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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQS);faqs.259 E-mail address: league@prep.ai.mit.edu Phone number: (617) 243-4091 ! Postal address: League for Programming Freedom 1 Kendall Square, Number 143 Post Office Box 9171 Cambridge, MA 02139, USA Papers describing the LPF's views are available on the internet and also ! from the LPF: ! Anonymous FTP: /prep.ai.mit.edu:/pub/lpf/ + /archive.cis.ohio-state.edu:pub/lpf/ ! Anonymous UUCP: osu-cis!~/lpf/* - 7: What is the real legal meaning of the GNU copyleft? The real legal meaning of the GNU General Public Licence (copyleft) is however it is interpreted by a judge. There has never been a copyright infringment case involving the GPL to set any precedents. Please take any discussion regarding this issue to the newsgroup gnu.misc.discuss, which was created to hold the extensive flame wars on the subject. RMS writes: The legal meaning of the GNU copyleft is less important than the spirit, which is that Emacs is a free software project and that work pertaining to Emacs should also be free software. "Free" means that all users have the freedom to study, share, change and improve Emacs. To make sure everyone has this freedom, pass along source code when you distribute any version of Emacs or a related program, and give the recipients the same freedom that you enjoyed. 8: What are appropriate messages for gnu.emacs.help, gnu.emacs.bug, comp.emacs, etc.? The file etc/MAILINGLISTS discusses the purpose of each GNU mailing-list. (See question 20 on how to get a copy.) For those which are gatewayed with newsgroups, it lists both the newsgroup name and the mailing list address. comp.emacs is for discussion of Emacs programs in general. This includes GNU Emacs along with various other implementations like JOVE, MicroEmacs, Freemacs, MG, Unipress, CCA, Epsilon, etc. Many people post GNU Emacs questions to comp.emacs because they don't receive any of the gnu.* newsgroups. Arguments have been made both for and against posting GNU-Emacs-specific material to comp.emacs. You have to decide for yourself. Messages advocating "non-free" software are considered unacceptable on any of the gnu.* newsgroups except for gnu.misc.discuss, which was created to hold the extensive flame-wars on the subject. "non-free" software includes any software for which the end user can't freely modify the source code and exchange enhancements. Be careful to remove the gnu.* groups from the `Newsgroups:' line when posting a followup that recommends such software. gnu.emacs.bug is a place where bug reports appear, but avoid posting bug reports to this newsgroup, instead see question 10. 9: Where can I get old postings to gnu.emacs.help and other GNU groups? The FSF has maintained archives of all of the GNU mailing lists for many years, although there may be some unintentional gaps in coverage. The archive is not particularly well organized or easy to retrieve individual postings from, but pretty much everything is there. Anonymous FTP: /prep.ai.mit.edu:/pub/gnu/emacs/MailingListArchives/ ! {There was a WAIS database named `comp-emacs' on lambada.oit.unc.edu that makes available the last 10 days of articles in comp.emacs. It appears to have died. Anyone know if it moved?} 10: Where should I report bugs and other problems with GNU Emacs? The correct way to report GNU Emacs bugs is by e-mail to bug-gnu-emacs@prep.ai.mit.edu. Anything sent here also appears in the newsgroup gnu.emacs.bug, but please use e-mail instead of news to submit the bug report. This way a reliable return address is available so you can be contacted for further details. RMS explains: Sending bug reports to help-gnu-emacs (which has the effect of posting on gnu.emacs.help) is undesirable because it takes the time of an unnecessarily large group of people, most of whom are just users and have no idea how to fix these problem. bug-gnu-emacs reaches a much smaller group of people who are more likely to know what to do and have expressed a wish to receive more messages about Emacs than the others. However, RMS says there are circumstances when it is okay to