Copyright (C) 2001-2016 Free Software Foundation, Inc. See the end of the file for license conditions. Emacs for Windows This README.W32 file describes how to set up and run a precompiled distribution of GNU Emacs for Windows. You can find the precompiled distribution on the ftp.gnu.org server and its mirrors: ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/ This server contains other distributions, including the full Emacs source distribution, as well as older releases of Emacs for Windows. Information on how to compile Emacs from sources on Windows is in the files README and INSTALL in the nt/ sub-directory of the top-level Emacs directory in the source distribution. If you received this file as part of the Emacs source distribution, and are looking for information on how to build Emacs on MS-Windows, please read those 2 files and not this one. * Preliminaries The binary distribution has these top-level directories: + bin + libexec + share + var * Setting up Emacs To install Emacs, simply unpack the binary package into a directory of your choice. To complete the installation process, you can optionally run the program addpm.exe in the bin subdirectory. This will put an icon for Emacs in the Start Menu under "Start -> Programs -> Gnu Emacs". Some users have reported that the Start Menu item is not created for them. If this happens, just create your own shortcut to runemacs.exe, eg. by dragging it on to the desktop or the Start button. Note that running addpm is now an optional step; Emacs is able to locate all of its files without needing any information to be set in the environment or the registry, although such settings will still be obeyed if present. This is convenient for running Emacs on a machine which disallows registry changes, or on which software should not be installed. For instance, you can now run Emacs directly from a CD or USB flash drive without copying or installing anything on the machine itself. * Prerequisites for Windows 9X To run Emacs on Windows 9X (Windows 95/98/Me), you will need to have the Microsoft Layer for Unicode (MSLU) installed. It can be downloaded from the Microsoft site, and comes in a form of a single dynamic library called UNICOWS.DLL. If this library is not accessible to Emacs, it will pop up a dialog saying that it cannot find the library, and will refuse to start up. * Starting Emacs To run Emacs, simply select Emacs from the Start Menu, or invoke runemacs.exe directly from Explorer or from a command prompt. This will start Emacs in its default GUI mode, ready to use. If you have never used Emacs before, you should follow the tutorial at this point (select Emacs Tutorial from the Help menu), since Emacs is quite different from ordinary Windows applications in many respects. If you want to use Emacs in tty or character mode within a command window, you can start it by typing "emacs -nw" at the command prompt. (Obviously, you need to ensure that the Emacs bin subdirectory is in your PATH first, or specify the path to emacs.exe.) The -nw (non-windowed) mode of operation is most useful if you have a telnet server on your machine, allowing you to run Emacs remotely. * EXE files included Emacs comes with the following executable files in the bin directory. + emacs.exe - The main Emacs executable. As this is designed to run as both a text-mode application (emacs -nw) and as a GUI application, it will pop up a command prompt window if run directly from Explorer. + runemacs.exe - A wrapper for running Emacs as a GUI application without popping up a command prompt window. If you create a desktop shortcut for invoking Emacs, make it point to this executable, not to emacs.exe. + emacsclient.exe - A command-line client program that can communicate with a running Emacs process. See the `Emacs Server' node of the Emacs manual. + emacsclientw.exe - A version of emacsclient that does not open a command-line window. + addpm.exe - A basic installer that creates Start Menu icons for Emacs. Running this is optional. + ctags.exe, etags.exe - Tools for generating tag files. See the `Tags' node of the Emacs manual. + ebrowse.exe - A tool for generating C++ browse information. See the `Ebrowse' manual. Several helper programs are in a version-specific subdirectory of the libexec directory: + cmdproxy.exe - Used internally by Emacs to work around problems with the native shells in various versions of Windows. + ddeclient.exe - A tool for interacting with DDE servers. To be invoked as "ddeclient SERVER [TOPIC]", where SERVER is the DDE server name, and sends each line of its standard input to the DDE server using the DdeClientTransaction API. This program is supposed to be invoked via the 'call-process-region' Emacs primitive. + hexl.exe - A tool for producing hex dumps of binary files. See the `Editing Binary Files' node of the Emacs manual. + movemail.exe - A helper application for safely moving mail from a mail spool or POP server to a local user mailbox. See the `Movemail' node of the Emacs manual. + profile.exe - A helper program that generates periodic events for profiling Emacs Lisp code. + update-game-score.exe - A utility for updating the score files of Emacs games. * Image support Emacs has built in support for XBM and PPM/PGM/PBM images, and the libXpm library is bundled, providing XPM support (required for color toolbar icons and splash screen). Source for libXpm should be available from the same place from which you got this binary distribution. Emacs can also support some other image formats with appropriate libraries. These libraries are all available on the following sites: 1. http://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/ -- leaner, more up-to-date builds, only for 32-bit Emacs 2. http://www.gtk.org/download/win32.php http://www.gtk.org/download/win64.php -- the GTK project site; offers much fatter builds, but includes 64-bit DLLs (from the 2nd URL) 3. GnuWin32 project -- very old builds, not recommended The libraries to download are mentioned below. Some libraries depend on others that need to be downloaded separately from the same site; please consult the download instructions on each site for the details. In general, the ezwinports site mentioned above has all the dependencies bundled in the same zip archive, so installing from there is the easiest. Emacs will find these libraries if the directory they are installed in is on the PATH or in the same directory where you have emacs.exe. Here are some specific comments about each image type: PNG: requires the PNG reference library 1.4 or later, which will be named libpngNN.dll or libpngNN-NN.dll. LibPNG requires zlib, which should