See ``Working with Xemacs''
NAME
xemacs - Emacs: The Next Generation
SunOS 5.7 Last change: 1998 January 13
SYNOPSIS
xemacs [ command-line switches ] [ files ... ]
DESCRIPTION
XEmacs is a version of Emacs, compatible with and containing
many improvements over GNU Emacs, written by Richard Stall-
man of the Free Software Foundation. It was originally
based on an early release of GNU Emacs Version 19, and has
tracked subsequent releases of GNU Emacs as they have become
available.
The primary documentation of XEmacs is in the XEmacs Refer-
ence Manual, which you can read on-line using Info, a sub-
system of XEmacs. Please look there for complete and up-
to-date documentation. Complete documentation on using
Emacs Lisp is available on-line through the XEmacs Lisp
Programmer's Manual. Both manuals also can be printed out
nicely using the TeX formatting package.
The user functionality of XEmacs encompasses everything
other Emacs editors do, and it is easily extensible since
its editing commands are written in Lisp.
XEmacs has an extensive interactive help facility, but the
facility assumes that you know how to manipulate XEmacs win-
dows and buffers. CTRL-h enters the Help facility. Help
Tutorial (CTRL-h t) requests an interactive tutorial which
can teach beginners the fundamentals of XEmacs in a few
minutes. Help Apropos (CTRL-h a) helps you find a command
given its functionality, Help Key Binding (CTRL-h k)
describes a given key sequence's effect, and Help Function
(CTRL-h f) describes a given Lisp function specified by
name. You can also look up key sequences in the XEmacs
Reference Manual using Lookup Key Binding (CTRL-h CTRL-k),
and look up Lisp functions in the XEmacs Lisp Programmer's
Manual using Lookup Function (CTRL-h CTRL-f). All of these
help functions, and more, are available on the Help menu if
you are using a window system.
XEmacs has extensive GUI (graphical user interface) support
when running under a window system such as X, including mul-
tiple frames (top-level windows), a menubar, a toolbar, hor-
izontal and vertical scrollbars, dialog boxes, and extensive
mouse support.
XEmacs has full support for multiple fonts and colors,
variable-width fonts, and variable-height lines, and allows
for pixmaps to be inserted into a buffer. (This is used in
the W3 web-browsing package and in some of the debugger and
outlining interfaces, among other things.)
XEmacs's Undo can undo several steps of modification to your
buffers, so it is easy to recover from editing mistakes.
XEmacs's many special packages handle mail reading (VM, MH-E
and RMail) and sending (Mail), Usenet news reading and post-
ing (GNUS), World Wide Web browsing (W3), specialized modes
for editing source code in all common programming languages,
syntax highlighting for many languages (Font-Lock), compil-
ing (Compile), running subshells within XEmacs windows
(Shell), outline editing (Outline), running a Lisp read-
eval-print loop (Lisp-Interaction-Mode), and automated
psychotherapy (Doctor).
There is an extensive reference manual, but users of other
Emacsen should have little trouble adapting even without a
copy. Users new to Emacs will be able to use basic features
fairly rapidly by studying the tutorial and using the self-
documentation features.
XEmacs Options
XEmacs accepts all standard X Toolkit command line options
when run in an X Windows environment. In addition, the fol-
lowing options are accepted (when options imply a sequence
of actions to perform, they are performed in the order
encountered):
-t file Use specified file as the terminal instead of using
stdin/stdout. This implies -nw.
-batch Edit in batch mode. The editor will send messages
to stdout. You must use the -l, -f, and -eval
options to specify files to execute and functions to
call.
-nw Inhibit the use of any window-system-specific
display code: use the current TTY.
-debug-init
Enter the debugger if an error occurs loading the
init file.
-unmapped
Do not map the initial frame.
-no-site-file
Do not load the site-specific init file (site-
start.el).
-q, -no-init-file
Do not load an init file.
-no-early-packages
Do not process the early packages.
-vanilla
Load no extra files at startup. Equivalent to the
combination of -q , -no-site-file , and -no-packages
-u user, -user user
Load user's init file.
file Edit file.
