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GNU Emacs FAQ For Windows 95/98/ME, and 2000

Note: This FAQ is now being hosted at

and now takes advantage of all of the GNU mirrors.

 The latest version of GNU Emacs is v20.7.1, see The Introduction, Getting Emacs, and Installing Emacs, for more details.

1. Introduction

• What is Emacs?
• Which versions of Windows, (and Windows NT), are supported?
• Related ports: MSDOS and Windows 3.11, MULE, DJGPP, XEmacs, MacOS

2. Getting Emacs

• Where can I get the source distribution?
• Where can I get precompiled versions?
• I don't want the precompiled version. How do I compile Emacs myself?
• How do I use a debugger on Emacs?
• What are the differences between Emacs 19.x, and 20.x

3. Installing Emacs.

• How do I unpack the distributions?
• How do I install Emacs, after unpacking?
• What do I do if Emacs does not work?
• How do I customize Emacs?
• What is a .emacs file?
• Where do I put my .emacs, (or _emacs), file?
• Sample .emacs Files
• How can I have Emacs prompt me before closing?
• How do I associate files with Emacs (i.e., use Emacs as a server with gnuserv/gnuclient)?
  • Controlling the use of frames
  • For use with Internet Explorer
  • For use with Netscape
  • PIF file for gnuserv
• How do I use find-file to load files that are on the desktop?
• How can I modify Windows to be more like the X Windows System?
  • How do I make the active window follow the mouse?
  • How do I swap CapsLock and Control?
  • How do I use the Windows key as a Alt?
• How can I modify Emacs to be more like a Windows app?
  • Keypad keys, highlighting selections, etc.
  • Standard Windows application keymaps (C-c, C-v, C-x, etc.)
  • Window operations (maximize, minimize, etc.)
  • Open File dialog box
• How do I uninstall Emacs?
• When I run Emacs, nothing happens. What's the deal?
  • I just upgraded the operating system, and Emacs no longer works.
• I use anti-virus software. What problems can this cause?
  • Dr. Solomon's
  • McAfee
  • Norton
• Does Emacs contain a virus?
• Sometimes when I exit Emacs, my machine hangs or crashes immediately
• How does Emacs determine the name of my computer?

4. Display Settings

• How do I change the size, position, and color attributes of Emacs?
  • Windows Interface :
  • Size ,
  • Position ,
  • Colors .
• Customizing frame appearances.
• Determining screen resolution.
• Console Interface :
  • Size ,
  • Emacs in console mode goes beyond the window size. What do I do?
  • Position ,
  • Colors .
• How do I enable color syntax highlighting in Emacs (font-lock)?
  • Converting font-lock buffers into HTML markup
  • Font-locking embedded code (e.g., ASP) in HTML documents
• How do I change the format of the mode line?
• What do I do if I have problems with Emacs and my mouse buttons?
  • How do I use Emacs with a two-button mouse?
  • How do I get Emacs to recognize the third button on my mouse?
  • Strange two-button mouse behavior on Windows 95.
• How do I highlight the region between the point and the mark?
• How do I highlight matching parentheses?
• How do I cut & paste text with null characters?
• How do I change the sounda of the Emacs beep?
• When I yank previously copied or killed text into a buffer, it appears garbled. How can I fix this?

5. Fonts, and text translation

• How do I change the Font Emacs uses?
• Information on italic fonts.
• Console Fonts.
• Emacs multilingual font support
• Is it now possible to display correctly the sample of various scripts and languages accessible from the MULE menu?
• How do I get Emacs to display characters other than ISO-8859-1 (West European)?
• Where can I find fonts for other languages?
• How do I use third party programs for displaying multibyte characters with Emacs?
• How do I use a font with a name in my language?
• How do I use bdf fonts with Emacs?
• How can I have Emacs use a font menu similar to the one it uses on Unix (with fonts and fontsets listed)?
• The font I want to use is not in the font menu, how can I put it there?
• How can I control CR/LF translation (e.g., to access UNIX files via NFS)?
  • By file extension
  • By file system
  • Automatic

6. Printing

• How do I print from Emacs?
• Printing via Ghostscript
• How do I print all these languages that Emacs is now displaying?

