Re: Installing matlab mode under Windows XP

[Perry Smith <pedz@easesoftware.com>]

[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3126 bytes --]

On Nov 20, 2006, at 8:20 AM, schnurpfelkamel@bluewin.ch wrote:

> Hi
>
> I would like to install other packages like Matlab mode for emacs
> on Windows XP. Where do I have to put these additional package files?
> Is there something like the .emacs file under UNIX that tells emacs
> to load these packages? Or in other words: What do I need to do, to
> make emacs load the additional package files?

First, there an emacs variable called load-path.  It is a list of  
directories emacs searches when a load is done.  What I do myself is  
I have all my emacs lisp in a directory called emacs.  Then in  
my .emacs file I do:

(setq load-path (append load-path (list "~/emacs")))

If you keep things in separate sub directories, then the list will be  
the list of all the places emacs needs to look in.

I believe there is a slicker way to do this.

Second, most packages come with some instructions.  You generally do  
not want to always load all of the contents of all of the packages.   
Usually, there are some key functions that are always called first.   
You set these in autoload statements.  A typical statement looks like:

(autoload 'vm "vm" "Start VM on your primary inbox." t)

The package will usually tell you want autoload statements to put in  
your .emacs file.

I can't think of what else you need to know.  Hopefully, this will  
get your started.

I don't know where the .emacs file is located on XP.  This is from  
the Info page:

    On MS-DOS, file names are case-insensitive and limited to eight
characters, plus optionally a period and three more characters.  Emacs
knows enough about these limitations to handle file names that were
meant for other operating systems.  For instance, leading dots `.' in
file names are invalid in MS-DOS, so Emacs transparently converts them
to underscores `_'; thus your default init file (*note Init File::) is
called `_emacs' on MS-DOS.  Excess characters before or after the
period are generally ignored by MS-DOS itself; thus, if you visit the
file `LongFileName.EvenLongerExtension', you will silently get
`longfile.eve', but Emacs will still display the long file name on the
mode line.  Other than that, it's up to you to specify file names which
are valid under MS-DOS; the transparent conversion as described above
only works on file names built into Emacs.

`HOME'
      The location of the user's files in the directory tree; used for
      expansion of file names starting with a tilde (`~').  On MS-DOS,
      it defaults to the directory from which Emacs was started, with
      `/bin' removed from the end if it was present.  On Windows, the
      default value of `HOME' is the `Application Data' subdirectory of
      the user profile directory (normally, this is `C:/Documents and
      Settings/USERNAME/Application Data', where USERNAME is your user
      name), though for backwards compatibility `C:/' will be used
      instead if a `.emacs' file is found there.

Good luck,
Perry Smith ( pedz@easesoftware.com )
Ease Software, Inc. ( http://www.easesoftware.com )

Low cost SATA Disk Systems for IBMs p5, pSeries, and RS/6000 AIX systems



[-- Attachment #1.2: Type: text/html, Size: 8552 bytes --]

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/plain, Size: 152 bytes --]

_______________________________________________
help-gnu-emacs mailing list
help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-gnu-emacs