '([xpm :data "\
/* XPM */
static char* eye = {
\"20 11 7 2\",
\"__ c None\"
\"_` c #7f7f7f\",
\"_a c #fefefe\",
\"_b c #7f0000\",
\"_c c #fefe00\",
\"_d c #fe0000\",
\"_e c #bfbfbf\",
\"___________`_`_`___b_b_b_b_________`____\",
\"_________`_`_`___b_c_c_c_b_b____________\",
\"_____`_`_`_e___b_b_c_c_c___b___b_______`\",
\"___`_`_e_a___b_b_d___b___b___b___b______\",
\"_`_`_e_a_e___b_b_d_b___b___b___b___b____\",
\"_`_`_a_e_a___b_b_d___b___b___b___b___b__\",
\"_`_`_e_a_e___b_b_d_b___b___b___b___b_b__\",
\"___`_`_e_a___b_b_b_d_c___b___b___d_b____\",
\"_____`_`_e_e___b_b_b_d_c___b_b_d_b______\",
\"_`_____`_`_`_`___b_b_b_d_d_d_d_b________\",
\"___`_____`_`_`_`___b_b_b_b_b_b__________\",
} ;"]
[string :data "[END]"]))))
Note that you might want to make this a function, and put it to a hook. We leave that as an exercise for the reader.
Like this:
(insert (current-time-string))
Markus Gutschke writes:
Yes, abbrevs only expands word-syntax strings. While XEmacs does not prevent you from defining (e.g. with C-x a g or C-x a l) abbrevs that contain special characters, it will refuse to expand them. So you need to ensure, that the abbreviation contains letters and digits only. This means that `xd', `d5', and `5d' are valid abbrevs, but `&d', and `x d' are not.
If this sounds confusing to you, (re-)read the online documentation for abbrevs (C-h i m XEmacs RET m Abbrevs RET), and then come back and read this question/answer again.
Starting with XEmacs 20.3 this restriction has been lifted.
Firstly there is an ftp site which describes X-faces and has the associated tools mentioned below, at ftp://ftp.cs.indiana.edu:/pub/faces/.
Then the steps are
cat file.xbm | xbm2ikon |compface > file.face
cat ./file.face | sed 's/\\/\\\\/g' | sed 's/\"/\\\"/g' > ./file.face.quoted
(setq mail-default-headers
"X-Face: Ugly looking text string here")
Or, alternatively, as:
(defun mail-insert-x-face ()
(save-excursion
(goto-char (point-min))
(search-forward mail-header-separator)
(beginning-of-line)
(insert "X-Face:")
(insert-file-contents "~/.face")))
(add-hook 'mail-setup-hook 'mail-insert-x-face)
However, 2 things might be wrong:
Some versions of pbmtoicon produces some header lines that is not
expected by the version of compface that I grabbed. So I found I had to
include a tail +3 in the pipeline like this:
cat file.xbm | xbm2ikon | tail +3 |compface > file.face
Some people have also found that if one uses the (insert-file)
method, one should NOT quote the face string using the sed script .
It might also be helpful to use Stig's script (included in the compface distribution at XEmacs.org) to do the conversion. For convenience xbm2xface is available for anonymous FTP at ftp://ftp.miranova.com/pub/xemacs/xbm2xface.pl.
Contributors for this item:
Paul Emsley, Ricardo Marek, Amir J. Katz, Glen McCort, Heinz Uphoff, Peter Arius, Paul Harrison, and Vegard Vesterheim
You use something like:
(setq Info-directory-list (cons (expand-file-name "~/info") Info-default-directory-list))
David Masterson writes:
Emacs Info and XEmacs Info do many things differently. If you're trying to support a number of versions of Emacs, here are some notes to remember:
- Emacs Info scans
Info-directory-listfrom right-to-left while XEmacs Info reads it from left-to-right, so append to the correct end of the list.- Use
Info-default-directory-listto initializeInfo-directory-listif it is available at startup, but not all Emacsen define it.- Emacs Info looks for a standard `dir' file in each of the directories scanned from #1 and magically concatenates them together.
