-Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009,
- 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
+Copyright (C) 2001-2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
See the end of the file for license conditions.
Emacs for Windows
- This README file describes how to set up and run a precompiled
- version of GNU Emacs for Windows. This distribution can be found on
- the ftp.gnu.org server and its mirrors:
+ 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/
+ ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/
This server contains other distributions, including the full Emacs
- source distribution and a barebin distribution which can be installed
- over it, as well as older releases of Emacs for Windows.
+ source distribution, as well as older releases of Emacs for Windows.
- Answers to frequently asked questions, and further information about
- this port of GNU Emacs and related software packages can be found via
- http:
-
- http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/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
- Along with this file should be six subdirectories (bin, etc, info,
- lisp, leim, site-lisp). If you have downloaded the barebin
- distribution, then it will contain only the bin directory and the
- built in documentation in etc/DOC-X, the rest of the subdirectories
- are in the src distribution, which the barebin distribution is
- designed to be used with.
+ Along with this file should be four subdirectories (bin, libexec,
+ share, and var).
* Setting up Emacs
To install Emacs, simply unpack all the files into a directory of
- your choice, but note that you might encounter minor problems if
- there is a space anywhere in the directory name. 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".
+ 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,
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
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.
+ 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'
+ addpm.exe - A basic installer that creates Start Menu icons for Emacs.
Running this is optional.
- + cmdproxy.exe - Used internally by Emacs to work around problems with
- the native shells in various versions of Windows.
-
+ 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.
- + ddeclient.exe - A tool for interacting with DDE servers.
+ Several helper programs are in a version-specific subdirectory of
+ the libexec directory:
- + hexl.exe - A tool for converting files to hex dumps. See the
+ + 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
- on the same place as you got this binary distribution from. The version
- of libXpm bundled with this version of Emacs is 3.5.7, based on x.org's
- libXpm library from X11R7.3.
+ 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 as part of GTK, or from
- gnuwin32.sourceforge.net. Emacs will find them if the directory they
- are installed in is on the PATH.
-
- PNG: requires the PNG reference library 1.2 or later, which will
- be named libpng13d.dll, libpng13.dll, libpng12d.dll, libpng12.dll
- or libpng.dll. LibPNG requires zlib, which should come from the same
- source as you got libpng.
-
- JPEG: requires the Independant JPEG Group's libjpeg 6b or later,
+ 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 libtiff3.dll
- or libtiff.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 giflib4.dll, libungif4.dll or libungif.dll.
+ 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.
- In addition, Emacs can be compiled to support SVG. This precompiled
- distribution has not been compiled that way, since the SVG library
- or one or more of its extensive dependencies appear to be
- unreliable under Windows. See nt/INSTALL in the src distribution if
- you wish to compile Emacs with SVG support.
+ 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
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.
* Further information
- If you have access to the World Wide Web, I would recommend pointing
- your favorite web browser to the following document (if you haven't
- already):
-
- http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/
+ The FAQ for the MS Windows port of Emacs is distributed with Emacs
+ (info manual "efaq-w32"), and also available at
- This document serves as an FAQ and a source for further information
- about the Windows port and related software packages.
+ http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/efaq-w32.html
In addition to the FAQ, there is a mailing list for discussing issues
related to the Windows port of Emacs. For information about the
HCoop / bpt / emacs.git / blobdiff