How To Get Emacs and Java for your own  Windows Based Machine.

Java is located here.  It comes in two flavors (well actually a few more too).  You may either download the Java Development Kit (JDK) or you can download JBuilder.   If you are planning on using Emacs then just follow Sun's Java page all the way down and download the Java 2 SDK, v 1.3.1_01 for Windows.  If on the other hand you want a program that is a bit more WIndows friendly you will want to check out Borland JBuilder located near the middle Sun's Page.  The Personal Edition is free for people like yourselves, and has tons of nice Java features.  It may be worth checking out even if you want to use Emacs also.

Emacs is what real programmers like to use.  It has lots of time saving features but for people that grew up using Windows and Macs it can be a bit intimidating.  But since you will be using it in class it makes sense to try it at home too.  Here is decent summary of Emacs commands.  *One change for windows users, the Meta-Key is ESC, not Alt.

To install Emacs you need what  is called a precompiled version.  This means that the code used to write the software has been compiled for you and will run on your machine without too much work.  Its a bit like when you ran javac to turn the Hello class into something you could use.

You need to download a file from this page and then decompress it.  Winzip should do the trick.  If you don't have Winzip it is available here.  The type of archive is a gzip'd tar, something that windows users do not normally encounter but is quite common on Unix based systems.  Once you have figured out how to decompress it (which mostly involves clicking through the archive until you get something that looks like the emacs folder you saw in class) you can move it to any directory you want.  Maybe make a shortcut to the Emacs Icon for your desktop.

While you are at the Emacs Download page you can read up a bit about it.   There is a bunch of useful stuff on that page.

To get emacs to work with the JDK you may need to follow some of the steps that we did in class, such as set path.=blah blah.  I would try it out first though and see if you can do some of Lab 1.  The JDK installer may set all of that up for you.