Where can I get Emacs for my PC running MS-DOS?

• Demacs For 386 or 486 PCs running MS-DOS, there is a version of GNU Emacs called Demacs. To get Demacs see section Demacs -- GNU Emacs altered to run on MS-DOS on 386/486 machines. From the announcement message:

    Demacs is almost a full set of GNU Emacs but does not support some
    features: asynchronous process, locking a file, etc.
  

    Demacs provides following DOS specific features:
  

• File type: text or binary file translation.
• "8-bit clean" display mode.
• 8086 software interrupt call by int86 lisp function.
• Machine specific features such as function key support.
• File name completion with drive name.
• Child process (suspend-emacs, call-process).
• Enhanced dired mode which can work without 'ls.exe'.

    To our regret `shell-mode' does not work, but `compile' command works
    properly.
  

  Demacs was developed using an MS-DOS version of gcc called djgpp by D. J. Delorie <dj@ctron.com> which can compile and run large programs under MS-DOS, but not under MS Windows. Demacs was derived from Nemacs rather than straight from GNU Emacs.

There are a variety of other Emacses for MS-DOS including among them the following.

• Freemacs Russ Nelson <nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu>, the author, describes Freemacs:
• Freemacs is free, and it was designed from the start to be

      programmable.
  

• Freemacs is the only IBM-PC editor that tries to be like GNU Emacs.
• Freemacs can only edit files less than 64K in length.
• Freemacs doesn't have undo. Carl Witty <cwitty@cs.stanford.edu> reviews Freemacs:

    Better is Freemacs, which follows the tradition of ITS and GNU Emacs
    by having an full, turing-complete extension language which is
    incompatible with everything else.  In fact, it's even closer to ITS
    Emacs than GNU Emacs is, because Mint (Freemacs' extension language)
    is absolutely illegible without weeks of study, much like TECO.
  

  To get Freemacs see section Freemacs -- a small Emacs for MS-DOS.
• MicroEmacs MicroEmacs is a descendant of Microemacs {originally by Dave Conroy?}. It is programmable in a BASIC-like language. Many of the keybindings are different from GNU Emacs. It is rumored that MicroEmacs can not correctly edit files larger than memory. The author is Daniel Lawrence <dan@mdbs.uucp, dan@midas.mgmt.purdue.edu, nwd@j.cc.purdue.edu>. The latest version is 3.10 and it is available via anonymous FTP:

  
    /midas.mgmt.purdue.edu:  (non-working hours only)
    /durer.cme.nist.gov:
    /wuarchive.wustl.edu:/mirrors/msdos/memacs/
  

  Version 3.11 is in beta test.
• JOVE Another Emacs for small machines is JOVE (Jonathan's Own Version of Emacs). The latest official version is 4.14. There appears to be a newer version. People rumored to be working on JOVE include Mark Moraes <moraes@cs.toronto.edu> and Bill Marsh <bmarsh@cod.nosc.mil>. It is available via anonymous FTP:

  
    /cs.rochester.edu:/pub/jove.tar.4.14.Z
    /cs.toronto.edu:/pub/moraes/jove4.14.3.tar.Z
    /ftp.uu.net:
  

• MG MG is another descendant of Microemacs. MG used to stand for MicroGNUEmacs, but now just stands for MG. The look-and-feel of MG is intended to be close to that of GNU Emacs. It is rumored that MG can not correctly edit files larger than memory. The current version is rumored to be 2. There is a version 3 in beta which works on the Amiga. It is also available via anonymous FTP:

  
    /ftp.white.toronto.edu:pub/mg/
    /wuarchive.wustl.edu:/mirrors/unix-c/editors/
    /procyon.cis.ksu.edu:  (source and executable)