+number Go to the line specified by number (do not insert a
space between the "+" sign and the number).
-help Print a help message and exit.
-V, -version,
Print the version number and exit.
-f function, -funcall function
Execute the lisp function function.
-l file, -load file
Load the Lisp code in the file file.
-eval form
Evaluate the Lisp form form.
-i file, -insert file
Insert file into the current buffer.
-kill Exit XEmacs (useful with -batch).
Using XEmacs with X
XEmacs has been tailored to work well with the X window sys-
tem. If you run XEmacs from under X windows, it will create
its own X window to display in. You will probably want to
start the editor as a background process so that you can
continue using your original window.
XEmacs can be started with the following standard X options:
-visual
Select the visual that XEmacs will attempt to use.
should be one of the strings "Sta-
ticColor", "TrueColor", "GrayScale", "PseudoColor" or
"DirectColor", and should be the number of
bits per pixel (example, "-visual TrueColor24" for a
24bit TrueColor visual) See X(1) for more information.
-privateColormap
Require XEmacs to create and use a private colormap for
display. This will keep XEmacs from taking colors from
the default colormap and keeping them from other
clients.
-geometry ##x##+##+##
Specify the geometry of the initial window. The ##'s
represent a number; the four numbers are width (charac-
ters), height (characters), X offset (pixels), and Y
offset (pixels), respectively. Partial specifications
of the form ##x## or +##+## are also allowed. (The
geometry specification is in the standard X format; see
X(1) for more information.)
-iconic
Specifies that the initial window should initially
appear iconified.
-name name
Specifies the program name which should be used when
looking up defaults in the user's X resources.
-title title, -T title, -wn title
Specifies the title which should be assigned to the
XEmacs window.
-d displayname, -display displayname
Create the XEmacs window on the display specified by
displayname. Must be the first option specified in
the command line.
-font font, -fn font
Set the XEmacs window's font to that specified by
font. You will find the various X fonts in the
/usr/lib/X11/fonts directory. XEmacs works with
either fixed- or variable-width fonts, but will
probably look better with a fixed-width font.
-scrollbar-width pixels
Specify the width of the vertical scrollbars.
-scrollbar-height pixels
Specify the height of the horizontal scrollbars.
-bw pixels, -borderwidth pixels
Set the XEmacs window's border width to the number
of pixels specified by pixels. Defaults to one
pixel on each side of the window.
-ib pixels, -internal-border-width pixels
Specify the width between a frame's border and its
text, in pixels. Defaults to one pixel on each side
of the window.
-fg color, -foreground color
Sets the color of the text.
See the file /usr/lib/X11/rgb.txt for a list of
valid color names.
-bg color, -background color
Sets the color of the window's background.
-bd color, -bordercolor color
Sets the color of the window's border.
-mc color
Sets the color of the mouse pointer.
-cr color
Sets the color of the text cursor.
-rv, -reverse
Reverses the foreground and background colors
(reverse video). Consider explicitly setting the
foreground and background colors instead of using
this option.
-xrm argument
This allows you to set an arbitrary resource on the
command line. argument should be a resource specif-
ication, as might as in your .Xresources or .Xde-
faults file.
You can also set resources, i.e. X default values, for your
XEmacs windows in your .Xresources or .Xdefaults file (see
xrdb(1)). Use the following format:
Emacs.keyword:value
or
Emacs*EmacsFrame.keyword:value
where value specifies the default value of keyword. (Some
resources need the former format; some the latter.)
You can also set resources for a particular frame by using
the format
Emacs*framename.keyword:value
where framename is the resource name assigned to that par-
ticular frame. (Certain packages, such as VM, give their
frames unique resource names, in this case "VM".)