come from the same source as you got libpng. Starting with Emacs 23.3, the precompiled Emacs binaries are built with libpng 1.4.x and later, and are incompatible with earlier versions of libpng DLLs. So if you have libpng 1.2.x, the PNG support will not work, and you will have to download newer versions. JPEG: requires the Independent JPEG Group's libjpeg 6b or later, which will be called jpeg62.dll, libjpeg.dll, jpeg-62.dll or jpeg.dll. TIFF: requires libTIFF 3.0 or later, which will be called libtiffN.dll or libtiff-N.dll or libtiff.dll. GIF: requires libungif or giflib 4.1 or later, which will be called libgif-6.dll, giflib4.dll, libungif4.dll or libungif.dll. SVG: requires librsvg 2.x whose DLL will be called librsvg-2-2.dll. SVG also requires several dependency DLLs, such as Pango, Cairo, and Glib, all of them found on the above-mentioned sites. If you download from the ezwinports site, you need only librsvg-2.nn.mm-x-w32-bin.zip, it comes with all the other dependencies bundled. If you have image support DLLs under different names, customize the value of `dynamic-library-alist'. * GnuTLS support GnuTLS provides SSL/TLS network support for Emacs (https, imaps and so on.) In order to support GnuTLS at runtime, Emacs must be able to find the relevant DLLs during startup; failure to do so is not an error, but GnuTLS won't be available to the running session. You can get pre-built binaries (including any dependency DLLs) at http://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/. * libxml2 support libxml2 provides HTML parsing support for Emacs, which is necessary to use the built-in eww browser. In order to support libxml2 at runtime, a libxml2-enabled Emacs must be able to find the relevant DLLs during startup; failure to do so is not an error, but libxml2 features won't be available to the running session. You can get pre-built binaries (including any required DLL and the header files) at http://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/. * Uninstalling Emacs If you should need to uninstall Emacs, simply delete all the files and subdirectories from the directory where it was unpacked (Emacs does not install or update any files in system directories or anywhere else). If you ran the addpm.exe program to create the registry entries and the Start menu icon, then you can remove the registry entries using regedit. All of the settings are written under the Software\GNU\Emacs key in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, or if you didn't have administrator privileges when you installed, the same key in HKEY_CURRENT_USER. Just delete the whole Software\GNU\Emacs key. The Start menu entry can be removed by right-clicking on the Taskbar and selecting Properties, then using the Remove option on the Start Menu Programs page. (If you installed under an account with administrator privileges, then you need to click the Advanced button and look for the Gnu Emacs menu item under All Users.) * Troubleshooting Unpacking the distributions If you encounter trouble trying to run Emacs, there are a number of possible causes. Check the following for indications that the distribution was not corrupted by the tools used to unpack it: * Be sure to disable CR/LF translation or the executables will be unusable. Older versions of WinZipNT would enable this translation by default. If you are using WinZipNT, disable it. (I don't have WinZipNT myself, and I do not know the specific commands necessary to disable it.) * Check that filenames were not truncated to 8.3. For example, there should be a file lisp\abbrevlist.elc; if this has been truncated to abbrevli.elc, your distribution has been corrupted while unpacking and Emacs will not start. * On Windows 9X, make sure you have the UNICOWS.DLL library either in the same directory where you have emacs.exe or in the directory where system-wide DLLs are kept. If you believe you have unpacked the distributions correctly and are still encountering problems, see the section on Further Information below. Virus scanners Some virus scanners interfere with Emacs' use of subprocesses. If you are unable to use subprocesses and you use Dr. Solomon's WinGuard or McAfee's Vshield, turn off "Scan all files" (WinGuard) or "boot sector scanning" (McAfee exclusion properties). * Further information The Emacs User manual describes Windows-specific issues in the appendix named "Emacs and Microsoft Windows/MS-DOS". You can read it in Emacs by typing C-h r g Microsoft Windows RET This appendix is also available (as part of the entire manual) at http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/emacs.html#Microsoft-Windows In addition to the manual, there is a mailing list for discussing issues related to the Windows port of Emacs. For information about the list, see this Web page: http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-emacs-windows To ask questions on the mailing list, send email to help-emacs-windows@gnu.org. (You don't need to subscribe for that.) To subscribe to the list or unsubscribe from it, fill the form you find at http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-emacs-windows as explained there. Another valuable source of information and help which should not be overlooked is the various Usenet news groups dedicated to Emacs. These are particularly good for help with general issues which aren't specific to the Windows port of Emacs. The main news groups to use for seeking help are: gnu.emacs.help comp.emacs There are also fairly regular postings and announcements of new or updated Emacs packages on this group: gnu.emacs.sources * Reporting bugs If you encounter a bug in this port of Emacs, we would like to hear about it. First check the FAQ on the web page above to see if the bug is already known and if there are any workarounds. Then check whether the bug has something to do with code in your .emacs file, e.g. by invoking Emacs with the "-Q" option. If you decide that it is a bug in Emacs, use the built in bug reporting facility to report it (from the menu; Help -> Send Bug Report). If you have not yet configured Emacs for mail, then when you press C-c C-c to send the report, it will ask you to paste the text of the report into your mail client. If the bug is related to subprocesses, also specify which shell you are using (e.g., include the values of `shell-file-name' and `explicit-shell-file-name' in your message). Enjoy! This file is part of GNU Emacs. GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. GNU Emacs 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. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with GNU Emacs. If not, see .