User Profiles(2)

USER PROFILES

This section describes how a user profile should be incorporated into MicroEmacs '99. A user profile defines a set of extensions to MicroEmacs which encapsulates settings which are used by an individual user.

The user profile allows:-

• Saving of the last session (history), allowing the next invocation of MicroEmacs '99 to restore your previous session.
• Personalized spelling dictionaries.
• Redefinition of MicroEmacs '99, allowing the editor to be tailored to an individual's requirements. Including the re-binding of keys, modification of the screen colors. Definition of personal macros etc.

Identification

In order to identify a user MicroEmacs '99 uses information in the system to determine the name of the user, and in turn the configuration to use. On all systems the value of the environment variable $MENAME(5) takes priority over any other means of user identification. If this variable is not defined then the host system typically provides a mechanism to determine the current user. DOS and Windows systems present problems where a login prompt is not supplied.

Each of the supported platforms are now described.

UNIX


The environment variable $LOGNAME is defined. This is the user name used by the system.

DOS


MS-DOS typically has no concept of the user name. The user name should be defined in the autoexec.bat file, choose a name of 8 characters or less, i.e. to fix the user name to fred then add the following line:-

SET MENAME=fred 

Remember to re-boot the system before the new command takes effect. (see the next step, there is another change to autoexec.bat).

Microsoft Windows


Microsoft windows environments may, or may not, have logging enabled. If you have to log into your system then a login identification has been supplied and will be recognized by MicroEmacs, setting the environment variable $MENAME(5) to this value.

If login is not enabled then the me32.ini(8) file may be modified to provide a default login name. To add the user fred then add the following lines to the ini file:-

[guest] 
MENAME=fred 

If login is subsequently enabled on the system then these lines should be removed. These lines force the user identification to be fred.

The above technique may be used within the windows environment to modify your login name. Assuming that the system administrator has assigned fred a user login name of fwhite, and fred requires all of his configuration files to be the same name as his UNIX login which is fred. Then fred may force his user name to fred from the me32.ini file as follows:-

[fwhite] 
MENAME=fred 

Once fred has entered MicroEmacs he will adopt his new login name which will be used to identify his own files etc. The action of this statement is to force the environment variable $MENAME to a new value. Any other environment variables may be forced in this way i.e. $HOSTNAME is a good candidate here as the me32.ini is local to the machine.

Shared Platforms


Platforms may share the same set of configuration files. Consider a system which may boot under MS-DOS, Windows '98, NT and Linux. Provided that the macro files are located on a file system that may be mounted by all of the other operating systems and the $MEPATH is set appropriately, then a single set of MicroEmacs macro files may be shared across all platforms.

Personal MicroEmacs Directory

The private user profile is stored in a separate directory. The directory that MicroEmacs uses must be created by the user, create the directory in your local file system. In addition, the MicroEmacs search path $MEPATH(5) should be modified to include your new MicroEmacs personal directory.

UNIX


Create in your local directory, typically called microemacs or .microemacs (if it is to be hidden).

Add/modify the $MEPATH(5) environment variable to include your personal directory in your .login, .chsrc or .profile file, the file and exact syntax will depend upon your shell. For a Korn shell the following line would be added to the .profile file:-

export MEPATH=$HOME/.microemacs:/usr/local/microemacs 

Where $HOME is assumed to be the users login home directory, or use the directory location of your new directory.

DOS


For MS-DOS environments, there is typically no user directory, it is suggested that the user directory is created in the MicroEmacs directory, use the $MENAME defined in the previous step i.e.

mkdir c:\me\fred 

Change the $MEPATH(5) in the autoexec.bat to include the new directory i.e.

SET MEPATH=c:\me\fred;c:\me 

Windows


Windows environments, the me32.ini(8) userPath entry defines the location of the user profile directories, within the Install Shield installation, the me32.ini is typically defined as:-

userPath=C:\Program Files\JASSPA\MicroEmacs 

Create your MicroEmacs personal directory in this folder, the name of the folder should be your login name or $MENAME, depending upon how your name is identified.

Creating Your Profile

Once you have created a new directory to store your user profile, create a default profile for yourself from MicroEmacs using the user-setup(3) dialog:-

Help => User Setup 

Fill in the entries in the dialog, and ensure that Save is depressed on exit to write the files.

The dictionaries often present difficulties the first time, a prompt to save the dictionary requires the full pathname and the name of the file, the pathname is the path to your personal folder, the filename is typically your username.edf. Once the file is created you will not have a problem in the future.

The User Profile

Files created in the user directory include:-

• Setup registry and previous session history username.erf, see erf(8)). This stores the user-setup settings and also the context from your previous edit session.
• Users start-up file username.emf, see emf(8) the user may make local changes to MicroEmacs in this file, this may include changing key bindings, defining new hook functions etc. You should over-ride the standard MicroEmacs settings from your start-up file rather than modifying the standard MicroEmacs files.
• Personal spelling dictionary username.edf, see edf(8). This file contains your personal spelling modifications, any words that are added to the spelling dictionary are added to this file.

In addition to the above, if new file hooks are defined then they should be added to this directory (if they are not global to the company).

EXAMPLE

The following are examples of some individuals start-up files:-

; Jon's special settings 
; 
; Last Modified <190698.2226> 
; 
; Macro to delete the whitespace, or if an a word all of the 
; word until the next word is reached. 
define-macro super-delete 
    !while &not &sin @wc " \t\n" 
        forward-delete-char 
    !done 
    !repeat 
        forward-delete-char 
    !until &or &seq @wc "" &not &sin @wc " \t\n" 
    !return 
!emacro 
; Macro to force buffer to compile buffer for C-x ' 
define-macro compile-error-buffer 
    !force delete-buffer *compile* 
    change-buffer-name "*compile*" 
!emacro 
; 
; Set up the bindings. 
; 
global-bind-key super-delete            "C-delete" 
global-bind-key beginning-of-line       "home" 
global-bind-key end-of-line             "end" 
global-bind-key undo                    "f4" 
; 
; Setup for windows and UNIX. 
; 
; Change the cursor blink rate. 
set-variable $cursor-blink 750 
; Set scrolling to smooth scroll 
set-variable $scroll 0x11 
!if $use-x 
    ; Small font is better for me. 
    change-font "-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--13-*-*-*-c-80-iso8859-1" 
!elif &seq $platform "win32" 
    ; Change the size of the screen 
    82 change-screen-width 
    50 change-screen-depth 
!endif 
; Define the home directories. 
!if &or &seq $platform "dos" &seq $platform "win32"  ; Is it an MS system ?? 
    set-variable $home	"c:/usr/jon" 
!endif 
; Like a korn shell please. 
ml-bind-key tab "esc esc" 
; Change the default diff command-line for GNU diff utility all platforms 
set-variable %diff-com "diff --context --minimal --ignore-space-change --report-identical-files --recursive" 
; Setup for cygnus 
!if &seq $platform "win32" 
    set-variable %cygnus-bin-path "C:/Cygnus/B19/h-i386~1/bin" 
    set-variable %cygnus-hilight 1 
    set-variable %cygnus-prompt "bash-2.01$" 
!endif 
; Finished 
ml-write "Configured to Jon's requirements" 

SEE ALSO

$MEPATH(5), $MENAME(5), user-setup(3), Company Profiles, File Hooks, File Language Templates, Installation.

(c) Copyright JASSPA 1999
Last Modified: 1999/06/02
Generated On: 1999/12/01