- XEmacs Info looks for a `localdir' file (which consists of just the menu entries from a `dir' file) in each of the directories scanned from #1 (except the first), does a simple concatenation of them, and magically attaches the resulting list to the end of the menu in the `dir' file in the first directory.
Another alternative is to convert the documentation to HTML with texi2html and read it from a web browser like Lynx or W3.
For regular printing there are two variables that can be customized.
lpr-command
(setq lpr-command "lp")
lpr-switches
(setq lpr-switches '("-depson"))
For postscript printing there are three analogous variables to customize.
ps-lpr-command
ps-lpr-switches
ps-lpr-command to do its job.
ps-print-color-p
t if printing will be done in
color, otherwise it should be set to nil.
NOTE: It is an undocumented limitation in XEmacs that postscript
printing (the Pretty Print Buffer menu item) requires a
window system environment. It cannot be used outside of X11.
This is part 6 of the XEmacs Frequently Asked Questions list, written by Hrvoje Niksic and others. This section is devoted to the MS Windows port of XEmacs.
Is XEmacs really getting ported to MS Windows? What is the status of the port?
Yes, a group of volunteers actively works on making XEmacs code base cleanly compile and run on MS Windows operating systems. The mailing list at xemacs-nt@xemacs.org is dedicated to that effort (please use the -request address to subscribe).
At this time, XEmacs on MS Windows is usable for the adventurous, but not yet ready for general public. The first prime time MS Windows-aware release will be the upcoming 21.0.
The list name is misleading, as XEmacs will support both Win95 and Windows NT. The MS Windows-specific code is based on Microsoft Win32 API, and will not work on MS Windows 3.x or on MS-DOS.
No binaries are currently available. XEmacs is not too stable on MS Windows at the moment, so testing it requires getting your hands dirty and a compiler and a debugger handy. Besides, the betas are issued on an almost daily basis, so making binary kits would take too much developers' time.
When XEmacs becomes officially supported on MS Windows, binaries of the released version might appear.
Short answer: No.
Long answer: XEmacs can be built in several ways in the MS Windows environment, some of them requiring an X server and some not.
One is what we call the "X" port -- it requires X libraries to build and an X server to run. Internally it uses the Xt event loop and makes use of X toolkits. Its look is quite un-Windowsy, but it works reliably and supports all of the graphical features of Unix XEmacs.
The other is what we call the "native" port. It uses the Win32 API and does not require X libraries to build, nor does it require an X to run. In fact, it has no connection with X whatsoever. At this time, the native port obsoletes the X port, providing almost all of its features, including support for menus, scrollbars, toolbars, embedded images and background pixmaps, frame pointers, etc. Most of the future work will be based on the native port.
There is also a third special case, the Cygwin port. It takes advantage of Cygnus emulation library under Win32, which enables it to reuse much of the Unix XEmacs code base, such as processes and network support, or internal select() mechanisms.
Cygwin port supports all display types -- TTY, X & MS gui, and can be built with support for all three. If you build with ms gui support then the cygwin version uses the majority of the msw code, which is mostly related to display. If you want to build with X support you need X libraries. If you want to build with tty support you need ncurses. MS gui requires no additional libraries.
Some of the advantages of the cygwin version are that it:
The disadvantage is that it requires several Unix utilities and the whole cygwin environment, whereas the native port requires only a suitable MS Windows compiler. Also, it follows the Unix filesystem and process model very closely (some will undoubtedly view this as an advantage).
Pointers to X servers can be found at http://dao.gsfc.nasa.gov/software/grads/win32/X11R6.3/;
look for "Where to get an X server". Also note that, although the above page talks about Cygnus gnu-win32 (cygwin), the information on X servers is cygwin-independent. You don't have to be running/using cygwin to use these X servers, and you don't have to compile XEmacs under cygwin to use XEmacs with these X servers. An "X port" XEmacs compiled under Visual C++ will work with these X servers (as will XEmacs running on a Unix box, redirected to the server running on your PC).
You need Visual C++ 4.2 or 5.0, with the exception of the Cygwin port, which uses Gcc.
Please read the file `nt/README' in the XEmacs distribution, which contains the full description.
Again, it is described in `nt/README' in some detail. Basically, you need to get X11 libraries from ftp.x.org, and compile them. If the precompiled versions are available somewhere, I don't know of it.
