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What is XEmacs?

XEmacs is a highly customizable open source text editor and application development system. It is protected under the GNU Public License and related to other versions of Emacs, in particular GNU Emacs. Its emphasis is on modern graphical user interface support and an open software development model, similar to Linux. XEmacs has an active development community numbering in the hundreds, and runs on Windows 95 and NT, Linux and nearly every other version of Unix in existence. Support for XEmacs has been supplied by Sun Microsystems, University of Illinois, Lucid, ETL/Electrotechnical Laboratory, Amdahl Corporation, BeOpen, and others, as well as the unpaid time of a great number of individual developers.

Web and FTP hosting graciously provided by Sourceforge, SunSITE and tux as well as many world-wide FTP site and Web site mirrors.

Website Mirrors

As a common saying goes: Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.

XEmacs Website Mirrors exist on following continents. Pick the continent where your internet service provider resides, which is not always the continent you may sit on. This is most likely to matter when you work for an international company with no local internet connection.

Current XEmacs Core Releases

Problem reports and requests for enhancement may be filed at the new XEmacs issue tracking system.

XEmacs 21.4 has been promoted to stable, and the XEmacs 21.1 series has been retired. For those with classic taste, these historical releases are still available. We will continue to support, at a lower level, 21.1 users.

Current XEmacs Package Releases

See the Quickstart Package Guide for information about the XEmacs package system. It is a feature differentiating XEmacs from GNU Emacs by allowing us to deploy bug fixes and enhancements of our lisp packages on a separate, usually faster, schedule than core XEmacs releases.

Official Release

XEmacs Community News

2008-02-10

XEmacs joins the 21st century with a new issue tracker.

2007-12-03

Thank you, Siam Web Hosting, for mirroring the XEmacs website.

2007-09-24

XEmacs users in China now have a "local" mirror to download from! Thank you, FKtPp!

2007-08-15

Max Bear adds a website mirror, in Texas, USA, and might followup with a ftp site mirror as well. Thank you!

is.xemacs.org is taking some time off, but will return before long.

We now have a functional primary FTP mirror in the US again. We're greatful to ibiblio, a collaboration of the Center for the Public Domain and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for filling the gap.

We have a functional primary FTP mirror in the UK again. Thanks to the University of Kent UKMIRROR service.

2003-10-10

The XEmacs Project notes with sadness the untimely passing of J. Pitts Jarvis, III, of Palo Alto, CA. Jarvis was responsible for the ports of XEmacs 19.14 to MacOS 8, and of XEmacs 21.5.9 to Mac OS X (the "Carbon" branch). We will miss his presence as we integrate his work.

2002-03-09

Peter Brown, our new website sidekick, sets up a Namazu search engine for the XEmacs website. Indexes get updated on each and every commit to the website. Mailing lists remain searchable separately via their own interface.

2001-11-29

Although GTK is still classed as experimental because the core team has insufficient time to devote to it, Les Schaffer is coordinating efforts to improve the support. Visit his GTK XEmacs bugs page (it disappeared between June and October 2004) for more information. Thanks, Les!

2001-11-03

All XEmacs CVS modules, among other projects, can now be browsed via cvsweb (upgraded to ViewCVS access on 2002-01-16) at the Anonymous CVS Repository at SunSITE.dk. See also Service Issue 8. Details about CVS repository access are still in flux, but documentation in   Develop/packages.html will be kept in sync with reality.

2001-04-16

XEmacs 21.4.0 "Solid Vapor" is released.

2001-03-29

Infodock, the industrial-strength IDE built on XEmacs, has now opened a SourceForge project. The current release of Infodock, 4.00.08, is based on XEmacs 21.1.

2001-03-28

The final release date for XEmacs 21.4 has been fixed for April 15th; see the Release page for details.

2001-01-09

The code base currently called ``XEmacs 21.2'' is now scheduled for release on March 1, 2001. Prelease testing and development discussion are taking place on xemacs-beta, the open list for developers and beta testers. Come join the fun!

2000-11-09

It's about time for a dashing piece of news: William M. Perry's work (funded by BeOpen.com through sourceXchange), Gtk-XEmacs is available via tarballs or directly from the XEmacs repository. (N.B. This feature has been incorporated in the XEmacs mainline since the 21.4.0 release.)

2000-07-01

Steve Youngs, our XEmacs Packager from Downunder, reports: Andy Piper can't have all the limelight. My daughter, Kaitlyn (a future XEmacs hacker) was born July 1, 2000.

2000-05-12

Congratulations to XEmacs hacker Andy Piper and his family on the birth of William Piper on 5 May 2000!

2000-01-18

Users of the MacOS are reported to be rejoicing wildly now that a port of XEmacs 19.14 is available for their platform of choice.

XEmacs has been nominated in the Slashdot 2000 Beanie Awards, in the Best Open Source Editor Category. We urge all XEmacs users to vote for their favorite editor.

1999-09-29

The first public release of coffee-el allows RFC2324-compliant coffee devices (Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol, or HTCPCP) to be controlled from within XEmacs. Coffee-drinking XEmacs users everywhere rejoice as their favorite beverage is unified with their favorite editor.