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.

Unfortunately not anymore. My config files were all online but the links broke when I reorganised the site. Fixing the links is somewhere low down on my todo list.

Yes, definitely. Inferior R mode provides a readline/history mechanism, object name completion, and syntax-based highlighting of the interaction buffer using Font Lock mode, as well as a very convenient interface to the R help system. Of course, it also integrates nicely with the mechanisms for editing R source using Emacs. One can write code in one Emacs buffer and send whole or parts of it for execution to R; this is helpful for both data analysis and programming.

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.

There are currently irreconcilable differences in the views about technical, programming, design and organizational matters between RMS and the XEmacs development team which provide little hope for a merge to take place in the short-term future. If you have a comment to add regarding the merge, it is a good idea to avoid posting to the newsgroups, because of the very heated flamewars that often result. Mail your questions to xemacs-beta@xemacs.org and bug-gnu-emacs@prep.ai.mit.edu.

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.

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.

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.

To read news with Emacs, you can use the Gnus package. To invoke Gnus, type "M-x gnus" and Emacs will prompt you for a news server to connect to. For more information about using Gnus, take a look at:

The latest released version of Gnus isn't included in Emacs 21, therefor you should get the Gnus tarball from http://www.gnus.org/dist/gnus.tar.gz or via anonymous FTP from ftp://ftp.gnus.org/pub/gnus/gnus.tar.gz. If you use XEmacs instead of Emacs you can use XEmacs' package system instead.

If you don't already have one, you need to create a .emacs file in your home directory. In this file you need to add this: These machines: lexington, concord, yorktown, trenton, camden, ticonderoga, shelby, camaross, princeton

No. The name XEmacs is unfortunate in the sense that it is not an X Window System-only version of Emacs. XEmacs has full color support on a color-capable character terminal.

Strictly speaking, no. XEmacs will build and install just fine without any packages installed. However, only the most basic editing functions will be available with no packages installed, so installing packages is an essential part of making your installed XEmacs _useful_.

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'.

XEmacs is regularly tested on Linux, Solaris, SunOS, HP/UX, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, BSD/OS aka BSDI, Tru64 aka DEC/OSF, SCO5, and probably others. It should work on all versions of Unix created in the last 10 years or so, perhaps with a bit of work on more obscure platforms to correct bit-rot.

To answer the second part of the question: No, you, you don't need Cygwin or MinGW to build or to run XEmacs. But if you have them and want to use them, XEmacs supports these environments. One important reason to support Cygwin is that it lets the MS Windows developers test out their code in a Unix environment without actually having to have a Unix machine around. For this reason alone, Cygwin support is likely to remain supported for a long time in XEmacs.

Gnus offers no real solutions to these questions, but I would very much like to see Gnus being used as a testing ground for new methods of reading and fetching news. Expanding on UMEDA-san's wise decision to separate the newsreader from the back ends, Gnus now offers a simple interface for anybody who wants to write new back ends for fetching mail and news from different sources. I have added hooks for customizations everywhere I could imagine it being useful.

The first "proper" release of Gnus 5 was done in November 1995 when it was included in the Emacs 19.30 distribution (132 (ding) Gnus releases plus 15 Gnus 5.0 releases). In May 1996 the next Gnus generation (aka. "September Gnus" (after 99 releases)) was released under the name "Gnus 5.2" (40 releases). On July 28th 1996 work on Red Gnus was begun, and it was released on January 25th 1997 (after 84 releases) as "Gnus 5.4" (67 releases).

Emacs could have failed to run for a number of reasons. The most common symptom is that, when Emacs is started, the cursor changes for a second but nothing happens. If this happens to you, it is quite likely that the distribution was unpacked incorrectly. Be sure to disable the CR/LF translation or the executables will be unusable. Older versions of WinZipNT would enable this translation by default. If you are using WinZipNT, disable it. Check that filenames were not truncated to 8.3.

Oort Gnus was the name of the development version of Gnus, which became Gnus 5.10 in autumn 2003. No Gnus is the name of the current development version which will once become Gnus 5.12 or Gnus 6. (If you're wondering why not 5.11, the odd version numbers are normally used for the Gnus versions bundled with Emacs)

In Emacs, you need to use the command M-x server-start before invoking the edit hook from the Factor end.