XEmacs lets you set default values for the following key-
words:
default.attributeFont (class Face.AttributeFont)
Sets the window's text font.
default.attributeForeground (class Face.AttributeForeground)
Sets the window's text color.
default.attributeBackground (class Face.AttributeBackground)
Sets the window's background color.
face.attributeFont (class Face.AttributeFont)
Sets the font for face, which should be the name of
a face. Common face names are
FACE PURPOSE
default Normal text.
bold Bold text.
italic Italicized text.
bold-italic Bold and italicized text.
modeline Modeline text.
zmacs-region Text selected with the mouse.
highlight Text highlighted when the mouse
passes over.
left-margin Text in the left margin.
right-margin Text in the right margin.
isearch Text highlighted during incremental
search.
info-node Text of Info menu items.
info-xref Text of Info cross references.
face.attributeForeground (class Face.AttributeForeground)
Sets the foreground color for face.
face.attributeBackground (class Face.AttributeBackground)
Sets the background color for face.
Face.AttributeBackgroundPixmap)
face.attributeBackgroundPixmap (class
Sets the background pixmap (stipple) for face.
face.attributeUnderline (class Face.AttributeUnderline)
Whether face should be underlined.
reverseVideo (class ReverseVideo)
If set to on, the window will be displayed in
reverse video. Consider explicitly setting the
foreground and background colors instead of using
this resources.
borderWidth (class BorderWidth)
Sets the window's border width in pixels.
internalBorderWidth (class InternalBorderWidth)
Sets the window's internal border width in pixels.
borderColor (class BorderColor)
Sets the color of the window's border.
cursorColor (class Foreground)
Sets the color of the window's text cursor.
pointerColor (class Foreground)
Sets the color of the window's mouse cursor.
emacsVisual (class EmacsVisual)
Sets the default visual XEmacs will try to use (as
described above).
privateColormap (class PrivateColormap)
If set, XEmacs will default to using a private
colormap.
geometry (class Geometry)
Sets the geometry of the XEmacs window (as described
above).
iconic (class Iconic)
If set to on, the XEmacs window will initially
appear as an icon.
menubar (class Menubar)
Whether the XEmacs window will have a menubar.
Defaults to true.
initiallyUnmapped (class InitiallyUnmapped)
Whether XEmacs will leave the initial frame unmapped
when it starts up.
barCursor (class BarCursor)
Whether the cursor should be a bar instead of the
traditional box.
title (class Title)
Sets the title of the XEmacs window.
iconName (class Title)
Sets the icon name for the XEmacs window icon.
scrollBarWidth (class ScrollBarWidth)
Sets the width of the vertical scrollbars, in pix-
els. A width of 0 means no vertical scrollbars.
scrollBarHeight (class ScrollBarHeight)
Sets the height of the horizontal scrollbars, in
pixels. A height of 0 means no horizontal
scrollbars.
scrollBarPlacement (class ScrollBarPlacement)
Sets the position of vertical and horizontal
scrollbars. Should be one of the strings "top-
left", "bottom-left", "top-right", or "bottom-
right". The default is "bottom-right" for the Motif
and Lucid scrollbars and "buttom-left" for the
Athena scrollbars.
topToolBarHeight (class TopToolBarHeight)
Sets the height of the top toolbar, in pixels. 0
means no top toolbar.
bottomToolBarHeight (class BottomToolBarHeight)
Sets the height of the bottom toolbar, in pixels. 0
means no bottom toolbar.
leftToolBarWidth (class LeftToolBarWidth)
Sets the width of the left toolbar, in pixels. 0
means no left toolbar.
rightToolBarWidth (class RightToolBarWidth)
Sets the width of the right toolbar, in pixels. 0
means no right toolbar.
topToolBarShadowColor (class TopToolBarShadowColor)
Sets the color of the top shadows for the toolbars.
(For all toolbars, not just the toolbar at the top
of the frame.)
bottomToolBarShadowColor (class BottomToolBarShadowColor)
Sets the color of the bottom shadows for the tool-
bars. (For all toolbars, not just the toolbar at the
bottom of the frame.)
topToolBarShadowPixmap (class TopToolBarShadowPixmap)
Sets the pixmap of the top shadows for the toolbars.