post to gnu.emacs.help: If you have reported a bug and you don't hear about a possible fix, then after a suitable delay (such as a week) it is okay to post on gnu.emacs.help asking if anyone can help you. If you are unsure whether you have a bug, RMS describes how to tell: ... if Emacs crashes, that is a bug. If Emacs gets compilation errors while building, that is a bug. If Emacs crashes while building, that is a bug. If Lisp code does not do what the documentation says it does, that is a bug. 11: How do I unsubscribe to this mailing list? If you are receiving a GNU mailing list named `XXX', you might be able to unsubscribe to it by sending a request to the address `XXX-request@prep.ai.mit.edu'. However, this will not work if you are not listed on the main mailing list, but instead recieve the mail from a distribution point. In that case, you will have to track down at which distribution point you are listed. Inspecting the `Received:' headers on the mail messages may help, along with liberal use of the `EXPN' or `VRFY' sendmail commands through `telnet <site-address> smtp'. Ask your postmaster for help. 12: What is the current address of the FSF? E-mail address: gnu@prep.ai.mit.edu + Phone number: (617) 876-3296 + Postal address: Free Software Foundation, Inc. 675 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02139, USA - On-line Help, Printed Manuals, Other Sources of Help 13: I'm just starting GNU Emacs; how do I do basic editing? Type "C-h t" to invoke the self-paced tutorial. Typing just C-h is how to enter the help system. WARNING: Your system administrator may have changed C-h to act like DEL to deal local keyboards. You can use M-x help-for-help instead to invoke help. To discover what key (if any) invokes help on your system, type "M-x where-is RET help-for-help RET". This will print a comma-separated list of key sequences in the echo area. Ignore the last character in each key sequence listed. Each of the resulting key sequences invokes help. NOTE: Emacs's help facility works best if help is invoked by a single key whose value should be stored in the variable help-char. Andrew Arensburger <arensb@kong.gsfc.nasa.gov> wrote a patch that allows the help facility to work properly when invoked by multiple character sequences. 14: How do I find out how to do something in GNU Emacs? There are several methods for finding out how to do things in Emacs. * The complete text of the Emacs manual is available online via the Info hypertext reader. Type "C-h i" to invoke Info. * You can order a hardcopy of the manual from the FSF. See question 15. * You can get a printed reference card listing commands and keys to invoke them. You can order one from the FSF for $1 (or 10 for $5), or you can print your own from the etc/refcard.tex file in the Emacs distribution. {Are PostScript versions of this available for FTP?} * You can list all of the commands whose names contain a certain word (actually which match a regular expression) using "C-h a" (M-x command-apropos). * You can list all of the functions and variables whose names contain a certain word using M-x apropos. * There are many other commands in Emacs for getting help and information. To get a list of these commands, type "C-h C-h C-h". NOTE: You may find that command-apropos and apropos are extremely slow on your system. This will be fixed in Emacs 19. If you can't wait that long, there is a fast-apropos.el file available in the Emacs Lisp Archive (see question 89) that contains the fix. 15: How do I get a printed copy of the GNU Emacs manual? You can order a printed copy of the GNU Emacs manual from the FSF for $20. For 6 or more manuals the price is $13 each. The price may be - tax-deductible as a business expense. - The full TeX source for the manual also comes in the `man' directory of the Emacs distribution, if you're daring enough to try to print out this 300 page manual yourself (see question 18). If you absolutely have to print your own copy, and you don't have TeX, you can get a PostScript version via anonymous FTP: ! ! /cs.ubc.ca:src/gnu/manuals_ps/emacs-18.57.ps.Z ! which site requests that you please CONFINE ANY MAJOR FTPING TO LATE EVENINGS OR EARLY MORNINGS OUR TIME (pacific time zone, GMT-8)). A DVI version is also available via FTP: ! ! /prep.ai.mit.edu:pub/gnu/emacs-manual-6.0.dvi.Z ! If you don't have TeX you can convert the Texinfo sources into {t,n,ps}roff format with the `texi2roff' program, which is available via anonymous FTP: ! ! /archive.cis.ohio-state.edu:pub/gnu/texi2roff/texi2roff.shar.Z ! See also question 14 for how to view the manual online. 