From: jrs@world.std.com (Rick Sladkey)
Subject: GNU Emacs FAQ for Linux
Organization: The Internet
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 04:12:00 GMT

Here is the most recent README for my distribution of GNU Emacs for
Linux.  Also included is the README.8bit file describing the eight-bit
clean support.  - jrs

----- README
		FAQ for Linux version of GNU Emacs

This is a short list of Frequently Asked Questions about GNU Emacs
under Linux.  It does not address general questions about Emacs which
are not Linux specific.  For general help about Emacs, 1) learn to use
and read the online documentation, 2) read the real Emacs FAQ found in
emacs/etc/FAQ, and 3) read the newsgroup gnu.emacs.help.

					Rick Sladkey <jrs@world.std.com>

* Does Linux Emacs use the shared libraries?

Yes.  It wasn't easy.  If you have any problems with them let me know.
Also contact me if you would like static binaries.

* What version of the compiler was used?  Which shared libaries?

This describes version of GNU Emacs 18.58 for Linux 0.97 and above
compiled with GCC 2.2.2d7 using the libc.so.4.1 and libX11.so.2.1 shared
libraries.

* Which files do I need?

emacs-4.1.tar.Z			this file, sample default.el and diffs
				for this version, the eight-bit patch,
				iso-latin-1.el and eight-bit.el
emacs-etc-4.1.tar.Z		emacs support programs and misc info
emacs-shared-4.1.tar.Z		shared emacs binary and its doc file
x11emacs-shared-4.1.tar.Z	shared x11emacs binary and its doc file

* How do I install them?

According to Linux convention, cd to /usr and untar the packages.

* Does Linux Emacs support eight-bit input/output?

Yes.  It is new with this version.  It uses the so-called "ctl-arrow"
patch.  See the file README.8bit for more information.

* How much disk space is required?

Anywhere from 1 to 15 Meg.  Emacs works reasonably well with no
support files at all.  With a judicious selection from lisp/*.elc and
etc/*, quite a lot can be done using only 2 Meg.  If you want all of
lisp/*.elc, info/*, and etc/* this will require 4 to 6 Meg.  If you
unpack the whole source you need 8 Meg.  If you collect info files
like rare coins and install a lot of big lisp packages then Emacs may
need its own partition. :-)

* Why can't Emacs find its support files anymore?

This is because older versions of Emacs were compiled with
"/usr/local/emacs" based paths.  The current version is compiled with
"/usr/emacs" paths.  If you have a previous installation, just "mv
/usr/local/emacs /usr" and you're done.  If you can't bear to part
with the "/usr/local" pathnames because of inertia then do "ln -s
/usr/local/emacs /usr" and you can have them both.

* How do I get Emacs to recognize my cursor keys?

Simple.  Don't use them. :-)  Seriously, there are as many ways to do
this are there are elisp hackers but the preferred way is to follow
the pattern set by the other terminal definition files in
emacs/lisp/term/*.el.  For just arrow keys you can just copy vt220.el
to console.el and that's it.  For all the function keys and some others see
the sample default.el included with this file.

* What packages are particularly useful under Linux?

Because info format is the documentation standard of the GNU project
and just about everything except the kernel comes from FSF, you will
find that Dave Gillespie's enhanced info package is very useful.  It
allows multiple info directories, space bar paging, and supports
compressed info files. Please learn to use info.  Imagine Unix life
without man.

Others that I highly recommend are Sebastian Kremer's enhanced
dired directory editor, Dave Gillespie's calc calculator, Masanobu
UMEDA's gnus for usenet news, and Kyle Jone's vm for mail.

All can be found in the OSU Emacs archive, ftp.cis.ohio-state.edu,
/pub/gnu/emacs/elisp-archive.  See the real FAQ for more details.

* Does Linux Emacs support the X Window System?

Yes.  However, there are two binaries.  One without X support (about
485k) and one with X support (about 515k).

* Do I need both Emacs if I don't always use X?

No.  The X11 version works equally well inside or outside of X.  If
you get the message "Check your DISPLAY variable" it means that you
have defined DISPLAY in your ~/.profile (or whatever).  You can fix
this by starting Emacs with 'emacs -nw' or by removing the DISPLAY
variable from your ~/.profile and putting it in you ~/.xinitrc.

