"Easy" Windows Emacs

"Easy" Windows Emacs

[Shug Boabby]

hi there,

a friend uses windows and wishes to install GNU Emacs on it. they are a
long time SUN with GNU Emacs user, but are used to having the sysadmin
do all the dirty work regarding updates and installing the packages she
needs...

does anyone know of a binary windows version of GNU Emacs which comes
bundled with things like AucTeX and aspell (for the spell checker to
work). google was no help, but i'd be surprised if such distros didn't
exist as people have done similar things for OS X... bundling lots of
adons and GNU binary goodies.

thanks for your help,
Shug

Re: "Easy" Windows Emacs

[Pascal Bourguignon]

"Shug Boabby" <Shug.Boabby@gmail.com> writes:

> hi there,
>
> a friend uses windows and wishes to install GNU Emacs on it. they are a
> long time SUN with GNU Emacs user, but are used to having the sysadmin
> do all the dirty work regarding updates and installing the packages she
> needs...
>
> does anyone know of a binary windows version of GNU Emacs which comes
> bundled with things like AucTeX and aspell (for the spell checker to
> work). google was no help, but i'd be surprised if such distros didn't
> exist as people have done similar things for OS X... bundling lots of
> adons and GNU binary goodies.

http://justfuckinggoogleit.com/search?as_q=emacs+binary+windows

-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/

Nobody can fix the economy.  Nobody can be trusted with their finger
on the button.  Nobody's perfect.  VOTE FOR NOBODY.

Re: "Easy" Windows Emacs

[Shug Boabby]

pascal, if you'd bothered to read my post you see that i am not looking
for the official distro, i'm asking if there is a binary distro which
includes adons such as AucTeX and aspell in the package. some OS X
distros do this (like the Japanese Carbon Emacs). i have been unable to
find any such windows distro using google.

so... "just fucking read the question before replying". all smart
people do this, you appear not to be one of them. (its not particularly
polite now that you are on the receiving end, is it?)

[HS] Re: "Easy" Windows Emacs

[drkm]

"Shug Boabby" <Shug.Boabby@gmail.com> writes:

>                                                   (its not particularly
> polite now that you are on the receiving end, is it?)

  Congratulations!  You won our humour contest.

--drkm

Re: "Easy" Windows Emacs

[Shug Boabby]

> Congratulations!  You won our humour contest.

it would have been humour if we knew each other and i was therefore
able to take it as a friendly jest. as for telling a complete stranger
to "fucking google for it" (after they already said they did, with
details on why google was no help) to which they will be told how
stupid they are... is most certainly NOT humour. it is nothing more
than ignorance and possibly arrogance on pascal's behalf.

if you, drkm, think it IS humour, then it probably indicates a severe
lacking of social skills on your behalf.

Re: "Easy" Windows Emacs

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

"Shug Boabby" <Shug.Boabby@gmail.com> writes:

> if you, drkm, think it IS humour, then it probably indicates a severe
> lacking of social skills on your behalf.

you had used google already, but did not mention that in your request.
that's something you can remember to do the next time, as a way to
improve your own skills (social or otherwise).  rejoice at the new you!

thi

Re: "Easy" Windows Emacs

[drkm]

"Shug Boabby" <Shug.Boabby@gmail.com> writes:

> if you, drkm, think it IS humour, then it probably indicates a severe
> lacking of social skills on your behalf.

  Indeed.

--drkm

Re: "Easy" Windows Emacs

[Pascal Bourguignon]

"Shug Boabby" <Shug.Boabby@gmail.com> writes:

> pascal, if you'd bothered to read my post you see that i am not looking
> for the official distro, i'm asking if there is a binary distro which
> includes adons such as AucTeX and aspell in the package. some OS X
> distros do this (like the Japanese Carbon Emacs). i have been unable to
> find any such windows distro using google.
>
> so... "just fucking read the question before replying". all smart
> people do this, you appear not to be one of them. (its not particularly
> polite now that you are on the receiving end, is it?)