16: Where can I get documentation on GNU Emacs Lisp? Within Emacs, you can type "C-h f" to get the documentation for a function, "C-h v" for a variable. For more information, obtain the GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual for Emacs 18 under Unix. It is available from the FSF for $50 (or 5 for $200). The latest revision available for FTP is edition 1.03 dated 28 January 1991. For online use, a set of pregenerated Info files is available with the Texinfo source for the Emacs Lisp manual via anonymous FTP: ! ! /archive.cis.ohio-state.edu:pub/gnu/emacs/ ! /prep.ai.mit.edu:pub/gnu/elisp-manual-1.03.tar.Z ! (You can also create the Info files from the Texinfo source.) See question 17 for details on how to install these files online. If you are daring enough to try to print this 550 page manual out yourself, for instructions see question 18. Also, as a popular USENET saying goes, "Use the Force, Read the Source". 17: How do I install a piece of Texinfo documentation? First create Info files from the Texinfo files with the `makeinfo' program. makeinfo is available as part of the latest Texinfo package: ! ! /prep.ai.mit.edu:pub/gnu/texinfo-2.14.tar.Z ! For information about the Texinfo format, read the Texinfo manual which comes with Emacs. This manual also comes installed in Info format, so you can read it online. Neither texinfo-format-buffer nor the makeinfo program install the resulting Info files in Emacs's Info tree. To install Info files: 1. Move the files to the `info' directory in the installed Emacs distribution. See question 4 if you don't know where that is. 2. Edit the file info/dir in the installed Emacs distribution, and add a line for the top level node in the Info package that you are installing. Follow the examples are already in this file. The format is: * Topic: (relative-pathname). Short description of topic. If you want to install Info files and you don't have the necessary privileges, you have several options: * Info files don't actually need to be installed before being used. You can feed a file name to the Info-goto-node command (invoked by pressing "g" in Info mode) by typing the name of the file in parentheses. This goes to the node named `Top' in that file. For example, to view a Info file named `XXX' in your home directory, you can type this: C-h i g (~/XXX) RET * You can create your own Info directory. You can tell Emacs where the Info directory is by setting the value of the variable Info-directory to its pathname. For example, to use a private Info directory which is a subdirectory of your home directory named `Info', you could do this: (setq Info-directory (expand-file-name "~/Info")) You will need a top-level Info file named `dir' in this directory. You can include the system-wide Info directory in your private Info directory with symbolic links or by copying it. * You can use an enhanced version of lisp/info.el that handles multiple Info directories. Then you can more easily use a mix of private and shared Info files. Dave Gillespie <daveg@synaptics.com, daveg@csvax.cs.caltech.edu> has written one such enhancement and I believe there are others. Dave's info.el also handles compressed Info files. Anonymous FTP: /archive.cis.ohio-state.edu:modes/info.el.Z ! /cs.umn.edu:pub/gnu/emacs/info.el.Z + According to Jay Bourland <jayb@math.stanford.edu>, a version of Dave's info.el comes with `xinfo' (see question 19). 18: How do I print a Texinfo file? NOTE: You can't get nice printed output from Info files; you must still have the original Texinfo source file for the manual you want to print. 