* Why doesn't Emacs use the settings in my .Xdefaults/.Xresources file?

You are probably using the word "emacs" and your X version of emacs
is called x11emacs.  Either use the word "Emacs" in your resource
file or rename x11emacs to emacs.  See above question on why this
is reasonable.

* I read about some menu that is supposed to pop up when I press some
  mouse button.  Does this work with Linux Emacs?

Yes.  This requires XMenu support to be compiled in.  Former
versions did not support it because it did not work correctly.

* Sometimes Emacs crashes with a SIGALRM message.  What's wrong?

You need to upgrade to a newer version of bash.  Some older versions
of bash were compiled with buggy libraries that caused bash to
send a SIGALRM to its parent in some circumstances.  Recent versions
do not exhibit this problem.

* Why does Emacs always put me in the root directory?

You have an old version of Emacs compiled before GCC 2.11c and you are
using the Linux extended filesystem.  Get the new version.

* Why doesn't Control-Z doesn't work right with Emacs?
* Why doesn't job control work in shell mode?

You have a really old version of Linux Emacs.  Get the new one.

----- README.8bit
Because of the international nature of the Linux project, and in the
interest of eradicating ethno-centricity, I patched this version of
Emacs to support eight-bit output and have also included some lisp
files to support eight-bit input.  This file explains how to do it.

The eight-bit output patch is called "the ctl-arrow patch" and was
written by Kenneth Cline.  Normally the ctl-arrow variable is either t
(meaning show control chars like ^C) or nil (meaning show control
chars like \003).  The patch adds a new alternative of anything other
than t or nil means to output eight-bit characters directly to the
display device with no interpretation.

For example, normally in Emacs, national language characters show up
as their octal equivalents.  But if you know that your ouput device
(terminal) supports the iso8859-1 latin character set, you can set the
ctl-arrow variable to 1 to display the real character.  The Linux
console, DEC vt220 terminals, and xterm fonts do support iso8859-1.
So instead of seeing:

From: d88-jwn@drax.nada.kth.se (Johan W\345hlin)

you see:
                                       o
From: d88-jwn@drax.nada.kth.se (Johan Wahlin)

Well, I'm faking it here, but you get the idea.  Sorry to single
you out, Johan.

In Emacs, ctl-arrow is a buffer-local variable meaning it can have a
different value in each buffer.  To turn it on in a specific buffer
type "ESC ESC (setq ctl-arrow 1) RET".  To make it the default for
every buffer put "(set-default 'ctl-arrow 1)" in your ~/.emacs.

Now, for eight-bit input.  If your keyboard supports your national
characters directly, you can just type "C-q key" to insert the quoted
national character.  You must have the meta-flag variable set to t
so Emacs won't strip the eighth bit.  Quoting is needed to keep
Emacs from interpreting the key a meta-key version of an ordinary key.

If you don't like the quoting business, you can load eight-bit.el from
you ~/.emacs.  This is a package I wrote that allows you enter eight
bit characters directly into Emacs without quoting.  A side effect of
this is that you lose the meta-key capability and must enter meta
keystrokes as "ESC key" instead of "M-key".

However, if your input device supports translating meta keystrokes
into "ESC key" then you can have to best of both worlds.  Luckily,
both the Linux console and xterm windows can be put into this mode.

For Linux, you will need to recompile your kernel for some variety of
a LATIN keyboard.  See the /usr/src/linux/Makefile for more details.

For xterm, you need to set the resource "eightBitInput" to false,
which is not the default.  This sounds backwords, but it works and
doesn't interfere with true eight-bit national characters.  You
can leave "eightBitOutput" as true, which is the default value.

If you do not have certain national keys on your keyboard but want to
input them anyway, you can load iso-latin-1.el (written by Matthieu
Herrb) from your ~/.emacs.  Then, in any buffer, you can turn on an
electric latin-1 minor mode with "ESC x iso-latin-1-mode RET" that
translates certain keystroke combinations into their respective
iso8859-1 single characters.  For example "c," becomes "c with a
cedilla" etc.  If you really want those two characters, you will have
to quote the second one.  There are other ISO input packages available
but this gives you a starting point.

Thanks to Janne Himanka for bugging me to get this working.

Let me know if you have any problems.
--
Rick Sladkey
jrs@world.std.com
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux