Blog - /Personal

After experiencing some aggravation with Nvu, I decided to install Emacs on my dad's Windows XP machine. I used Lennart Borgman's installer with his CVS Emacs image. Of course, all of the helper modes like CUA were enabled so that C-v, C-x, and C-c do the right thing for someone used to Windows.

The default background was changed to CornflowerBlue, which looks decent when editing HTML files. SGML mode (which is used to open HTML documents) was opening up some files using the Unix file coding system, showing all the ^M characters at the end of lines, even though `buffer-file-coding-system' was set to 'iso-latin-1-dos.

I hacked around until I found a working routine to insert into `html-mode-hook', which follows.

(add-hook 'html-mode-hook
          #'(lambda ()
              (set-buffer-file-coding-system 'iso-latin-1-dos)
              (save-excursion
                (save-match-data
                  (goto-char (point-min))
                  (while (re-search-forward "\r+$" nil t)
                    (replace-match "" t t))))
              (set-buffer-modified-p nil)))

In summary, the installer I tried was excellent, and the level of customization for integration with Windows — such as being able to specify which common file types to associate with Emacs — was superb.

Other things I liked:

• The use of gnuserv to open new Emacs windows.
• Placing Emacs in the SendTo menu of explorer.
• Supplying a better icon than the dead-looking palm tree abomination.
• Emacs seemed to automatically pick sensible colors to go with the bluish background.