Similar as on Unix; use the usual `configure' and `make' process. Some problems to watch out for:
You can find the cygwin tools and compiler at:
http://www.cygnus.com/misc/gnu-win32/
You will need version b19 or later. Installation instructions can be found at:
ftp://go.cygnus.com/pub/ftp.cygnus.com/gnu-win32/latest/README.txt
You will also need the X libraries. There are libraries at http://dao.gsfc.nasa.gov/software/grads/win32/X11R6.3/, but these are not b19 compatible. You can get b19 X11R6.3 binaries, as well as pre-built ncurses and graphic libraries, from:
ftp://ftp.parallax.co.uk/pub/andyp/.
XEmacs (and Emacs in general) UI is pretty different from what is expected of a typical MS Windows program. How will the MS Windows port cope with it?
Fortunately, Emacs is also one of the most configurable editor beasts in the world. The MS Windows "look and feel" (mark via shift-arrow, self-inserting deletes region, etc.) can be easily configured via various packages distributed with XEmacs. The `pending-delete' package is an example of such a utility.
In future versions, some of these packages might be turned on by default in the MS Windows environment.
You can change font manually, but not from the menubar, yet. For example:
(set-face-font 'default "Lucida Console:Regular:10")
(set-face-font 'modeline "MS Sans Serif:Regular:10")
If the HOME environment variable is set, `.emacs' will be looked for there. Else the directory defaults to `c:\'.
In his flavor of Emacs 20, Richard Stallman has renamed all the win32-* symbols to w32-*. Will XEmacs do the same?
We consider such a move counter-productive, thus we will not use the `w32' prefix. However, we do recognize that Win32 name is little more than a marketing buzzword (will it be Win64 in the next release?), so we decided not to use it. Using `windows-' would be wrong because the term is too generic, which is why we settled on a compromise `mswindows' term.
Thus all the XEmacs variables and functions directly related to Win32 are prefixed `mswindows-'. The user-variables shared with NT Emacs will be provided as compatibility aliases.
Architectural note: We believe that there should be a very small number of window-systems-specific variables, and will try to provide generic interfaces whenever possible.
XEmacs, Win-Emacs, DOS Emacs, NT Emacs, this is all very confusing. Could you briefly explain the differences between them?
Here is a recount of various Emacs versions running on MS Windows:
The 21.0 release being so close, we are now working on removing the remaining bugs in the MS Windows-specific code and making sure the large Lisp packages (Gnus, VM, W3, etc.) work correctly.
Yes, the next XEmacs version will officially support MS Windows, although it will likely be less stable than the Unix release.
This is part 7 of the XEmacs Frequently Asked Questions list. This section will change monthly, and contains any interesting items that have transpired over the previous month. If you are reading this from the XEmacs distribution, please see the version on the Web or archived at the various FAQ FTP sites, as this file is surely out of date.
The biggest changes in 20.2 include integration of EFS (the next generation of ange-ftp) and AUC Tex (the Emacs subsystem that includes a major mode for editing Tex and LaTeX, and a lot of other stuff). Many bugs from 20.0 have been fixed for this release. 20.2 also contains a new system for customizing XEmacs options, invoked via M-x customize.
XEmacs 20.2 is the development release (20.0 was beta), and is no longer considered unstable.
XEmacs 20.3 was released in November 1997. It contains many bugfixes, and a number of new features, including Autoconf 2 based configuration, additional support for Mule (Multi-language extensions to Emacs), many more customizations, multiple frames on TTY-s, support for multiple info directories, an enhanced gnuclient, improvements to regexp matching, increased MIME support, and many, many synches with GNU Emacs 20.
The XEmacs/Mule support has been only seriously tested in a Japanese locale, and no doubt many problems still remain. The support for ISO-Latin-1 and Japanese is fairly strong. MULE support comes at a price -- about a 30% slowdown from 19.16. We're making progress on improving performance and XEmacs 20.3 compiled without Mule (which is the default) is definitely faster than XEmacs 19.16.
XEmacs 20.3 is the first non-beta v20 release, and will be the basis for all further development.
XEmacs 20.4 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
This document was generated on 27 May 1998 using the texi2html translator version 1.52.