For a detailed description of the differences between GNU Emacs and XEmacs and a detailed history of XEmacs, check out the User-Visible Editing Features XEmacs in general tries hard to conform to exist user-interface standards, and to work "out-of-the-box" without the need for obscure customization changes. GNU Emacs, particularly version 21, has gotten better about this (in many cases by copying the XEmacs behavior!), but still has some weirdnesses.

There are currently irreconcilable differences in the views about technical, programming, design, organizational and legal matters between Richard Stallman (RMS), the author and leader of the GNU Emacs project, and the XEmacs development team which provide little hope for a merge to take place in the short-term future. There have been repeated attempts at merging by all of the major XEmacs developers, starting from the early days of Lucid Emacs (in 1991), but they have all failed.

Unfortunately even the naming of these two applications has become politicized. Much of this stems from RMS, who has a history of politicizing similar issues. (Compare the controversy over "Lignux" and "GNU/Linux".) We would prefer that the terms "XEmacs" and "GNU Emacs" be used, which are neutral and acceptable to most people. RMS, however, is not willing to accept these terms.

RMS has asserted at times that XEmacs is merely a "patch" on top of GNU Emacs (see section Q1.6.4: Is XEmacs "GNU"?). In fact, probably not more than 5% of the code, if that, remains unchanged, and nearly 14 years of work has gone into XEmacs at this point. (GNU Emacs itself is only than 20 years old, and thus XEmacs has existed as a separate product for over 2/3 of the lifespan of GNU Emacs.) As a point of comparison, XEmacs 21.

A GNU emacs 'matlab-mode' is available via anonymous ftp from csi.jpl.nasa.gov as pub/matlab/util/matlab-mode.el

You can't use the same copy of Gnus in both as the Lisp files are byte-compiled to a format which is different depending on which Emacs did the compilation. Get one copy of Gnus for Emacs and one for XEmacs.

Yes! It uses the X11 ('http://cygwin.com/xfree/') Windows interface. From a remote login shell, this "emacs -nw" works fine. There is also a non-X11 version which just provides the text-only terminal interface. Use Cygwin Setup to install either one (or both).

ILISP is a powerful GNU-Emacs interface to many dialects of Lisp, including Lucid, Allegro, {A}KCL, IBCL, and CMU. Written by Chris McConnell <ccm+@cs.cmu.edu> and now maintained by Marco Antoniotti <marcoxa@cs.nyu.edu> and Rick Busdiecker <rfb@lehman.com>. It is available by anonymous ftp from h.gp.cs.cmu.edu:/usr/rfb/ilisp/ [128.2.254.156] as the file ilisp-5.6.tar.gz. It is also available in the CMU AI Repository in ftp.cs.cmu.

GNU Emacs and XEmacs are related open-source text editors. Both derive from GNU Emacs version 18; the split between the two happened in 1991 (for comparison, the oldest versions of GNU Emacs date from 1984). For information on GNU Emacs, see http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs.html.

No not at the moment. The GNU Emacs bindings would be added as a compatibility file (gnu.emf) in much the same way that the me3.8 bindings are added, see me3_8.emf.

XEmacs is a branch version of Emacs. It was first called Lucid Emacs, and was initially derived from a prerelease version of Emacs 19. In this FAQ, we use the name “Emacs” only for the official version. Emacs and XEmacs each come with Lisp packages that are lacking in the other. The two versions have some significant differences at the Lisp programming level.

GNU GRUB is the successor of Erich's great GRUB. He couldn't work on GRUB because of some other tasks, so the previous maintainer Gordon Matzigkeit took over the maintainership, and opened the development in order for everybody to participate it. Technically speaking, GNU GRUB has many features that are not seen in the original GRUB. For example, GNU GRUB can be installed on UNIX-like operating system (i.e.

RTFM. Really, it's a great manual. Here's a list of commands that should allow you to use Emacs. The notation is pretty obvious, but it's explained in the manual anyway. M-w :Copy text between point and mark (point is the cursor. The selection is copied to the "kill ring"). M-y :cycle back through previous selection (try it after copying a few bits of text to see what I mean). C-h i :Go to Info mode (in Info mode, type m followed by a manual name, such as emacs to see that manual).

You should be using frames and abbrevs. Also check out the "desktop" feature. You should be answering mail with Emacs, probably with Gnus. Maybe registers as well, but I haven't started using them yet. Your .emacs should probably be 50 lines or more and should include a few simple functions attached to mode hooks etc.

The free software movement is something I care deeply about. The idea is that users of software should have rights as well, the right to use software how they wish, the right to adapt the software to their needs and to share improvements for the benefit of the user community. Big, proprietary, monopolistic companies like Microsoft are making this difficult in today's world, but there are alternatives.

Currently, Debian is only available for Linux, but with Debian GNU/Hurd and Debian on BSD kernels, we have started to offer non-Linux-based OSes as a development, server and desktop platform, too. However, these non-linux ports are not officially released yet. The Hurd is a set of servers running on top of the GNU Mach microkernel. Together they build the base for the GNU operating system. Please see http://www.gnu.

Emacs 19.29 or thereabouts stopped using a terminal type of "emacs" in shell buffers, and instead sets it to "dumb". Zsh only kicks in its special I'm-inside-emacs initialization when the terminal type is "emacs". Probably the most reliable way of dealing with this is to look for the environment variable $EMACS, which is set to t in Emacs' shell mode. Putting [[ $EMACS = t ]] && unsetopt zle in your .zshrc should be sufficient.

The reason for an Emacs package not to be included in XEmacs is usually one or more of the following: The package has not been ported to XEmacs. This will typically happen when it uses GNU-Emacs-specific features, which make it fail under XEmacs. Porting a package to XEmacs can range from a trivial amount of change to a partial or full rewrite. Fortunately, the authors of modern packages usually choose to support both Emacsen themselves.

The archives contain no less than three verilog modes for emacs: ftp.siliconlogic.com:/pub/comp.lang.verilog/verilog.el.Z Rick Eversole at Cadence maintains a verilog mode and occasionally posts it to comp.lang.verilog. At this time it supports only FSF 18.xx and Epoch. FSF 19.xx and Lucid Emacs (lemacs) are not supported. It is available at the archive site, or send email to eversole@cadence.com to request a copy if you have missed the posting and can not get it from the archive of comp.lang.

Gnu Emacs 18.55 (with Leonard N. Zubkoff's patches for SR10.2) seems to have a problem with shell subprocesses. At times the 0x0 character (displayed as ^@ by Emacs) appears in buffers running a shell. While this is only a nuisance running an inferior shell, it is a problem when running the M-x compile command: The C-x ' (next-error) function is unable to process the compiler output.

Debian GNU/Linux includes complete source-code for all of the included programs, so it should work on all systems which are supported by the Linux kernel; see the Linux FAQ for details. The current Debian GNU/Linux release, 3.

For a concise description of the current situation with XEmacs, see this message from the Cygwin mailing list: 'http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2002-11/msg00609.html'.

The new package replaces air with a mixture of 80% oxygen and 20% carbon dioxide. The package includes ground beef in a solid, plastic tray with skin-tight film, which keeps juices inside the package, reducing cross-contamination and helping to keep refrigerators and freezers cleaner.

The Companion System provides wireless communications for users at walking speeds in buildings. Cellular is better suited for wide area needs or users in high-speed vehicles. The Controller and Base Stations operate in a normal office environment with a temperature range of 32-122 F.