Re: Windows Emacs and screen readers

[Nikhil Nair <nnair@pobox.com>]

On Wed, 29 Jun 2005, Emilio Lopes wrote:

> Jason Rumney <jasonr <at> gnu.org> writes:
>
> > [...]
> > You need the later development version. Although the first changes to
> > use the system caret were made in 2001, a few months before 21.1 was
> > released, it was too close to the release to make it into 21.1, and
> > subsequent releases have all been bugfix releases.
> >
>
> Here is the documentation of the relevant user option:
>
>    w32-use-visible-system-caret's value is nil
>
>    Flag to make the system caret visible.
>    When this is non-nil, Emacs will indicate the position of point by
>    using the system caret instead of drawing its own cursor.  Some screen
>    reader software does not track the system cursor properly when it is
>    invisible, and gets confused by Emacs drawing its own cursor, so this
>    variable is initialized to t when Emacs detects that screen reader
>    software is running as it starts up.
>
>    When this variable is set, other variables affecting the appearance of
>    the cursor have no effect.
>
>    Defined in `C source code'.

Thanks to both of you for these helpful comments, and to Lennart Borgman
who pointed me to the precompiled version at
http://ourcomments.org/Emacs/EmacsW32.html .

I've just tried to install the development version I found there, on XP
SP2 (non-admin account), keeping all of the defaults except the
installation directory, which I put in my user account's filespace.  It
seemed to install, but then wouldn't run; I get:

---------------------------
C:\Documents and Settings\nnair\Emacs\setup\bin\gnuclientw.exe
---------------------------
Could not start runemacs --load="C:/Documents and Settings/nnair/Emacs/setup/bin/gnuservauto.el"
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------

(the above is the result of cutting from a message box with C-c.)

Any hints appreciated.  I did the installation from an unprivileged
account, but since the option it gave me was to do a full installation
except anything requiring privileged access, I presumed this would be
fine.

Cheers,

Nikhil.