What is Emacs?

Emacs is a very old and very powerful text editor. It has a powerful programming language built into it that will allow you to sort, format C, Java code. It also can be programmed to generate code like makefiles and then automatically run them. It is a great tool for java and C++ programmers -- a bit klunky for anything else.

Installation Instructions for Win2K & NT

  1. Notes:

    Important note: this will not work on Win98!

    Go to emacs download site. (The old site http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/voelker/ntemacs.html  probably still does not work).

  2. It will ask you what version you want. I selected emacs-20.6-fullbin-i386.tar.gz. Of course, you'll want the latest version.
  3. Double click on the version you want. Tell it you want to run it instead of saving to disk.
  4. Winzip should pop up and you should left click the on extract. Specify the directory "c:\GNU Utilities\emacs". This will probably not exist yet. Note I specified drive C here assuming you are installing on my notebook computer Angel.
  5. Since the file name was strange this time, winzip uncompress the file to create a new file with the extension of .tar[1]. I don't know where this "[1]" came from but if you get it you will have to rename this by clicking on the file once and just removing the [1] from the end of the file. Now it will have the extension of .tar and Winzip can extract stuff from it again. Once you have extracted all the files delete the original .tar file.
  6. Run the file addpm.exe in the bin directory to setup emacs. Copy the icon to the desktop.
  7. Create the file c:/.emacs with these contents. Note that this for emacs installed on drive d. You will have to adjust it accordingly by possibly changing the "d:" to "c:" depending on where you have installed it. To save you typing, you can download the latest version of this file at www.SIGNITEK.com/.emacs Here the essential parts of it are bolded.
    1. Note

      That an apostrophe is the comment character.

      You may have to change the directories.


    '(setq load-path (cons "d:/gnu utilities/w3-4.0pre.46/lisp" load-path))
    '(require 'w3-auto)
    (setq-default case-fold-search t) ; case insensitive search
    (setq-default case-replace t) ; modify case on replace

    (setq load-path (cons "d:/GNU Utilities/emacs-20.6/html-helper/html-helper-mode" load-path))
    (autoload 'html-helper-mode "html-helper-mode" "Yay HTML" t)
    (setq auto-mode-alist (cons '("\\.htm$" . html-helper-mode) auto-mode-alist))
    (setq auto-mode-alist (cons '("\\.html$" . html-helper-mode) auto-mode-alist))
    (setq html-helper-build-new-buffer t)
    (setq tempo-interactive t)
    (setq html-helper-do-write-file-hooks t)

    ;; For the interactive shell
    (setq explicit-shell-file-name "C:/Program Files/cygnus/bash/cygwin-b20/H-i586-cygwin32/bin/bash.exe")

    ;; For subprocesses invoked via the shell (e.g., "shell -c command")
    (setq shell-file-name "C:/Program Files/cygnus/bash/cygwin-b20/H-i586-cygwin32/bin/bash.exe")

    (defun my-shell-setup ()
    "For bash (cygwin 18) under Emacs 20"
    (setq comint-scroll-show-maximum-output 'this)
    (setq comint-completion-addsuffix t)
    ;; (setq comint-process-echoes t) ;; reported that this is no longer needed
    (setq comint-eol-on-send t)
    (setq w32-quote-process-args ?\")
    (make-variable-buffer-local 'comint-completion-addsuffix))

    (setq shell-mode-hook 'my-shell-setup)

    (setq process-coding-system-alist (cons '("bash" . raw-text-unix)
    process-coding-system-alist))

    ;Siegfried's key definition for the current date
    (define-key text-mode-map "\C-c\C-d" '(lambda () "Insert date-time" (interactive) (insert (current-time-string))))

  8. Optional step (for html users only). Install the emacs html helper mode ftp://ftp.reed.edu/pub/src/html-helper-mode.tar.gz. 
    1. I tried getting this with internet explorer and it did not work. Instead I had to create a command prompt and issue the following commands

      ftp ftp.reed.edu
      anonymous
      <your email>
      binary
      cd pub/src
      get html-helper-mode.tar.gz

    2. You can unpack this file by running winzip. Extract it into the emacs subdirectory of the GNU Utilities directory.
    3. The above .emacs file has already been modified to accommodate this.
  9. Install the emacs Java Development environment (JDE) (for Java programmers only)
    1. Install ispell if there is a lot of disk space, see http://fmg-www.cs.ucla.edu/fmg-members/geoff/ispell.html. Read the documentation, you'll probably have to modify the .emacs file.
    2. Install JDE: see http://sunsite.auc.dk/jde/ 
      1. Select zipped format
      2. Download and extract into D:\GNU Utilities\jde
      3. Add this to the .emacs file Add this to the end of the .emacs file: 
        (setq load-path 
        (nconc
        '("d:/GNU Utilities/jde/jde-2.1.5")
        load-path))
        (require 'jde)
  10. Udate the environment variables with an entry in the path variable with (in the example of FAFNIR "c:\GNU_Utilities\emacs-21.2\bin") .

 

 

 

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