Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!uflorida!novavax!weiner
From: weiner@novavax.UUCP (Bob Weiner)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Load order of 'site' files and '~/.emacs'
Message-ID: <812@novavax.UUCP>
Date: 13 Nov 88 22:08:15 GMT
Organization: Nova University, Fort Lauderdale, FL
Lines: 19

I have seen quite a number of postings to this group that show that
user's believe that any operation they perform in their GNU Emacs
personal init files, e.g. .emacs, should override any system wide
settings.  I believe most people would want this behavior.

I can only speak from my use of version 18.49, but the emacs startup
code does not operate this way.  Look in
<GNUEMACS_DIR>/lisp/startup.el and I believe you will find that
'site-init' or 'site-load' is loaded AFTER your .emacs init file.
This may account for the fact that your init file works only if you
execute it manually after starting emacs.

I changed the source myself, but if this is still the same in version 18.52
someone should send a message to the wonderful people at the Free Software
Foundation to report it as a bug or at least an 'extremely
non-intuitive feature.'  I think the mailing list is gnu.bugs.
-- 
Bob Weiner, Motorola, Inc.,   USENET:  ...!gatech!uflorida!novavax!weiner
(407) 738-2087