Ok, but emacs add-on don't need a different distribution: just put the
*.el in /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp/ or even in ~/emacs/
You don't need an administrator to do it, a mere _emacs_ user can do that.


-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/

Nobody can fix the economy.  Nobody can be trusted with their finger
on the button.  Nobody's perfect.  VOTE FOR NOBODY.

Re: "Easy" Windows Emacs

[Shug Boabby]

> you had used google already, but did not mention that in your request.

yes i did... and i quote my original post "google was no help" (2nd
line, 2nd paragragh)

> rejoice at the new you!

errr. yay!

Re: "Easy" Windows Emacs

[Shug Boabby]

> Ok, but emacs add-on don't need a different distribution: just put the
> *.el in /usr/local/share/emacs/site-li sp/ or even in ~/emacs/
> You don't need an administrator to do it, a mere _emacs_ user can do that.

the spell checker needs aspell/ispell/spell to be installed. last time
i checked, Mr Gates wasn't distributing that with XP.

also, AucTeX isn't as simple as putting some .el files into a folder...
its a configure/make install procedure. that needs a POSIX shell.

so... my request is really not as stupid as you make it out to be!

(technical note... on WINDOWS, not UNIX-like systems, so no /usr/local.
but i could instruct her to install .el files the drag and drop way if
the adons really were just a single .el file.)

Re: "Easy" Windows Emacs

[David Kastrup]

"Shug Boabby" <Shug.Boabby@gmail.com> writes:

>> Ok, but emacs add-on don't need a different distribution: just put
>> the *.el in /usr/local/share/emacs/site-li sp/ or even in ~/emacs/
>> You don't need an administrator to do it, a mere _emacs_ user can
>> do that.
>
> the spell checker needs aspell/ispell/spell to be installed. last
> time i checked, Mr Gates wasn't distributing that with XP.
>
> also, AucTeX isn't as simple as putting some .el files into a
> folder...  its a configure/make install procedure. that needs a
> POSIX shell.

Installing MSYS takes about 5 minutes.

Anyway, to get full benefit of Emacs and AUCTeX, you'd want to use a
developer version of Emacs like <URL:http://crasseux.com/emacs>.

There is a complete XEmacs/TeX/AUCTeX/preview-latex bundle called
XEmTeX available as well (Google for it).  Personally, I don't
particularly like XEmacs, and the Windows version in XEmTeX is likely
to be non-MULE (at least if it is 21.4), meaning that it won't get
along with utf-8.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: "Easy" Windows Emacs

[Pascal Bourguignon]

"Shug Boabby" <Shug.Boabby@gmail.com> writes:
>> Ok, but emacs add-on don't need a different distribution: just put the
>> *.el in /usr/local/share/emacs/site-li sp/ or even in ~/emacs/
>> You don't need an administrator to do it, a mere _emacs_ user can do that.
>
> the spell checker needs aspell/ispell/spell to be installed. last time
> i checked, Mr Gates wasn't distributing that with XP.
>
> also, AucTeX isn't as simple as putting some .el files into a folder...
> its a configure/make install procedure. that needs a POSIX shell.
>
> so... my request is really not as stupid as you make it out to be!
>
> (technical note... on WINDOWS, not UNIX-like systems, so no /usr/local.
> but i could instruct her to install .el files the drag and drop way if
> the adons really were just a single .el file.)

Of course, the first thing I do when I have to use MS-Windows, is to
install cygwin.  That's why I did not see the problem.  Go fetch it:
http://www.cygwin.com/

And of course, ispell is included in cygwin, and AucTeX is included
in the xemacs-sumo package.