(For all toolbars, not just the toolbar at the top
of the frame.) If set, this resource overrides the
corresponding color resource.
bottomToolBarShadowPixmap (class BottomToolBarShadowPixmap)
Sets the pixmap of the bottom shadows for the tool-
bars. (For all toolbars, not just the toolbar at the
bottom of the frame.) If set, this resource over-
rides the corresponding color resource.
toolBarShadowThickness (class ToolBarShadowThickness)
Thickness of the shadows around the toolbars, in
pixels.
visualBell (class VisualBell)
Whether XEmacs should flash the screen rather than
making an audible beep.
bellVolume (class BellVolume)
Volume of the audible beep. Range is 0 through 100.
useBackingStore (class UseBackingStore)
Whether XEmacs should set the backing-store attri-
bute of the X windows it creates. This increases
the memory usage of the X server but decreases the
amount of X traffic necessary to update the screen,
and is useful when the connection to the X server
goes over a low-bandwidth line such as a modem con-
nection.
textPointer (class Cursor)
The cursor to use when the mouse is over text.
selectionPointer (class Cursor)
The cursor to use when the mouse is over a mouse-
highlighted text region.
spacePointer (class Cursor)
The cursor to use when the mouse is over a blank
space in a buffer (that is, after the end of a line
or after the end-of-file).
modeLinePointer (class Cursor)
The cursor to use when the mouse is over a mode
line.
gcPointer (class Cursor)
The cursor to display when a garbage-collection is
in progress.
scrollbarPointer (class Cursor)
The cursor to use when the mouse is over the
scrollbar.
pointerColor (class Foreground)
The foreground color of the mouse cursor.
pointerBackground (class Background)
The background color of the mouse cursor.
Using the Mouse
The following lists the mouse button bindings for the XEmacs
window under X11.
MOUSE BUTTON FUNCTION
left Set point or make a text selection.
middle Paste text.
right Pop up a menu of options.
SHIFT-left Extend a selection.
CTRL-left Make a selection and insert it at
point.
CTRL-middle Set point and move selected text there.
CTRL-SHIFT-left Make a selection, delete it, and insert
it at point.
META-left Make a rectangular selection.
FILES
Lisp code is read at startup from the user's init file,
$HOME/.emacs.
/usr/local/info - files for the Info documentation browser
(a subsystem of XEmacs) to refer to. The complete text of
the XEmacs Reference Manual and the XEmacs Lisp Programmer's
Manual is included in a convenient tree structured form.
/usr/local/lib/xemacs-$VERSION/info - the Info files may be
here instead.
/usr/local/lib/xemacs-$VERSION/src - C source files and
object files. (May not be present.)
/usr/local/lib/xemacs-$VERSION/lisp/* - Lisp source files
and compiled files that define most editing commands. The
files are contained in subdirectories, categorized by func-
tion or individual package. Some are preloaded; others are
autoloaded from these directories when used.
/usr/local/lib/xemacs-$VERSION/etc - some files of informa-
tion, pixmap files, other data files used by certain pack-
ages, etc.
/usr/local/lib/xemacs-$VERSION/$CONFIGURATION - various pro-
grams that are used with XEmacs.
/usr/local/lib/xemacs-$VERSION/$CONFIGURATION/DOC - contains
the documentation strings for the Lisp primitives and
preloaded Lisp functions of XEmacs. They are stored here to
reduce the size of XEmacs proper.
/usr/local/lib/xemacs-$VERSION/etc/SERVICE - lists people
offering various services to assist users of XEmacs,
including education, troubleshooting, porting and customiza-
tion.
/usr/local/lib/xemacs/lock - holds lock files that are made
for all files being modified in XEmacs, to prevent simul-
taneous modification of one file by two users.
/usr/local/lib/xemacs/site-lisp - locally-provided Lisp
files.
/usr/lib/X11/rgb.txt - list of valid X color names.