7. Sub-processes

• Quoting issues
• Programs reading input hang
• Buffering in shells
  • Perl script buffering
• DOS subprocesses
• 16-bit subprocesses accessing the A: drive
• Killing subprocesses on Windows 95/98
• Sending eof to subprocesses in Emacs (e.g., C-c C-d in shell buffers)
• How do I use a shell in Emacs?
  • bash
  • ksh
  • MKS ksh
  • tcsh
  • zsh
• How do I prevent shell commands from being echoed?
• How do I have Emacs complete directories with "/" instead of "\"?
• Within a shell, when I run programs I get "Incorrect DOS version" messages. Why?
• When I do any shell-related commands, nothing happens. What could be wrong?

8. Mail, News, and Network access

• How do I use mail with Emacs?
  • Outgoing: Standard , Queued
  • Incoming: RMAIL and POP3 , VM and POP3 , GNUS .
  • Using GNUS with IMAP.
  • Mail notification .
  • Leaving on server: RMAIL .
  • Leaving on server: VM .
  • Sharing with Unix: RMAIL .
  • Handling attachments: Metamail, MIME with tm ,
  • Biff tools: POP
• How do I read news with Emacs using Gnus?
  • How do I authenticate with Gnus?
  • How do I use mime with Gnus?
  • How do I save messages in untranslated format?
• Network
  • How do I read online newspapers with Emacs?
  • How do I use the Emacs Web Browser, w3?
  • How do I use the browse-url package?
  • Package for using browse-url for dictionary, search, etc. functions
  • How do I use Emacs to translate text among languages?
  • How do I use FTP, (ange-ftp), within Emacs?
  • How do I use telnet with Emacs?

9. Text, and utility, modes for Emacs

• How do I use TeX with Emacs?
  • MiKTeX.
  • AUCTeX.
  • FPTeX.
  • Putting it all together .
• How do I perform spell checks, using Ispell?
• Emacs for SGML editing and publishing on Windows
• Emacs and Encryption, using GPG - or PGP
• How do I use an Intellimouse with Emacs?
  • Interactions with FlyWheel
  • Why does Emacs ignore my mouse wheel?
• How do I use grep with Emacs?
  • How do I do a recursive grep?
• How do I use EDT emulation mode in Emacs?
• How do I do "desktop saving" with Emacs?

10. Developing with Emacs

• How Do I Use Emacs with Microsoft Visual C++
  • VisEmacs
  • VC++ Environmental Variables
  • Setting the Default Command Line
  • Handling Compile Time Errors
  • Reverting Buffers
  • Exporting a File to Emacs
• Emacs and Borland C++ Builder
• Java
  • How do I get imenu to work with Java?
  • Creating TAGS files for Java source
  • Java Development Environment (JDE)
  • The Jacob class browser and project manager
  • Example instructions for installing Emacs/JDE/JDK
• How do I use revision/source control with Emacs?
  • Is there a version of RCS for Win32?
  • Is there a version of CVS for Win32?
  • What do I need to do to get vc-mode (version control) working?
  • vc-mode and Clearcase
• How do I use perl-mode with Emacs?
  • How do I use the perl debugger with Emacs?
• How do I use python-mode with Emacs?

11. Other Unix Ports, and further information

• Further Information.
  • Where can I get more information about Emacs?
  • NTEmacs Mailing List
  • Extra information about MULE
  • Where can I find more Lisp packages
• Other Unix utilities ported from Unix
  • Reading MAN pages without Man, (WoMan)
  • Where can I find a port of the diff program (e.g, for ediff)?
  • Where can I find a port of the patch program?
  • What other Unix tools have been ported to NT and/or Windows 95/98?