-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/
Until real software engineering is developed, the next best practice
is to develop with a dynamic system that has extreme late binding in
all aspects. The first system to really do this in an important way
is Lisp. -- Alan Kay

Re: "Easy" Windows Emacs

[Klaus Berndl]

On Sun, 05 Jun 2005, Pascal Bourguignon wrote:

>  "Shug Boabby" <Shug.Boabby@gmail.com> writes:
> >> Ok, but emacs add-on don't need a different distribution: just put the
> >> *.el in /usr/local/share/emacs/site-li sp/ or even in ~/emacs/
> >> You don't need an administrator to do it, a mere _emacs_ user can do
> >> that.
> >
> > the spell checker needs aspell/ispell/spell to be installed. last time
> > i checked, Mr Gates wasn't distributing that with XP.
> >
> > also, AucTeX isn't as simple as putting some .el files into a folder...
> > its a configure/make install procedure. that needs a POSIX shell.
> >
> > so... my request is really not as stupid as you make it out to be!
> >
> > (technical note... on WINDOWS, not UNIX-like systems, so no /usr/local.
> > but i could instruct her to install .el files the drag and drop way if
> > the adons really were just a single .el file.)
>  
>  Of course, the first thing I do when I have to use MS-Windows, is to
>  install cygwin.  That's why I did not see the problem.  Go fetch it:
>  http://www.cygwin.com/
>  
>  And of course, ispell is included in cygwin, and AucTeX is included
>  in the xemacs-sumo package.

The OP had ask for a distro with GNU Emacs not with XEmacs.

Of course all these steps are not really complicated but first of all you have
to know which steps should be done (e.g. installing cygwin or something
equivalent). It's not impossible for newbie to do these things but i can at
least not blame the OP if he ask for a complete out-of-the-box-working distro
including the editor itself and all other stuff necessary to write TeX-files
in a comfortable manner. And at least with GNU Emacs there is no such distro -
at least AFAIK.

BTW: This discussion leads for me to the old topic concerning the lack of a
package-system of GNU-Emacs - IMHO one of the most disadvantages of GNU
compared to XEmacs - surely, that one of XEmacs is not perfect (really not ;-)
but after all it *IS* a package-system which can make live easier - at least for
the users and for the newbies - maybe not for the package-programmers ;-)
But a well defined package-interface could also have a lot of advantages for
the package-programmer...but now I'm going really off topic i see... ;-)

Ciao,
Klaus

-- 
Klaus Berndl			mailto: klaus.berndl@sdm.de
sd&m AG				http://www.sdm.de
software design & management	
Carl-Wery-Str. 42, 81739 Muenchen, Germany
Tel +49 89 63812-392, Fax -220

Re: "Easy" Windows Emacs

[David Kastrup]

Klaus Berndl <klaus.berndl@sdm.de> writes:

> BTW: This discussion leads for me to the old topic concerning the
> lack of a package-system of GNU-Emacs - IMHO one of the most
> disadvantages of GNU compared to XEmacs - surely, that one of XEmacs
> is not perfect (really not ;-) but after all it *IS* a
> package-system which can make live easier - at least for the users
> and for the newbies

Users and newbies tend not to use it, and its use conflicts with the
package management of distributions, anyway.  So the typical usage is
installing the sumo package from your distribution and never touch it
again.

The price to pay for that is that packages sometimes incompatible with
the core of XEmacs you are using, and are often quite outdated.

> - maybe not for the package-programmers ;-) But a well defined
> package-interface could also have a lot of advantages for the
> package-programmer...but now I'm going really off topic i see... ;-)

I am not of the opinion that the XEmacs package system has been a
factor that has increased the productivity of end users as well as
developers significantly.  Partly this might be ascribed to the
centralized distribution channels of it that make it impossible for
third parties to provide packages through the XEmacs package manager.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: "Easy" Windows Emacs

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Klaus Berndl <klaus.berndl@sdm.de>
> Date: 05 Jun 2005 15:04:01 +0200
> 
> BTW: This discussion leads for me to the old topic concerning the lack of a
> package-system of GNU-Emacs - IMHO one of the most disadvantages of GNU
> compared to XEmacs - surely, that one of XEmacs is not perfect (really not ;-)
> but after all it *IS* a package-system which can make live easier - at least for
> the users and for the newbies - maybe not for the package-programmers ;-)

Sorry, I don't see how a package-system could solve the bulk of the
problems here.  In my experience, the problem with Windows is that
there's no coherent set of tools and ports that will all work
seamlessly with Emacs, unless you install Cygwin Emacs and Cygwin
ports (and don't need any significant interaction with non-Cygwin
programs).  GnuWin32 are close, but not yet there, IMHO (no Bash, no
Ispell/Aspell, no Perl, no TeX, etc.)

