OK, I've now waded through the morass associated with locating and actually using ~/.xemacs. I now know why I didn't try to touch this mess before, but now it's time to clean up. The problem: `user-init-directory' (for startup staging reasons) is relative to (concat "~" init-file-user). Here's its docstring: Some clients of `user-init-directory' (including code I wrote) just use (paths-construct-path "~" user-init-directory) to do the trick, but there are some other variants in core Lisp and the packages. This leads to different parts of XEmacs having a potentially different idea of where ~/.xemacs really is. BUT NOONE EVER NOTICED! I conclude from this that `init-file-user' is really too arcane to matter. The logic behind it is too twisted for me to really grok, and therefore probably to most users and many developers. Here's what I want to do: - zap `init-file-user' - set user-init-directory (effectively) to "~/.xemacs" - fix the two packages that need adjustment Any objections? -- Cheers =8-} Chipsy Friede, Völkerverständigung und überhaupt blabla