Re: Installing matlab mode under Windows XP

[Perry Smith]

On Nov 20, 2006, at 8:20 AM, schnurpfelkamel@bluewin.ch wrote:

Hi

I would like to install other packages like Matlab mode for emacs 

on Windows XP. Where do I have to put these additional package files? 

Is there something like the .emacs file under UNIX that tells emacs 

to load these packages? Or in other words: What do I need to do, to 

make emacs load the additional package files?

First, there an emacs variable called load-path.  It is a list of directories emacs searches when a load is done.  What I do myself is I have all my emacs lisp in a directory called emacs.  Then in my .emacs file I do:

(setq load-path (append load-path (list "~/emacs")))

If you keep things in separate sub directories, then the list will be the list of all the places emacs needs to look in.

I believe there is a slicker way to do this.

Second, most packages come with some instructions.  You generally do not want to always load all of the contents of all of the packages.  Usually, there are some key functions that are always called first.  You set these in autoload statements.  A typical statement looks like:

(autoload 'vm "vm" "Start VM on your primary inbox." t)

The package will usually tell you want autoload statements to put in your .emacs file.

I can't think of what else you need to know.  Hopefully, this will get your started.

I don't know where the .emacs file is located on XP.  This is from the Info page:

   On MS-DOS, file names are case-insensitive and limited to eight

characters, plus optionally a period and three more characters.  Emacs

knows enough about these limitations to handle file names that were

meant for other operating systems.  For instance, leading dots `.' in

file names are invalid in MS-DOS, so Emacs transparently converts them

to underscores `_'; thus your default init file (*note Init File::) is

called `_emacs' on MS-DOS.  Excess characters before or after the

period are generally ignored by MS-DOS itself; thus, if you visit the

file `LongFileName.EvenLongerExtension', you will silently get

`longfile.eve', but Emacs will still display the long file name on the

mode line.  Other than that, it's up to you to specify file names which

are valid under MS-DOS; the transparent conversion as described above

only works on file names built into Emacs.

`HOME'

     The location of the user's files in the directory tree; used for

     expansion of file names starting with a tilde (`~').  On MS-DOS,

     it defaults to the directory from which Emacs was started, with

     `/bin' removed from the end if it was present.  On Windows, the

     default value of `HOME' is the `Application Data' subdirectory of

     the user profile directory (normally, this is `C:/Documents and

     Settings/USERNAME/Application Data', where USERNAME is your user

     name), though for backwards compatibility `C:/' will be used

     instead if a `.emacs' file is found there.

Good luck,

Perry Smith ( pedz@easesoftware.com )

Ease Software, Inc. ( http://www.easesoftware.com )

Low cost SATA Disk Systems for IBMs p5, pSeries, and RS/6000 AIX systems