Emacs: can't open load file for windows.el, possible char encoding error

Question

I am trying to install Windows Mode from here: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/WindowsMode and I am having issues with loading the windows.el file upon initialization, where the minibuffer tells me Cannot open load file: windows . After saving the file, I added this to my init file:

(add-to-list 'load-path "~/workspace/emacs/.emacs.d/elisp/windows.el")
(require 'windows)
(win:startup-with-window)
(define-key ctl-x-map "C" 'see-you-again)

And here is where I saved the file:

[lucas@lucas-ThinkPad-W520]~/workspace/emacs/.emacs.d/elisp$ ls -la
total 296
drwxr-xr-x  4 lucas lucas   4096 Apr 20 01:06 .
drwxr-xr-x 14 lucas lucas   4096 Apr 20 01:14 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 lucas lucas  31502 Mar 29 21:40 multi-term.el
-rw-r--r--  1 lucas lucas  35201 Apr 20 01:01 revive.el
drwxr-xr-x  3 lucas lucas   4096 Mar  9 14:57 theme-changer
drwxr-xr-x  3 lucas lucas   4096 Mar 29 01:05 themes
-rw-r--r--  1 lucas lucas 115222 Apr 20 01:06 windows2.el
-rw-r--r--  1 lucas lucas  96830 Apr 20 01:01 windows.el

I suspect the character encoding, which is listed at the top of the windows.el file (full file on the link) as -*- coding: euc-jp -*- . Initially saving this file gave me an error (see below), prompting me to specify the encoding. I tried saving the file as euc-jp then again as utf-8 , but I still get the Cannot open load file... error.

Here is the message that I get when trying to save:

These default coding systems were tried to encode text
in the buffer `windows2.el':
  (japanese-iso-8bit-unix (13580 . 65533) (13581 . 65533) (13582
  . 65533) (13583 . 65533) (13584 . 65533) (13585 . 65533) (13586
  . 65533) (13587 . 65533) (13588 . 65533) (13589 . 65533) (13590
  . 65533))
However, each of them encountered characters it couldn't encode:
  japanese-iso-8bit-unix cannot encode these: � � � � � � � � � � ...

Click on a character (or switch to this window by `C-x o'
and select the characters by RET) to jump to the place it appears,
where `C-u C-x =' will give information about it.

Select one of the safe coding systems listed below,
or cancel the writing with C-g and edit the buffer
   to remove or modify the problematic characters,
or specify any other coding system (and risk losing
   the problematic characters).

  utf-8 gb18030 utf-7 utf-16 utf-16be-with-signature
  utf-16le-with-signature utf-16be utf-16le iso-2022-7bit utf-8-auto
  utf-8-with-signature utf-7-imap utf-8-emacs

Assuming that the encoding is the source of the problem, how can I setup my emacs to be compatible with these encodings?

Answer 1

load-path is a list of directories in which to look for elisp libraries.

Use this:

(add-to-list 'load-path (expand-file-name "~/workspace/emacs/.emacs.d/elisp"))