> I wish Emacs for XP worked the way it did on FreeBSD, but it
> doesn't. They had to pre-compile Emacs into its lowest functional
> form. I am not sure about the technicalities. Basically it is isolated
> from any of its former interactions with many OS functions.
>
> This same isolation also shows up in the LaTeX distribution for XP. It
> sits in some directory with all its components and packages and works
> as a stand alone. It works, but it has lost much of it's flexibility
> that TeX had.
You might want to try the Cygwin installation, most everything from gcc to GNOME works the same as it does under Linux/BSD.