         *********
FREE-DOS USERS - IMPORTANT NOTE
If you recieved this software via Free-DOS Beta release, you should
set your emacs environment variable as described below to
the \FDOS\SOURCE\EMACS\ directory.  *IMPORTANT* you must first
have downloaded and installed the source file disk....

Bryon Quackenbush <odo@cris.com>
Free-DOS Development Coardinator
         *********

Freemacs is a programmable editor.  The .EXE file is only 21K because
it only contains a language interpreter and text editor primitives.  The
bulk of the programming is done in MINT, which is a string-oriented
language.  Freemacs is yet another Emacs clone.  Emacs was first written
at MIT by Richard M. Stallman.

There are a number of Emacs clones for the PC available.  Unlike all
the others, Freemacs is the only IBM-PC editor that tries to be like
GNU Emacs.  Freemacs's only major failings are that it cannot edit files
larger than 64K, and it has no undo facility.

You may freely copy this software.  I only ask that you send
improvements back to me for incorporation into the package for the
rest of us.  Information on how to get the distribution is available
in the file HOWTOGET.IT

Addresses, electronic and otherwise:

Author:		Russell Nelson
Internet:	nelson@crynwr.com
Snail:		11 Grant St., Potsdam, NY 13676

There is a mailing list on the Internet. To subscribe, send a
message of the form "subscribe freemacs-help" to
listserv@sun.soe.clarkson.edu.  To get off the list, send
"unsubscribe freemacs-help" to the same address.  To submit something
to the list, send it to freemacs-help@sun.soe.clarkson.edu.

There are two other mailing lists, freemacs-announce, and
freemacs-bugs. Freemacs-announce is for announcements of freemacs
news, and has very low traffic.  Freemacs-bugs is for people who are
working on Freemacs.


Getting started:

Obviously you have extracted this file already, so you don't need to be
told how to unpack an archive.  You should put all the Freemacs files into
a subdirectory (I will assume \EMACS).

DOS 2.x users (is anyone still using DOS 2.x??)

You need to add a line to your autoexec.bat file that reads "set
emacs=x:\EMACS".  Replace "x:" with the drive that you have placed
Freemacs in.

DOS 3+ users:

You should ensure that emacs is executed out of the subdirectory in which
the Freemacs files are stored.  You can do this two ways -- you can include
\EMACS in your path, or you can put a small batch file on your path.  For
an example of a batch file, look at the included E.BAT.

Freemacs is shipped uncompiled.  The editor source files are all the
files with .MIN extensions.  Freemacs will compile itself using these
files.  After the compiling is finished, you can delete all .MIN
files.

To compile Freemacs, just run it.  It will ask if you want to compile
the files.  You do.  After it finishes, which can take a little or a
lot of time depending on how fast your processor is, you should run
it again.  The second time through it compiles the help files.

If you are unfamiliar with Emacs, you should run emacs, get help, and read
the tutorial.  The opening screen has instructions for doing this.


Modifying Freemacs:

There are lots of simple changes that you can make without really needing
to understand MINT.  For example, the mode line uses inverse video.  If
you would like to change the colors, use M-x edit-options.

If you would like to do simple customizations like key rebinding, see
the file CUSTOMIZ.DOC.

If you would like to learn how to program in MINT, see the file MINTTUT.DOC.