That is why setting up a typical Windows box for Emacs and related
packages is hard: you need to tinker with many individual ports
gathered from all over, and you need to read the fine print in
numerous README files to understand the subtle problems an limitations
with the ports.

So packaging, IMHO, is the least of our problems: we need to come up
with a good set of ports first.

Re: "Easy" Windows Emacs

[drkm]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> Sorry, I don't see how a package-system could solve the bulk of the
> problems here.  In my experience, the problem with Windows is that
> there's no coherent set of tools and ports that will all work
> seamlessly with Emacs

  Then, if Emacs has its own package system (as a set of ELisp
libraries), there is no more need to such tools.

  David said that using a package system within Emacs may
conflict with the packaging of the system (like, as I understood,
with the Debian packages, or RPMs, or whatever).

  I agree.  But if such an Emacs package system exists (as in
XEmacs, but I don't know XEmacs), I think ELisp package
maintainers must use it instead of the system package system (I
mean they have to provide XEmacs packages, not Debian packages,
for example).

  But I don't think a package system is interresting if it's
designed to work only with a specific flavour of Emacs, or a
specific version.  The only usefull package system is one
available on almost all Emacsen.

  Because it have to be itself customisable, the maintainers of
the Emacs system package (for example gnu-emacs-XXX.deb) have to
setup it correctly (set the correct directories, etc.).

  Because we can customize such a system at any level (the
flavour or version of Emacs, the OS, the site administrator, the
user, the package itself), I don't think it'll really conflict
with other package systems.

  The most serious problem is to be used widely enough, and that
most libraries provide such a package as its official
distribution media.

  IMHO.

--drkm

Re: "Easy" Windows Emacs

[Stefan Monnier]

> So packaging, IMHO, is the least of our problems: we need to come up
> with a good set of ports first.

Why bother, really, when installing something like GNU/Linux fixes all those
problems  ;-)


        Stefan

[HS] Re: "Easy" Windows Emacs

[drkm]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> Why bother, really, when installing something like GNU/Linux fixes all those
> problems  ;-)

  Yes.  But "C:\>install /gnu_linux" doesn't work on every Windows
stations I have to work on (and I don't own).  Unfortunately.

--drkm

Re: "Easy" Windows Emacs

[Shug Boabby]

Klaus Berndl wrote, concerning cygwin:
> It's not impossible for newbie to do these things

hmm, i don't think its an issue of "newbie"-ness... its more one of
"not wanting to do"-ness. my friend is very experienced with emacs,
windows and LaTeX and simply wants a bundled package which will get her
system working the way the SUNs do at her work desktop (set up by an
admin). there should be no need to manually install any other GNU
packages or frameworks such as cygwin.

such packages like this exist for OS X, and i am surprised that no such
package exists for GNU Emacs! possibly the oldest program i know of.

i'd thought maybe someone had compiled GNU Emacs CVS for windows and
ispell and added a bunch of useful packages (like AucTeX) and set them
up for a default Windows machine (i.e. all the AucTeX stuff pointing to
the usual location for a MiKTeX install etc)... then put the zip-file
(preferably a self extracting exe, but def NOT a tarball as most
windows machines do not handle them) on some webspace.

Re: "Easy" Windows Emacs

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: drkm <usenet@fgeorges.org>
> Date: Mon, 06 Jun 2005 00:08:43 +0200
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> > Sorry, I don't see how a package-system could solve the bulk of the
> > problems here.  In my experience, the problem with Windows is that
> > there's no coherent set of tools and ports that will all work
> > seamlessly with Emacs
> 
>   Then, if Emacs has its own package system (as a set of ELisp
> libraries), there is no more need to such tools.

