Re: Problem with .emacs

[B. T. Raven]

"Hendrik Bilges" <VZQNVPETFXMY@spammotel.com> wrote in message
4qvvupFol4vsU2@individual.net">news:4qvvupFol4vsU2@individual.net...
> Hi,
>
> after solving the problem with .emacs not being read (thanks to the
> community :-) ) I am now confronted with an error in .emacs. I'm not
good
> yet at understanding what's going on in this file, most of the stuff I
> simply copied from some examples on the net. Can somebody please have a
> look and point out the mistake(s)?
> Emacs tells me:
>
> An error has occurred while loading `/home/billy/.emacs':
> Symbol's value as variable is void: setq
>
> I posted my .emacs here: http://phpfi.com/170452
>
> Hendrik

It's almost certainly bad syntax somewhere in your .emacs. Invoke emacs
with the switch --debug-init and then evaluate (setq  show-paren-mode t )
in *scratch with C-j after closing parenthesis. This highlighting of
matching parentheses can also be turned on via Custom and it writes
'(show-paren-mode t nil (paren)) into the (custom-set-variables .....
list) in your .emacs. I don't understand this syntax but I guess I don't
need to. There are both a variable and a function called show-paren-mode.
This will help you to find the syntax error in the vicinity of one or more
instances of the "setq" token.

A cursory look at your .emacs shows that this certainly looks suspicious:

....
setq TeX-auto-save t
setq TeX-parse-self t
setq-default TeX-master nil
....

Ed.