Re: Windows Emacs and Screen Readers

[Jason Rumney]

"Zachary" <Z_kline@hotmail.com> writes:

> The problem with the console mode is that, at least apparently, the
> status line is not displayed unless I use a keystroke like M-X, to
> force something to be displayed in the echo area.  This eliminates a
> useful source of information for me.

Console mode on MS-Windows is tuned for use through telnet by default,
because many years ago it was decided that was more useful (or perhaps
more difficult to recover from the inappropriate setting). To tune it
to run locally, add the following to your .emacs:

(setq w32-use-full-screen-buffer nil)


> In graphical mode, the problems are more obvious and annoying.  They
> manifest themselves from the moment Emacs starts up, I have no idea
> where my cursor is, or if it is in fact reading me a correct bit of
> information.

This should be fixed in the development version of Emacs, which can be
obtained from cvs.gnu.org if you are able and willing to compile
yourself, or there are a couple of 6 month old snapshots precompiled
for Windows floating around (the Emacs wiki has links, I think).