??? You mean, we should implement a speller, a typesetter, all the
programs in Coreutils, etc., all in Emacs Lisp?  IMHO, that'd be a
terrible waste of scarce resources.

Re: "Easy" Windows Emacs

[Brian Elmegaard]

"Shug Boabby" <Shug.Boabby@gmail.com> writes:

> i'd thought maybe someone had compiled GNU Emacs CVS for windows and
> ispell and added a bunch of useful packages (like AucTeX) and set them

The packed emacs on
http://www.et.web.mek.dtu.dk/Software/DNA/emacs21.3-setup.exe is an
attempt of doing this.

It is however only a snapshot of what I had installed, meaning no
ispell, but auctex and a customized site-start.el and _emacs according
to Claus Dethlefsens instructions. It was fairly easy to do with inno
setup but I am working an a way to switch to make addon packages for
Rex Dieters emacs setup on
http://www.math.unl.edu/~rdieter1/Software/Windows/. 

I think the xml-msi way of wix http://sourceforge.net/projects/wix/
is very attractive and I plan to make packages of what you
want. However, I am quite sure that someone else will have it running
earlier than me...


-- 
Brian (remove the sport for mail)
http://www.et.dtu.dk/staff/be/be.html

Re: "Easy" Windows Emacs

[Fabrice Popineau]

* David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:

    > There is a complete XEmacs/TeX/AUCTeX/preview-latex bundle called
    > XEmTeX available as well (Google for it).  Personally, I don't
    > particularly like XEmacs, and the Windows version in XEmTeX is
    > likely to be non-MULE (at least if it is 21.4), meaning that it
    > won't get along with utf-8.

The xemacs bundled is the latest 21.5 cvs compiled natively with mule.
AUCTeX and Preview mode are also from cvs.

http://www.metz.supelec.fr/~popineau/xemtex-2.html

Fabrice

Re: "Easy" Windows Emacs

[David Kastrup]

Fabrice Popineau <Fabrice.Popineau@supelec.fr> writes:

> * David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:
>
>     > There is a complete XEmacs/TeX/AUCTeX/preview-latex bundle called
>     > XEmTeX available as well (Google for it).  Personally, I don't
>     > particularly like XEmacs, and the Windows version in XEmTeX is
>     > likely to be non-MULE (at least if it is 21.4), meaning that it
>     > won't get along with utf-8.
>
> The xemacs bundled is the latest 21.5 cvs compiled natively with
> mule.  AUCTeX and Preview mode are also from cvs.

I'd wish I'd get the merge finished well enough so that we can release
again.  Probably this week.  I think most of the remaining issues can,
with not too bad a conscience, be left as they are.  Currently not
much more than figuring out a good packaging strategy remains: the
code works pretty much ok, I guess.

> http://www.metz.supelec.fr/~popineau/xemtex-2.html

Thanks for the correction.  I don't have any personal experience with
XEmacs 21.5.  I do find the kind of error reports it gets on the
XEmacs developer list somewhat scary, and Ralf tends not to be too
enthused about how well bug reports and patches from the AUCTeX
developers are taken up.

It is somewhat likely, particularly on Windows, that XEmacs 21.5
provides better satisfaction than XEmacs 21.4 when working with
AUCTeX.  But you are probably quite more qualified to say anything
about that.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: "Easy" Windows Emacs

[drkm]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: drkm <usenet@fgeorges.org>
>> Date: Mon, 06 Jun 2005 00:08:43 +0200

>>   Then, if Emacs has its own package system (as a set of ELisp
>> libraries), there is no more need to such tools.

> ??? You mean, we should implement a speller, a typesetter, all the
> programs in Coreutils, etc., all in Emacs Lisp?

  No, sorry.  I misunderstood the point.  I understood you spook
about the tools needed to install some ELisp packages (as make,
shell for ./configure, install, etc.).

--drkm