Customizing EMacs 20 for Windows

[Justin Birtwell]

Hello,
Newbie here.  I'm trying to setup my Emacs for Windows to program SML/NJ.
The documentation talk allot about a '.emacs' files which I apparently don't
seem to have.  I've read the FAQ for emacs and realize that this is a common
question.  Digging a little deeper I found some documentation that says for
Emacs 20 new installations don' t have the '.emacs' files.

This is quoted for the FAQ from
:http://www.lerner.co.il/emacs/faq_5.html#SEC31

"In general, new Emacs users should not have `.emacs' files, because it
causes confusing non-standard behavior. Then they send questions to
help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org asking why Emacs isn't behaving as documented"

So what is a Newbie to do?  On one hand most of the documentation to be
found on Emacs refers to a .emacs file.  But the file doesn't exist with the
install.

I should say that I unpack emacs into a folder (c:\Program Files\emacs) and
ran the setup routine addpm.exe.  Emacs does seem to run fine so far.  But
alas for the customization.

The FAQ goes on to point me to the new    Options->Customize EMacs feature.
Things are looking  good.  I sleekest the 'Programming' options then
'Languages' then get a list of languages that are customized for emacs.  But
no ML or SML?  Now what?

So now I find SML Documentation on how to customize emacs for SML and it all
refers to this '.emacs' file, which I don't have.

I know this is totally a newbie/bonehead question.  Please forgive me.  But
what can I do?

Thanks,
Justin