Hi Rob, although you appear to have working emacs installation now, let me ask if you have tried the emacs-app port (version 23.0.0_NS-9.0rc3)? This works very well for me on Leopard and I like that emacs version better than the Carbon version (which apparently is in the emacs port package) anyway. I tried the Carbon version by downloading it from apple.com[1]. I always start emacs from the command line, and so I created the following alias (which, I know, will break with every new version): emacs='/opt/local/var/macports/software/emacs-app/23.0.0_NS-9.0rc3_0/Applications/MacPorts/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs --no-splash' As someone being new to both MacOS and MacPorts, coming from Debian/ Ubuntu, I am also not happy with the initial state of MacPorts on Leopard, but judging from the activity on this mailing list and the rate of improvements (when I first tried it, the emacs-app package, version rc2, also did not build on Leopard) the situation is likely to improve steadily and quickly. Regards, Vlado [1] http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/unix_open_source/carbonemacspackage.ht...