The Process

If you run emacs on Windows, there are a number of customizations available to our Unix counterparts via their .Xdefaults file. We have access to these same customizations, however we manipulate them via the Windows Registry.

1. Start regedit. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\GNU\Emacs (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\GNU\Emacs to make changes for all users). Create “Keys” (folders) as necessary.
2. Add a “String Value”. Name it Emacs.x; where x is one of:

   background, bitmapIcon, borderColor, borderWidth, cursorColor, font, foreground, geometry, iconName, internalBorder, lineSpacing, menuBar, toolBar, minibuffer, paneFont, pointerColor, reverseVideo, screenGamma, selectionFont, synchronous, title, verticalScrollBars.

My preferences

1. Emacs.reverseVideo = On
2. Emacs.font = -outline-Bitstream Vera Sans Mono-normal-r-normal-normal-12-90-96-96-c-*-iso8859-1


1. Switches to light on dark background (which is default console behavior).
2. Changes the font to a more readable mono-spaced font.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007 at 9:03 pm and is filed under Programming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.