Re: Emacs newbie - Syntax Highlighting and Indentation

[Michael M Mason <admin@cambridge-optical.com>]

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 16:52:12 +0100, David Rasmussen
<david.rasmussen@gmx.net> wrote:

>I've installed the Windows version of Emacs 21.3.1.
>I have read some tutorials, but I have two questions (for now):
>
>1) How do I enable syntax highlighting by default, for any type of file 
>/ extension / mode that supports it? I have enabled it in the Options 
>menu, and saved my options. But isn't there a non-menu-way of doing 
>this, so I can get to learn and understand how to configure emacs myself?

Customisations are saved in a file called .emacs which is
stored in your home directory.  Unless you've taken steps to
tell it otherwise, Emacs will very probably be using the
root directory of your C: drive as your home directory.  You
can open your .emacs using C-x C-f and specifying ~/.emacs
as the filename.

In order to find out what you can put in your .emacs, select
"Read the Emacs Manual" from the "Help" menu and check out
the "Init File" sections.  You will probably also want to
have a look at "font-locking" (the name for syntax
highlighting).  The commands that you will most likely want
to put in your .emacs are:

(global-font-lock-mode t)
(setq font-lock-maximum-decoration t)
(transient-mark-mode t)

There's a lot of Windows-specific information at:

http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/faq.html

and there's plenty of .emacs stuff at:

http://www.dotemacs.de/

-- 
Michael