BUGS AND HELP
There is a newsgroup, comp.emacs.xemacs, for reporting
XEmacs bugs and fixes and requesting help. But before
reporting something as a bug, please try to be sure that it
really is a bug, not a misunderstanding or a deliberate
feature. We ask you to read the section ``Reporting XEmacs
Bugs'' near the end of the reference manual (or Info system)
for hints on how and when to report bugs. Also, include the
version number of the XEmacs you are running and the system
you are running it on in every bug report that you send in.
Finally, the more you can isolate the cause of a bug and the
conditions it happens under, the more likely it is to be
fixed, so please take the time to do so.
The newsgroup is bidirectionally gatewayed to and from the
mailing list xemacs@xemacs.org. You can read the list
instead of the newsgroup if you do not have convenient
Usenet news access. To request to be added to the mailing
list, send mail to xemacs-request@xemacs.org. (Do not send
mail to the list itself.)
The XEmacs maintainers read the newsgroup regularly and will
attempt to fix bugs reported in a timely fashion. However,
not every message will get a response from one of the main-
tainers. Note that there are many people other than the
maintainers who read the newsgroup, and will usually be of
assistance in helping with any problems encountered.
If you need more personal assistance than can be provided by
the newsgroup, look in the SERVICE file (see above) for a
list of people who offer it.
For more information about XEmacs mailing lists, see the
file /usr/local/lib/xemacs-$VERSION/etc/MAILINGLISTS.
UNRESTRICTIONS
XEmacs is free; anyone may redistribute copies of XEmacs to
anyone under the terms stated in the XEmacs General Public
License, a copy of which accompanies each copy of XEmacs and
which also appears in the reference manual.
Copies of XEmacs may sometimes be received packaged with
distributions of Unix systems, but it is never included in
the scope of any license covering those systems. Such
inclusion violates the terms on which distribution is per-
mitted. In fact, the primary purpose of the General Public
License is to prohibit anyone from attaching any other res-
trictions to redistribution of XEmacs.
SEE ALSO
X(1), xlsfonts(1), xterm(1), xrdb(1), emacs(1), vi(1)
AUTHORS
XEmacs was written by Steve Baur , Martin
Buchholz , Richard Mlynarik
, Hrvoje Niksic , Chuck
Thompson , Ben Wing , Jamie
Zawinski , and many others. It was based
on an early version of GNU Emacs Version 19, written by
Richard Stallman of the Free Software Founda-
tion, and has tracked subsequent releases of GNU Emacs as
they have become available. It was originally written by
Lucid, Inc. (now defunct) and was called Lucid Emacs.
Chuck Thompson wrote the XEmacs redisplay engine, maintains
the XEmacs FTP and WWW sites, and has put out all releases
of XEmacs since 19.11 (the first release called XEmacs).
Ben Wing wrote the Asian-language support, the on-line docu-
mentation (including this man page and much of the FAQ), the
external widget code, and retooled or rewrote most of the
basic, low-level XEmacs subsystems. Jamie Zawinski put out
all releases of Lucid Emacs, from the first (19.0) through
the last (19.10), and was the primary code contributor for
all of these releases. Richard Mlynarik rewrote the XEmacs
Lisp-object allocation system, improved the keymap and mini-
buffer code, and did the initial synching of XEmacs with GNU
Emacs Version 19.
Many others have also contributed significantly. For more
detailed information, including a long history of XEmacs
from multiple viewpoints and pretty pictures and bios of the
major XEmacs contributors, see the XEmacs About Page (the
About XEmacs option on the Help menu).
MORE INFORMATION
For more information about XEmacs, see the XEmacs About Page
(mentioned above), look in the file /usr/local/lib/xemacs-
$VERSION/etc/NEWS, or point your Web browser at
http://www.xemacs.org/
for up-to-the-minute information about XEmacs.
The XEmacs FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) can be found at
the Web site just listed. A possibly out-of-date version is
also accessible through the Info system inside of XEmacs.
The latest version of XEmacs can be downloaded using
anonymous FTP from
ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/
or from a mirror site near you. Mirror sites are listed in
the file etc/FTP in the XEmacs distribution or see the Web
site for an up-to-date list of mirror sites.