Frequently asked questions about XEmacs

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. XEmacs is much more than just a Text Editor.

This FAQ is freely redistributable. 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

1 Introduction, Policy, Credits

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 ChristianNybø.

If you notice any errors or items which should be added or amended to this FAQ please send email to Sandra Wambold. Include `XEmacs FAQ' on the Subject: line.

1.0: Introduction

Q1.0.1: What is XEmacs?

XEmacs is a powerful, highly customizable open source text editor and application development system, with full GUI support. It is protected under the GNU Public License and related to other versions of Emacs, in particular GNU Emacs. Its emphasis is on modern graphical user interface support and an open software development model, similar to Linux. XEmacs has an active development community numbering in the hundreds (and thousands of active beta testers on top of this), and runs on all versions of MS Windows, on Linux, and on nearly every other version of Unix in existence. Support for XEmacs has been supplied by Sun Microsystems, University of Illinois, Lucid, ETL/Electrotechnical Laboratory, Amdahl Corporation, BeOpen, and others, as well as the unpaid time of a great number of individual developers.

Q1.0.2: What is the current version of XEmacs?

XEmacs versions 21.1.* are releases made from the current stable sources. XEmacs versions 21.2.* are releases made from the development sources. Check at http://www.xemacs.org for the current minor version.

XEmacs 19.16 was the last release of v19, released in November, 1997, which was also the last version without international language support.

Q1.0.3: Where can I find it?

The canonical source and binaries can be found via anonymous FTP at:

ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/
	    

Q1.0.4: Why Another Version of Emacs?

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:

• It looks nicer.

• The XEmacs maintainers are generally more receptive to suggestions than the GNU Emacs maintainers.

• Many more bundled packages than GNU Emacs.

• Binaries are available for many common operating systems.

• Face support on TTY's.

• A built-in toolbar.

• Better Motif compliance.

• Some internationalization support (including full MULE support, if compiled with it).

• Variable-width fonts.

• Variable-height lines.

• Marginal annotations.

• ToolTalk support.

• XEmacs can be used as an Xt widget, and can be embedded within another application.

• Horizontal and vertical scrollbars (using real toolkit scrollbars).

• Better APIs (and performance) for attaching fonts, colors, and other properties to text.

• The ability to embed arbitrary graphics in a buffer.

• Completely compatible (at the C level) with the Xt-based toolkits.

Q1.0.5: Why Haven't XEmacs and GNU Emacs Merged?

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.

Q1.0.6: Where can I get help?

Probably the easiest way, if everything is installed, is to use Info, by pressing C-h i, or looking for an Info item on the Help Menu. M-x apropos can be used to look for particular commands.

For items not found in the manual, try reading this FAQ and reading the Usenet group comp.emacs.xemacs.

If you choose to post to a newsgroup, please use 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 to xemacs-request@xemacs.org with `subscribe' in the body of the message. Send to the list at xemacs@xemacs.org. list. To cancel a subscription, you must use the xemacs-request address. Send a message with a subject of `unsubscribe' to be removed.

Q1.0.7: Where are the mailing lists archived?

The archives can be found at http://list-archive.xemacs.org

Q1.0.8: How do you pronounce XEmacs?

The most common pronounciation is `Eks eemax'.

Q1.0.9: What does XEmacs look like?

Screen snapshots are available at http://www.xemacs.org/About/Screenshots/index.html as part of the XEmacs website.

Q1.0.10: Is there a port of XEmacs to Microsoft ('95 or NT)?

Yes. XEmacs can be built under MS Windows and is fully-featured and actively developed. See 6 XEmacs on MS Windows.

Q1.0.11: Is there a port of XEmacs to the Macintosh?

Yes.

XEmacs 21.5 (perhaps 21.4 also?) works on MacOS X, although it certainly will not feel very much like a Mac application as it has no Mac-specific code in it.

There is also a port of XEmacs 19.14 that works on all recent versions of MacOS, from 8.1 through MacOS X, by Pitts Jarvis. It runs in an equivalent of TTY mode only (one single Macintosh window, 25 colors), but has a large number of Mac-specific additions. It's available at http://homepage.mac.com/pjarvis/xemacs.html.

Q1.0.12: Is there a port of XEmacs to NextStep?

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.

Q1.0.13: Is there a port of XEmacs to OS/2?