1. Make sure the first line of the Texinfo file looks like this: \input texinfo You may need to alter `texinfo' to the full pathname of the texinfo.tex file, which comes with Emacs as man/texinfo.tex (or copy or link it into the current directory). 2. tex XXX.texinfo 3. texindex XXX.?? The `texindex' program comes with Emacs as man/texindex.c. 4. tex XXX.texinfo 5. Print the DVI file XXX.dvi in the normal way for printing DVI files at your site. To get more general instructions, retrieve the latest Texinfo package mentioned in question 17. 19: Can I view Info files without using GNU Emacs? Yes, the `info', `xinfo', and `ivinfo' programs do this. info uses curses, xinfo uses standard X11 libraries, and ivinfo uses InterViews. You can get info as part of the latest Texinfo package (see question 17). xinfo is available separately: ! ! /prep.ai.mit.edu:pub/gnu/xinfo-1.01.01.tar.Z ! /export.lcs.mit.edu: ! ivinfo is available in a comp.sources.misc archive or from Tom Horsley <tom@ssd.csd.harris.com>. For ivinfo, you need Stanford's InterViews C++ X library, available via anonymous FTP (interviews.stanford.edu). 20: What informational files are available for GNU Emacs? This isn't a frequently asked question, but it should be! A variety of informational files about GNU Emacs and relevant aspects of the GNU project are available for you to read. The following files are available in the `etc' directory of the GNU Emacs distribution, and also the latest versions are available individually via anonymous FTP (prep.ai.mit.edu:/pub/gnu/GNUinfo/): APPLE -- Why the FSF doen't support GNU Emacs on Apple computers DISTRIB -- GNU Emacs Availability Information, including the popular "Free Software Foundation Order Form" FTP -- How to get GNU Software by Internet FTP or by UUCP GNU -- The GNU Manifesto INTERVIEW -- Richard Stallman discusses his public-domain UNIX-compatible software system with BYTE editors MACHINES -- Status of GNU Emacs on Various Machines and Systems MAILINGLISTS -- GNU Project Electronic Mailing Lists SERVICE -- GNU Service Directory SUN-SUPPORT -- including "Using Emacstool with GNU Emacs" These files are available in the `etc' directory of the GNU Emacs distribution: DIFF -- Differences between GNU Emacs and Twenex Emacs CCADIFF -- Differences between GNU Emacs and CCA Emacs GOSDIFF -- Differences between GNU Emacs and Gosling (Unipress??) Emacs COPYING -- GNU Emacs General Public License NEWS -- GNU Emacs News, a history of user-visible changes LPF -- Why you should join the League for Programming Freedom FAQ -- GNU Emacs Frequently Asked Questions (You're reading it) OPTIONS -- a complete explanation of startup option handling These files are available via anonymous FTP (prep.ai.mit.edu:/pub/gnu/): tasks -- GNU Task List standards.text -- GNU Coding Standards In addition, all of the above files are available directly from the FSF via e-mail. Of course, please try to get them from a local source first. These additional files are available from the FSF via e-mail: * GNU's Bulletin, June, 1991 -- this file includes: GNU'S Who What Is the Free Software Foundation? What Is Copyleft? A Small Way to Help Free Software GNUs Flashes (important recent developments for project GNU) Free Software Support (and how to get it!) Copyrighted Programming Languages AT&T Threatens Users of X Windows (and other software patent threats) Project Gutenberg GNU Project Status Report GNU in Japan GNU Wish List Help Keep Government Software Free GNU Software Available Now Contents of the Emacs Tape Contents of the Compiler Tape Contents of the X11 Tapes VMS Emacs and Compiler Tapes GNU Documentation How to Get GNU Software Free Software for Microcomputers GNU Software on Apple computers GNU Software on the Amiga GNU Software on the Atari GNUish MS-DOS project Freemacs, an Extensible Editor for MS-DOS GNU in Japan FSF Order Form Thank GNUs * Legal issues about contributing code to GNU * GNU Project Status Report A collection of past GNU's Bulletins is available via anonymous FTP: + + /ftp.funet.fi:pub/gnu/Bulletins/ + 21: Where can I get help in installing GNU Emacs? Look in etc/SERVICE for names of companies and individuals who will sell you this type of service. An up-to-date version of the SERVICE file is available on prep.ai.mit.edu (also see question 20). 