Jim Porter <jporterbugs@gmail.com> writes:

> On 9/12/2023 7:30 PM, sbaugh@catern.com wrote:
>> tags 65902 + patch
>> quit
>> This patch avoids the complicated scripting needed for
>> emacsclient-mail.desktop by adding a new flag to emacsclient, --funcall,
>> which mirrors emacs --funcall and allows emacsclient-mail.desktop to be
>> basically the same as emacs-mail.desktop.
>
> I think this is actually the same as the (very long) bug#57752, so
> thanks for working on this. (It was on my list of things to get to,
> but I just haven't had time.)
>
> Over there, we agreed that something like your patch is wanted, albeit
> with two caveats:
>
> 1. Since "--funcall" for the regular "emacs" binary doesn't pass
> arguments to the function, how about we call this option "--apply"
> instead?

Ah, for some reason I thought --funcall passed arguments.  Done in
attached patch.

> 2. It would be great if we could get "--apply" for the regular "emacs"
> binary too, so that both programs work the same way (at least in this
> regard).

Done.

Although the behavior is slightly different: emacs --apply calls the
function with subsequent FILE arguments, and emacsclient --apply calls
the function with all FILE arguments.  The "subsequent FILE arguments"
behavior is probably better, but I don't know a way to do that with
getopt (which emacsclient uses).

> Even better, if you could forward "--apply" from
> "emacsclient" to the alternate editor (which would be "emacs" 99% of
> the time) automatically. That works, in a roundabout way, for the
> Emacs daemon, but not if the alternate editor is "emacs".

This happens automatically anyway: When emacsclient starts the daemon,
it sends the --apply request.  I think that's exactly what you'd want.