No, but Alexander Nikolaev <avn_1251@mail.ru> is working on it.

Q1.0.14: Where can I obtain a printed copy of the XEmacs User's Manual?

Pre-printed manuals are not available. If you are familiar with TeX, you can generate your own manual from the XEmacs sources.

HTML and Postscript versions of XEmacs manuals are available from the XEmacs web site at http://www.xemacs.org/Documentation/index.html.

1.1: Policies

Q1.1.1: What is the FAQ editorial policy?

The FAQ is actively maintained and modified regularly. All links should be up to date. Unfortunately, some of the information is out of date -- a situation which the FAQ maintainer is working on. All submissions are welcome, please e-mail submissions to XEmacs FAQ maintainers.

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, we'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 previous FAQ maintainers. Answers quoted from Usenet news articles will always be attributed, regardless of the author.

Q1.1.2: How do I become a Beta Tester?

Send an email message to xemacs-beta-request@xemacs.org with the line `subscribe' in the body of the message.

Be prepared to get your hands dirty, as beta testers are expected to identify problems as best they can.

Q1.1.3: How do I contribute to XEmacs itself?

Ben Wing ben@xemacs.org 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 :)

1.2: Credits

Q1.2.1: Who wrote XEmacs?

XEmacs is the result of the time and effort of many people. The developers responsible for recent releases are:

• Martin Buchholz
  
  

• Steven Turnbull

• Ben Wing
  
  

• Hrvoje Niksic

  
  
  

The developers responsible for older releases were:

• Steve Baur

  
  
  

• Chuck Thompson
  
  

• Jamie Zawinski
  
  

• Richard Mlynarik

  Steve Baur was the primary maintainer for 19.15 through 21.0.

  Chuck Thompson and Ben Wing were the maintainers for 19.11 through 19.14 and heavy code contributors for 19.8 through 19.10.

  Jamie Zawinski was the maintainer for 19.0 through 19.10 (the entire history of Lucid Emacs). Richard Mlynarik was a heavy code contributor to 19.6 through 19.8.

Along with many other contributors, partially enumerated in the `About XEmacs' option in the Help menu.

Q1.2.2: Who contributed to this version of the FAQ?

The following people contributed valuable suggestions to building this version of the FAQ (listed in alphabetical order):

• SL Baur

• Hrvoje Niksic

• Aki Vehtari

Q1.2.3: Who contributed to the FAQ in the past?

This is only a partial list, as many names were lost in a hard disk crash some time ago.

• Curtis.N.Bingham

• Georges Brun-Cottan

• Richard Caley

• Richard Cognot

• Mark Daku

• William G. Dubuque

• Eric Eide

• Alain Fauconnet

• Chris Flatters

• Evelyn Ginsparg

• Marty Hall

• Darrell Kindred

• David Moore

• Arup Mukherjee

• Juergen Nickelsen

• Kevin R. Powell

• Justin Sheehy

• Stig

• Aki Vehtari

1.3: Internationalization

Q1.3.1: What is the status of internationalization support aka MULE (including Asian language support?

Both the stable and development versions of XEmacs include internationalization support (aka MULE). MULE currently works on UNIX and Linux systems; work for supporting MULE on Windows operating systems is in progress. Binaries compiled without MULE support run faster than MULE capable XEmacsen.

Q1.3.2: How can I help with internationalization?

If you would like to help, you may want to join the xemacs-mule@xemacs.org mailing list. Especially needed are people who speak/write languages other than English, who are willing to use XEmacs/MULE regularly, and have some experience with Elisp.

See section Q1.1.2: How do I become a Beta Tester?.

Q1.3.3: How do I type non-ASCII characters?

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.

Q1.3.4: Can XEmacs messages come out in a different language?

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. 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 oeffnen
	    

The name of the resource is derived from the non-localized entry by removing punctuation and capitalizing as above.

Q1.3.5: Please explain the various input methods in MULE/XEmacs

MORIOKA Tomohiko writes:

Original Mule supports the following input methods: Wnn4, Wnn6, Canna, SJ3 and XIM. Interfaces for Wnn and SJ3 uses the egg user 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:

1. Input character Translation System (ITS) layer. It translates ASCII inputs to Kana/PinYin/Hangul characters.

2. 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.