13.3.5 Installing Ispell
Installing Ispell on Windows can be tricky. Emacs 20 and beyond includes features like Flyspell and earlier versions of Ispell won't handle that functionality. Many Windows users do not compile their own software, and even if they did, the very newest Ispell also doesn't work with Emacs.
We found the version we describe here in a post by Raymond Zeitler (http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/help-emacs-windows/2004-06/msg00023.html), and we thank him heartily for it. The only downside to this version is that it is designed for English speakers. It may well work with other languages, but you'd have to find the <language>.hash file appropriate for your language.
The first step is to download a Windows binary of Ispell 3.1.20.[96]
Open a command window. On Windows XP, you open it using Start → Run, then typing command and clicking OK.
Create a temporary directory and move there (you can substitute another name for tmp).
C:\> mkdir tmp
C:\> cd tmp
FTP to gatekeeper.dec.com.
C:\tmp> ftp gatekeeper.dec.com
Type anonymous as your username and your email address as your password.
Move to the /pub/GNU/windows/emacs/contrib directory.
C:\tmp> cd /pub/GNU/windows/emacs/contrib
Type bin to change to binary mode.
C:\tmp> bin
Download ispell.zip.
C:\tmp> get ispell.zip
Type bye to close your ftp session, then exit to close the MS-DOS window.
Unzip the archive with WinZip or Windows' own decompression utility. We need to move a few files around to make Ispell work properly with Emacs.
Move ispell.exe to Emacs' bin folder. For example, if you called the folder where you installed Emacs nqmacs, you would place the file in nqmacs\bin.
Move english.hash to your home directory (either C: or the one you defined earlier as the location for your .emacs file). Now copy english.hash to american.hash (both files must exist for Ispell to work properly). We suspect but cannot verify that this would not be necessary for users of systems expecting British English dictionaries.
There's a lot more to the world of Emacs in Windows. We encourage you to check out the frequently asked questions and documentation available online at http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/.
Chapter 14. The Help System
Emacs has the most comprehensive help facility of any text editor—and one of the best such facilities of any program at all. In fact, the Emacs help facilities probably cut down the time it took for us to write this book by an order of magnitude, and they can help you immeasurably in your ongoing quest to learn more about Emacs.
In this chapter, we describe Emacs help in the following areas:
• The tutorial.
• The help key (C-h) and Help menu, which allow you to get help on a wide variety of topics.
• The help facilities of complex commands like query-replace and dired.
• Navigating Emacs manuals and using the info documentation reader.
• Completion, in which Emacs helps you finish typing names of functions, variables, filenames, and more. Completion not only saves you time and helps you complete names of functions you know about but can help you discover new commands and variables.
14.1 Using the Tutorial
If you are just starting out with Emacs, check out the tutorial by typing C-h t (for help-with-tutorial), which deletes all extra windows (leaving just one) and starts up a learn-by-doing tutorial. Actually, it displays a file called TUTORIAL in the window. The tutorial is currently available in 21 languages. The tutorial provides an introduction to the following Emacs features:
• Basic cursor motion
• Delete and yank
• Visiting and saving files
• Buffers
• Text and auto-fill modes
• Incremental search
• Basic help commands
You might want to use the tutorial along with Chapter 1 and Chapter 2. The tutorial is helpful, but of necessity it covers only the most basic information.
14.2 Help Commands
Emacs has many help commands, which are available as standard Emacs commands or as options to the C-h help key. They can be used to find information about commands, keystrokes, variables, modes, and various things about Emacs in general. The most basic help command is C-h C-h (help-for-help). C-h ? also invokes help-for-help. This command causes Emacs to open a *Help* buffer in a window with descriptions of all the help commands. You can type any one of these help keys, or, if you press Space, the *Help* window scrolls down as if you pressed C-v. Any other key aborts the whole process. If you scroll to the bottom of the help documentation, you can type a help key or any other key to abort.
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This binary is also available from this book's web site, http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/gnu3.