22: Where can I get the latest version of this document (the FAQ list)? The GNU Emacs FAQ is available in several ways: * Via USENET. If you can read news, the FAQ should be available in your news spool, in both the gnu.emacs.help and comp.emacs newsgroups. Every news reader of which I know will allow you to read any news article that is still in the news spool, even if you have read the article before. You may need to read the instructions for your news reader to discover how to do this. In `rn', this command will do this for you at the article selection level: ?GNU Emacs FAQ?rc:m In GNUS, you should type "C-u G" from the *Subject* buffer or "C-u SPC" from the *Newsgroup* buffer to view all articles in a newsgroup. The FAQ articles' message IDs are: <GNU-Emacs-FAQ-0.1992.09.22.011020@bigbird.bu.edu> ! <GNU-Emacs-FAQ-1.1992.09.22.011020@bigbird.bu.edu> ! <GNU-Emacs-FAQ-2.1992.09.22.011020@bigbird.bu.edu> ! <GNU-Emacs-FAQ-3.1992.09.22.011020@bigbird.bu.edu> ! <GNU-Emacs-FAQ-4.1992.09.22.011020@bigbird.bu.edu> ! <GNU-Emacs-FAQ-5.1992.09.22.011020@bigbird.bu.edu> ! If you are viewing this in the GNUS *Article* buffer, you can move point within one of the above message IDs and type "r" to fetch the referenced article. Type "o" in the *Article* buffer to restore the previous contents. If this text is not in the GNUS *Article* buffer, use M-r from the *Subject* buffer instead. If the FAQ articles have expired and been deleted from your news spool, it might (or might not) do some good to complain to your news administrator, because the most recent FAQ should not expire before November 21, 1992. ! * Via anonymous FTP. You can fetch the FAQ articles via anonymous FTP /rtfm.mit.edu:pub/usenet/news.answers/GNU-Emacs-FAQ/ part* ! * Via e-mail. You can send the following magical incantation in the body of a message to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu: send usenet/news.answers/GNU-Emacs-FAQ/part0 send usenet/news.answers/GNU-Emacs-FAQ/part1 send usenet/news.answers/GNU-Emacs-FAQ/part2 send usenet/news.answers/GNU-Emacs-FAQ/part3 send usenet/news.answers/GNU-Emacs-FAQ/part4 send usenet/news.answers/GNU-Emacs-FAQ/part5 * Via WAIS. The GNU Emacs FAQ is available via WAIS indexed on a per-question basis from the `faq' database on bigbird.bu.edu on the non-standard IP port number of 2210. This is probably the best way to find out if there is something in the FAQ related to your question. I use this myself to answer questions I see posted on gnu.emacs.help. The articles of the GNU Emacs FAQ are also available from the `usenet' database on rtfm.mit.edu (on the standard IP port: 210), along with a lot of other FAQ articles. However, these are all indexed at the whole article level instead of at the question level. This is a better place to look if you want to fetch the entire FAQ. * In the GNU Emacs distribution. Since GNU Emacs 18.56, the latest available version of the FAQ at the time of release has been part of the GNU Emacs distribution as file etc/FAQ. 18.58 is the latest version, and it was released in February 1992. * There is an old version of the FAQ list available for FTP in the GNU + archives at MIT: + + /prep.ai.mit.edu:pub/gnu/GNUinfo/FAQ.emacs + + * As the very last resort, you can e-mail a request to + gnu-emacs-faq-maintainers@bigbird.bu.edu. Don't do this unless you have made a serious effort to obtain the FAQ list via one of the methods listed above. Status of Emacs 23: Where does the name "Emacs" come from? Emacs originally was an acronym for Editor MACroS. RMS says he "picked the name `Emacs' because `E' was not in use as an abbreviation on ITS at the time.". The first Emacs was a set of macros written in 1976 at MIT by RMS for the editor TECO (Text Editor and COrrector (originally Tape Editor and COrrector)) under ITS on a PDP-10. RMS had already extended TECO with a "real-time" full screen mode with active keys. Emacs was started by Guy Steele <gls@think.com> as a project to unify the many divergent TECO command sets and keybindings at MIT. Many people have told me that TECO code looks a lot like line noise. See alt.lang.teco if you are interested. I think someone has written a TECO implementation in Emacs Lisp. It would be an interesting project to run the original TECO Emacs inside of GNU Emacs. 