Just a note to mention that the problem I was having running the Ciao toplevel under my winEmacs (and bothering everyone about) has been resolved simply, though I am ashamed to admit it: my Norton Antivirus was blocking the subprocess without a word. From the Emacs manual:

A third report from Peter Haas about Norton Antivirus 2000 (Emacs 20.5.1, Win98): a DOS shell cannot be started within Emacs without disabling the antivirus autoprotect feature (e.g., clicking on the icon in the system tray).

Now I am happily exploring Ciao.

(Another glitch which I will explore: under winEmacs the Ciao menus go off the screen to the left.)

Thanks,

Bill Winder