Emacs and Microsoft Windows Tips

See: Which Emacs to Download for Windows and Mac?.

For Windows users, after download, unzip it. Go to the folder, in the “bin” dir, then click on file runemacs.exe to launch.

to run emacs inside Windows Console, start like this: C:\Users\mary\apps\emacs-24.1\bin\emacs.exe --no-window-system.

Create a Windows shortcut, which lets you start emacs from your home dir properly.

to create a file shortcut:

• ① Hold Alt then drag that runemacs.exe icon to desktop.
• ② In the newly created alias icon, right click to open file properties. Then, in the “Start in” field, enter %home%.
• ③ In the “Target” field, you can add your own init files. For example, here's mine: %home%\apps\emacs-24.1\bin\runemacs.exe -q --load=%home%\ErgoEmacs_dev\init.el --load=%home%\.emacs. Here, i suppress loading init files by -q, but load ErgoEmacs init files, then load my personal init files.

with emacs 24, they are probably in MELPA repository. See: A Guide on Emacs 24 Package System.

• Emacs Visual Basic Mode
• Emacs PowerShell Modes

There are several packages for cmd.exe batch file, written by different people. You may want to try them in the order listed here:

• emacswiki dos.el, by Arni Magnusson. 2003 〜 2011.
• emacswiki batch-mode.el, by Agnar Renolen, 2002; Matthew Fidler, 2009.
• sourceforge.net dosbat, by Glen Peterson. 2003.
• ftp.gnu.org bat-mode.el, by Peter Breton. 1996.

See also: How to Install Emacs Packages.

That depends on whether if you have the environment variable named “HOME”. (“HOME” should not be confused with a default Windows environment variable named “HOMEPATH”.) If you do have “HOME”, then emacs will look for it there. If you don't have “HOME”, emacs will look for init file at:

• On Windows Vista and Windows 7: %HOMEPATH%\AppData\Roaming\
• on Windows XP: %HOMEPATH%\Application Data\

See: Windows Environment Variables Basic Tutorial.

By default, it is %HOME%/.emacs, or %HOME%/.emacs.el, or %HOME%/.emacs.d/init.el. The file can be byte-compiled, ending in “.elc”.

(info "(emacs) Find Init")

Type some garbage in your init file, then restart emacs. If emacs starts with error, then you know it's loaded.

Or, you can put the following code in your init file:

(set-background-color "pink")

You can disable the Windows shortcut that switches you among input methods of different languages. Here's the exact instruction for Windows Vista. Other Windows version should be similiar.

Go to 〖Start ▸ Control Panel〗. Choose Classic View on the left. Then, double click on the “Regional and Language Options” icon, then go to “Keyboards and Languages” tab, click on “Change Keyboards…”. Then, go to “Advanced Key Settings” tab, then, it should list Key sequences on the right column. Select a input choice that has shortcut key, then click the button “Change Key Sequence”.

See: Disable Ctrl+Alt+S of HP Support Information.

If you have other key combo that mysteriously launches some other program, basically, you want to find the shortcut file that launches it, right click and choose “Properties”, then in Shortcut tab, change the shoctcut key field there.

By default, the command named shell will run the interface to “cmd.exe”.

ErgoEmacs has several shells bundled. You can find them in the menu 〖Tools ▸ Shell〗. You can also call them by name.

Emacs Command Name	Shell Interface To
shell	Windows cmd.exe
powershell	Windows PowerShell
msys-shell	Bash (from MSYS)
cmd-shell	Windows cmd.exe
eshell	bash-like shell written in emacs lisp

See also: Emacs: What's eshell? eshell vs shell Difference? ◇ PowerShell Tutorial.

If you are using ErgoEmacs or Lennart's EmacsW32, it should work out of the box.

GNU Emacs for Windows's ftp facilities are broken out of the box. The problem is due to some incompatibility of emacs ftp interface with Windows's bundled FTP program at C:/Windows/system32/ftp.exe.

To find out what ftp program emacs is trying to interface, type this code: (executable-find "ftp") in a empty file, select it, then call eval-region.

REM example of setting HOME env var
setx HOME "C:\Users\mary"