24: What is the latest version of GNU Emacs? GNU Emacs 18.58 is the current version. Fixes from 18.57 include better mail address parsing, an X visual bell speedup, a call-process enhancement, a regexp matching change, the ability to apply a numeric argument to a self-inserting digit, getting X resource values from the RESOURCE_MANAGER property, more reliable shell mode job control, and a change to copy-keymap. Also, support has been added for many new system types. Fixes from 18.55 include the removal of arbitrary limits on the undo facility. According to the January 1992 GNU's Bulletin, "Emacs 18 maintenance continues for simple bug fixes.". To visit a file with information about what has changed in recent versions, type "C-h n". 25: When will GNU Emacs 19 be available? There are strong indications that Emacs 19 will be available in 1992. The FSF has recently gone through a spate of copyright disclaimer checking, which is a good sign. Lucid has released Lucid GNU Emacs 19.2, which is based on an early unreleased version of GNU Emacs 19. This will be similar to Emacs 19 when it finally arrives, but they are not the same. See question 121. Work has begun on features for Emacs 20. 26: What is different about GNU Emacs 19? From the January 1992 GNU's Bulletin: Version 19 will enter beta test late this year. Among its new features are: before and after change hooks, source-level debugging of Emacs Lisp programs, X selection processing (including clipboard selections), scrollbars, support for European character sets, floating point numbers, per-buffer mouse commands, X resource manager interfacing, mouse-tracking, Lisp-level binding of function keys, multiple X windows (`screens' to Emacs), a new input system, and buffer allocation, which uses a new mechanism capable of returning storage to the system when a buffer is killed. The input stream is now a sequence of Lisp objects, instead of a sequence of characters. This allows a reasonable representation for mouse clicks, function keys, menu selections, etc. Thanks go to Alan Carroll and the people who worked on Epoch for generating initial feedback to a multi-windowed Emacs, and to Eric Raymond for help in polishing the Emacs 19 Lisp libraries. The June 1991 GNU's bulletin had this to say about future plans for Emacs: Features being considered for later releases of Emacs include: associating property lists with regions of text in a buffer; multiple fonts, color, and pixmaps defined by those properties; different visibility conditions for the regions, and for various windows showing one buffer; hooks to be run if point or mouse moves outside a certain range; incrementally saving undo history in a file; static menu bars; and better pop-up menus. Mention of this feature disappeared in the January 1992 GNU's bulletin: Emacs 19 supports two styles of multiple windows, one with a separate screen for the minibuffer, and another with a minibuffer attached to each screen. Mention of these two proposed features disappeared in the January 1991 GNU's bulletin: * Incremental syntax analysis for various programming languages (Leif). * A more sophisticated emacsclient/server model, which would provide network transparent Emacs widget functionality. 27: What variants of GNU Emacs exist? * Nemacs (Nihongo Emacs), which can handle Japanese text, is derived from + GNU Emacs 18.55. See question 149. * Demacs, which can run under MS-DOS on 386 machines, is derived from Nemacs. See question 122. * Epoch, which has better X support, is derived from GNU Emacs 18.58. See question 120 and 92. * Nepoch (Nihongo Epoch), which can handle Japanese text, is derived from + Epoch. + + * Mule (the MULtilingual Enhancement of GNU Emacs) can handle many + character sets simultaneously. It is derived from Emacs 18.58. It is + available for FTP: + + /sh.wide.ad.jp:/JAPAN/mule/ + /etlport.etl.go.jp:/pub/mule/ + + * Lucid GNU Emacs is derived from an early unreleased version of GNU Emacs + 19. See question 121 and 92.