view etc/DISTRIB @ 103444:61b1b668390e

(Top): Mention which Emacs version this FAQ is about. Recommend the latest release. Mention how to get older FAQs. Recommend the Emacs manual. (Guidelines for newsgroup postings): Discourage cross-posts. (Underlining paragraphs): Remove. (Editing MS-DOS files): Remove pre-Emacs 20 information. (Bugs and problems): Update key-binding. (Problems with very large files): Mention 64-bit. (Shell process exits abnormally): Remove. (Problems with Shell Mode): Rename and update. (Spontaneous entry into isearch-mode) (Problems talking to certain hosts): Remove. This is old information, in etc/PROBLEMS if needed. (Emacs takes a long time to visit files, Updating Emacs): Remove. (Dired claims that no file is on this line): Update. (Installing Emacs, Problems building Emacs): Simplify. (Emacs for MS-DOS): Refer to msdos/INSTALL rather than duplicating information. (Emacs for MS-Windows): Rename from "Emacs for Windows". Simplify. (Emacs for Mac OS X): Rename from "Emacs for Apple computers". (JDEE): "JDEE", not "JDE". (Handling C-s and C-q with flow control, Binding C-s and C-q): Remove. This is old information, in etc/PROBLEMS if needed. (stty and Backspace key, Kanji and Chinese characters): Remove. (Right-to-left alphabets): Update section. (Changing the included text prefix): Gnus uses message-yank-prefix. Add cross-reference to Supercite manual. (Saving a copy of outgoing mail): Simplify output file description. (Expanding aliases when sending mail): Refer to Emacs manual. Remove old info about RFC822. Correct description of how to rebuild aliases. (Rmail writes to /var/spool/mail): Update location from /usr/spool/mail. (MIME with Emacs mail packages) (Viewing articles with embedded underlining) (Saving a multi-part Gnus posting, Gnus hangs for a long time): Remove old sections. (Killing based on nonstandard headers): Remove. Scoring is preferable, and is well-documented in the Gnus manual. (Reading news with Emacs): Merge "Learning more about Gnus" into here. (Making Gnus faster): Rename from "Starting Gnus faster". Merge "Catch-up is slow in Gnus" into here.
author Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org>
date Tue, 16 Jun 2009 02:51:00 +0000
parents c90853557b90
children 1d1d5d9bd884
line wrap: on
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						-*- text -*-
For an order form for all Emacs and FSF distributions deliverable from
the USA, see http://www.gnu.org/order/order.html.

	   GNU Emacs availability information, October 2000

Copyright (C) 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1995,
  1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009
  Free Software Foundation, Inc.
See the end of the file for license conditions.


GNU Emacs is legally owned by the Free Software Foundation, but we
regard the foundation more as its custodian on behalf of the public.

In the GNU project, when we speak of "free software", this refers to
liberty, not price.  Specifically, it refers to the users' freedom to
study, copy, change and improve the software.  Sometimes users pay
money for copies of GNU software, and sometimes they get copies at no
charge.  But regardless of how they got the software, or whether it
was modified by anyone else along the way, they have the freedom to
copy and change it--those freedoms are what "free software" means.

The precise conditions for copying and modification are stated in the
document "GNU General Public License," a copy of which is required to
be distributed with every copy of GNU Emacs.  It is usually in a file
named `COPYING' in the same directory as this file.  These conditions
are designed to make sure that everyone who has a copy of GNU Emacs
(including modified versions) has the freedom to redistribute and
change it.

If you do not know anyone to get a copy of GNU Emacs from, you can
order a cd-rom from the Free Software Foundation.  We distribute
several Emacs versions.  We also distribute nicely typeset copies of
the Emacs user manual, Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, the Emacs
reference card, etc.  See http://www.gnu.org/order/order.html.

If you have Internet access, you can copy the latest Emacs
distribution from hosts, such as ftp.gnu.org.  There are several ways
to do this; see http://www.gnu.org/software/software.html for more
information.

Emacs has been run on GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and on many
Unix systems, on a variety of types of cpu, as well as on MSDOS,
Windows and MacOS.  It also formerly worked on VMS and on Apollo
computers, though with some deficiencies that reflect problems in
these operating systems.  See the file `MACHINES' in this directory
(see above) for a full list of machines that GNU Emacs has been tested
on, with machine-specific installation notes and warnings.

Note that there is significant variation between Unix systems
supposedly running the same version of Unix; it is possible that what
works in GNU Emacs for me does not work on your system due to such an
incompatibility.  Since I must avoid reading Unix source code, I
cannot even guess what such problems may exist.

GNU Emacs is distributed with no warranty (see the General Public
License for full details, in the file `COPYING' in this directory (see
above)), and neither I nor the Free Software Foundation promises any
kind of support or assistance to users.  The foundation keeps a list
of people who are willing to offer support and assistance for hire.
See http://www.gnu.org/help/gethelp.html.

However, we plan to continue to improve GNU Emacs and keep it
reliable, so please send me any complaints and suggestions you have.
I will probably fix anything that I consider a malfunction.  I may
make improvements that are suggested, but I may choose not to.

If you are on the Internet, report bugs to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.  You
can use the Emacs command M-x report-bug RET to mail a bug report.
Please read the Bugs section of the Emacs manual before reporting
bugs.

General questions about the GNU Project can be asked of gnu@gnu.org.

If you are a computer manufacturer, I encourage you to ship a copy of
GNU Emacs with every computer you deliver.  The same copying
permission terms apply to computer manufacturers as to everyone else.
You should consider making a donation to help support the GNU project;
if you estimate what it would cost to distribute some commercial
product and divide it by five, that is a good amount.

If you like GNU Emacs, please express your satisfaction with a
donation: send me or the Foundation what you feel Emacs has been worth
to you.  If you are glad that I developed GNU Emacs and distribute it
as free software, rather than following the obstructive and antisocial
practices typical of software developers, reward me.  If you would
like the Foundation to develop more free software, contribute.

Your donations will help to support the development of additional GNU
software.  GNU/Linux systems (variants of GNU, based on the kernel
Linux) have millions of users, but there is still much to be done.
For more information on GNU, see the file `GNU' in this directory (see
above).

			Richard M Stallman
			Chief GNUisance,
			President of the Free Software Foundation

This file is part of GNU Emacs.

GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with GNU Emacs.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.