This directory tree holds version 21.5 of XEmacs.



*** What is XEmacs?

XEmacs is a powerful, highly customizable open source text editor and
application development system, with full GUI support.  It is protected
under the GNU Public License and related to other versions of Emacs, in
particular GNU Emacs.  Its emphasis is on modern graphical user
interface support and an open software development model, similar to
Linux.  XEmacs has an active development community numbering in the
hundreds (and thousands of active beta testers on top of this), and runs
on all versions of MS Windows, on Linux, and on nearly every other
version of Unix in existence.  Support for XEmacs has been supplied by
Sun Microsystems, University of Illinois, Lucid, ETL/Electrotechnical
Laboratory, Amdahl Corporation, BeOpen, and others, as well as the
unpaid time of a great number of individual developers.



*** What platforms does it run on?

  -- MS Windows (It has been tested on NT, 2000, 95, 98, and ME; you
                 can also compile Cygwin and MinGW versions.)
  -- Unix (It 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.  It uses
           a sophisticated configuration system to auto-detect zillions
           of features that are implemented differently in different
           versions of Unix, so it will probably work on your vendor's
           version, possibly with a bit of tweaking, even if we've
           never heard of it.)
  -- MacOS/X (As an X Windows application.  Unfortunately there is no
              support currently for MacOS-specific features.)

  There is also a port of XEmacs 19.14 (an older version, circa 1996)
  for all versions of MacOS, with extensive support for MacOS-specific
  features.  See the FAQ for more details.

  There are rumors of an in-progress port to OS/2.  See the FAQ.

  XEmacs will probably never work on MS/DOS or Windows 3.1, and we're
  not particularly interested in patches for these platforms, as they
  would introduce huge amounts of code clutter due to the woefully
  underfeatured nature of these systems. (See GNU Emacs for a port to
  MS/DOS.)



*** Where's the FAQ?

Look at `man/xemacs-faq.texi'.

For the very latest version, see
http://cvs.xemacs.org/cgi-bin/cvswebxe/xemacs/man/xemacs-faq.texi.



*** Where's the latest version?

For up-to-date information on XEmacs, see http://www.xemacs.org.

To download XEmacs, see http://ftp.xemacs.org/ or
ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/.

For the latest experimental sources, see http://cvs.xemacs.org/, which
gives instructions on how to get started with CVS access.

There are numerous mailing lists for discussion of XEmacs.  The
current description of these lists can be found at
http://www.xemacs.org/Lists/, or see `etc/MAILINGLISTS'.  General
discussion of bugs, new features, etc. takes place on
xemacs-beta@xemacs.org.



*** How do I build and install XEmacs?

See the file `etc/NEWS' for information on new features and other
user-visible changes since the last version of XEmacs.

The file `INSTALL' in this directory says how to bring up XEmacs on
Unix and Cygwin, once you have loaded the entire subtree of this
directory.

See the file `nt/README' for instructions on building XEmacs for
Microsoft Windows.

The file 'README.packages' will guide you in the installation of
(essential) add on packages.



*** How do I deal with bugs or with problems building, installing, or running?

The file `PROBLEMS' contains information on many common problems that
occur in building, installing and running XEmacs.

Reports of bugs in XEmacs should be sent to xemacs-beta@xemacs.org.
You can also post to the newsgroup comp.emacs.xemacs (or equivalentlt,
send to the mailing list xemacs@xemacs.org), but it is less likely
that the developers will see it in a timely fashion.  See the "Bugs"
section of the XEmacs manual for more information on how to report
bugs.  (The file `BUGS' in this directory explains how you can find
and read that section using the Info files that come with XEmacs.)
See `etc/MAILINGLISTS' for more information on mailing lists relating
to XEmacs.


*** What's the basic layout of the code?

The file `configure' is a shell script to acclimate XEmacs to the
oddities of your processor and operating system.  It will create a
file named `Makefile' (a script for the `make' program), which helps
automate the process of building and installing emacs.  See INSTALL
for more detailed information.

The file `configure.in' is the input used by the autoconf program to
construct the `configure' script.  Since XEmacs has configuration
requirements that autoconf can't meet, `configure.in' uses an unholy
marriage of custom-baked configuration code and autoconf macros; it
may be wise to avoid rebuilding `configure' from `configure.in' when
possible.

The file `Makefile.in' is a template used by `configure' to create
`Makefile'.

There are several subdirectories:

`src' holds the C code for XEmacs (the XEmacs Lisp interpreter and its
    primitives, the redisplay code, and some basic editing functions).
`lisp' holds the XEmacs Lisp code for XEmacs (most everything else).
`lib-src' holds the source code for some utility programs for use by
    or with XEmacs, like movemail and etags.
`etc' holds miscellaneous architecture-independent data files
    XEmacs uses, like the tutorial text and the Zippy the Pinhead quote
    database.  The contents of the `lisp', `info' and `man'
    subdirectories are architecture-independent too.
`lwlib' holds the C code for the X toolkit objects used by XEmacs.
`info' holds the Info documentation tree for XEmacs.
`man' holds the source code for the XEmacs online documentation.
`nt' holds files used compiling XEmacs under Microsoft Windows.