Subject: Re: bug#24040: download instructions incomplete

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2016 17:24:29 +0300

> From: Óscar Fuentes <[email-masked]>
> Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2016 03:17:17 +0200
> Cc: Jay Walker <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
> 
> > Ok, so based on your feedback, it is not obvious that the zip file
> > contains a binary to run?
> 
> Maybe it is a good idea to mention de addpm.exe utility for creating the
> shorcuts, and emacs.exe/emacsrun.exe for directly executing Emacs?

I'm not sure it's a good idea.  addpm.exe is not needed nowadays, and
can cause trouble in the long run, because it records environment
variables in the Registry, and therefore requires you to re-run it
with each installation of a new Emacs version.  I'd like to remove
addpm.exe in the long run, so advertising it is a step in the wrong
direction.

If we want to help users to create shortcuts, we should come up with a
different utility, one that doesn't write to Registry.

> Oh, wait:
> 
> https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/efaq-w32.html#Installing-binaries
> 
> but the FAQ is not referenced from
> 
> https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/download.html
> 
> In fact, I found no link at all to the Windows FAQ. That's a waste,
> because the FAQ contains lots of useful info.

Most of that info is either outdated or even plain wrong.  Patches are
welcome to add any information there that's still useful and accurate
to the Emacs FAQ, so that we could finally retire efaq-w32.

Thanks.