From: "John M. Aldrich" <fighteer AT cs DOT com>
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject: Re: [Q] emacs on dos 6.22 or 5.xx?
Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 19:04:14 -0800
Organization: Three pounds of chaos and a pinch of salt
Lines: 58
Message-ID: <328A8C2E.313F@cs.com>
References: <328A31E6 DOT 60D AT Tek DOT com>
Reply-To: fighteer AT cs DOT com
NNTP-Posting-Host: ppp108.cs.com
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
To: Phil Galbiati <Philip DOT S DOT Galbiati AT Tek DOT com>
To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
DJ-Gateway: from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp

Phil Galbiati wrote:
> 
> 1) The old version of emacs that I have been using was able to discern
>    the path to its emacs.ini file (the dos equivalent of .emacs, which
>    now seems to have become _emacs), the lisp libraries, and any other
>    support files it needs by looking at argv[0].  I don't remember
  [snip]
>    Does the new version do this as well, or do I need to put
>    \djgpp\gnu\emacs\bin in my path like the readme file says?

Yes, the new Emacs does this as well.  However, the _emacs file has to
be in the _root_ directory of your Emacs installation, not the /bin
directory.  I have never had any difficulty running Emacs 19.34 whether
its bin was in the PATH or not.  Your problem may be LFN-related; see
below.

> 2) The readme file talks a lot about Win95, but doesn't say much of
>    anything about win3.1 or dos.  Does the new emacs work properly
>    under both dos 6.22 and dos 5.xx?  I copied my old emacs.ini file
>    to \djgpp\gnu\emacs\_emacs, but the new emacs didn't find it (or
>    at least it didn't change the face-foreground and face-background
>    colors to the ones I specified).

Of course Emacs works in DOS; it's DJGPP-compiled.  :)  It also works
fine in a Win 3.1 DOS shell, except for Windoze hooking Alt-Tab and the
other special keystrokes.  Emacs compiled under DJGPP also takes
advantage of long filenames, IF you unzipped the archive under LFN with
an LFN-aware unzip program.  This may also be the cause of it not
finding the _emacs file:  you are running with LFN-enabled.

To test this, try shutting down Win95 in DOS mode and running Emacs.  If
it finds the _emacs file then, then you'll know it's an LFN problem. 
The solution - use an LFN-aware unzip program (like unzip.exe from the
root directory of the DJGPP SimTel distribution) to re-install the
distribution, then rebuild it with LFN=Y in your environment.  The
INSTALL file has detailed information about this procedure.

FYI:  This may be related to some LFN-related confusion with files that
begin with a single dot, like .gdbinit, etc.  That is a legal filename
under Win95, but not under DOS.  However, I think Emacs uses _emacs
whether it is in an LFN environment or not... Eli?

> 3) Does the new emacs assume anything about its path, or can I just
>    move it to wherever I want simply by renaming its directory?  I
>    ran out of space in my path a LONG time ago, and can't afford to
>    give up an additional 21 characters.

The PATH shouldn't matter at all, but Emacs does expect to find the same
directory structure, i.e., '..' is its "home" directory and its files
are in '../bin', '../lisp', '../doc', etc.  Beyond that it doesn't
matter where you move it to.

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------
| John M. Aldrich, aka Fighteer I |        fighteer AT cs DOT com          |
| Proud owner of what might one   |   http://www.cs.com/fighteer    |
| day be a spectacular MUD...     | Plan: To make Bill Gates suffer |
---------------------------------------------------------------------