bug#7741: 23.2.91; Please allow emacs to run emacsclient

bug#7741: 23.2.91; Please allow emacs to run emacsclient

[Reuben Thomas]

At present, “emacsclient” is a reasonable replacement for “emacs”, in
that emacsclient can be configured to run emacs in daemon mode if it’s
not already running. But it is longer to type, harder to learn, and even
after years of use, I find I have trouble remembering, sometimes to use
it. It also looks odd to use emacsclient rather than emacs in
configuration files like /etc/mailcap. In short, it’s yet another thing
to remember.

Most web browsers fix this problem nicely by using the same command to
start the browser as to open a new window in that browser. It would be
nice if emacs did the same, i.e. if emacs had a -client flag which made
it work like emacsclient. Even if it did something as simple as passing
the remaining arguments to emacsclient.


In GNU Emacs 23.2.91.2 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.22.0)
 of 2010-12-23 on mord
Windowing system distributor `The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.10900000
Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: nil
  value of $LC_COLLATE: nil
  value of $LC_CTYPE: nil
  value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
  value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
  value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
  value of $LC_TIME: nil
  value of $LANG: en_GB.UTF-8
  value of $XMODIFIERS: nil
  locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix
  default enable-multibyte-characters: t

Major mode: Text

Minor modes in effect:
  buffer-face-mode: t
  flyspell-mode: t
  show-paren-mode: t
  savehist-mode: t
  minibuffer-electric-default-mode: t
  iswitchb-mode: t
  icomplete-mode: t
  global-auto-revert-mode: t
  desktop-save-mode: t
  smart-quotes-mode: t
  mouse-wheel-mode: t
  file-name-shadow-mode: t
  global-font-lock-mode: t
  font-lock-mode: t
  blink-cursor-mode: t
  auto-encryption-mode: t
  auto-compression-mode: t
  column-number-mode: t
  line-number-mode: t
  transient-mark-mode: t

Recent input:
<right> <right> <right> <right> <right> <right> <right> 
<right> <right> <right> <right> <right> e o g : S-SPC 
C-x C-a <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> C-a 
<down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> 
<down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> 
<down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> <down> C-n 
C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p 
C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p 
C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p 
C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p 
C-p C-p C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n 
C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n 
C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n 
C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n 
C-n C-n C-n C-n C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p 
C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p 
C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p 
C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-p C-n C-n C-p C-p C-n C-n C-p 
C-p C-k C-k C-x C-s <help-echo> C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n 
C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n 
C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n C-n 
C-n C-n C-n M-x m e a c s <backspace> <backspace> <backspace> 
<backspace> <backspace> e m a c s - r e p o r t <backspace> 
<backspace> <backspace> <backspace> <backspace> <backspace> 
<backspace> <backspace> <backspace> <backspace> <backspace> 
<backspace> <backspace> <backspace> <backspace> <backspace> 
<backspace> <backspace> <backspace> <backspace> <backspace> 
<backspace> <backspace> r e p o r t - <return>

Recent messages:
Undo! [5 times]
Saving file /home/rrt/.mailcap...
Wrote /home/rrt/.mailcap
Mark set [3 times]
Saving file /home/rrt/.mailcap...
Wrote /home/rrt/.mailcap
Auto-saving...done
Saving file /home/rrt/.mailcap...
Wrote /home/rrt/.mailcap
call-interactively: Text is read-only [11 times]

Load-path shadows:
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/tex-style hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-style
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/tex-buf hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-buf
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/context hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/context
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/bib-cite hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/bib-cite
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/tex-fold hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-fold
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/tex-jp hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-jp
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/context-nl hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/context-nl
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/toolbar-x hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/toolbar-x
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/tex-mik hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-mik
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/context-en hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/context-en
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/texmathp hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/texmathp
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/tex-info hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-info
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/tex-fptex hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-fptex
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/tex-font hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-font
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/latex hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/latex
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/font-latex hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/font-latex
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/tex-bar hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-bar
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/multi-prompt hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/multi-prompt
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/tex hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex

Features:
(shadow sort mail-extr message sendmail ecomplete rfc822 mml mml-sec
password-cache mm-decode mm-bodies mm-encode mailcap mail-parse rfc2231
rfc2047 rfc2045 qp ietf-drums mailabbrev nnheader gnus-util netrc
time-date mm-util mail-prsvr gmm-utils wid-edit mailheader canlock sha1
hex-util hashcash mail-utils emacsbug multi-isearch dired-aux help-mode
view imenu python-mode info-look info ansi-color compile dired skeleton
longlines preview prv-emacs byte-opt warnings tex-buf noutline outline
font-latex bytecomp byte-compile latex tex-style tex nxml-uchnm rng-xsd
xsd-regexp rng-cmpct rng-nxml rng-valid rng-loc rng-uri rng-parse
nxml-parse rng-match rng-dt rng-util rng-pttrn nxml-ns nxml-mode
nxml-outln nxml-rap nxml-util nxml-glyph nxml-enc xmltok sgml-mode
cperl-mode conf-mode newcomment make-mode vc-git face-remap filladapt
flyspell sh-script executable auto-dictionary-autoloads
dictionary-autoloads js2-mode-autoloads package reporter completing-help
ff-paths uniquify paren savehist minibuf-eldef iswitchb icomplete
autorevert time cus-start cus-load desktop server change-mode advice
help-fns advice-preload php-mode derived etags cc-langs cl cl-19 cc-mode
cc-fonts cc-menus cc-cmds cc-styles cc-align cc-engine cc-vars cc-defs
speedbar sb-image ezimage dframe easymenu assoc lua-mode regexp-opt
comint ring whitespace etags-update smart-quotes edmacro kmacro ispell
ffap muse-autoloads emacs-goodies-el emacs-goodies-custom
emacs-goodies-loaddefs easy-mmode devhelp preview-latex tex-site
auto-loads tooltip ediff-hook vc-hooks lisp-float-type mwheel x-win
x-dnd font-setting tool-bar dnd fontset image fringe lisp-mode register
page menu-bar rfn-eshadow timer select scroll-bar mldrag mouse jit-lock
font-lock syntax facemenu font-core frame cham georgian utf-8-lang
misc-lang vietnamese tibetan thai tai-viet lao korean japanese hebrew
greek romanian slovak czech european ethiopic indian cyrillic chinese
case-table epa-hook jka-cmpr-hook help simple abbrev loaddefs button
minibuffer faces cus-face files text-properties overlay md5 base64
format env code-pages mule custom widget hashtable-print-readable
backquote make-network-process dbusbind system-font-setting
font-render-setting gtk x-toolkit x multi-tty emacs)

-- 
http://rrt.sc3d.org/

bug#7741: 23.2.91; Please allow emacs to run emacsclient

[Juanma Barranquero]

On Mon, Dec 27, 2010 at 13:39, Reuben Thomas <rrt@sc3d.org> wrote:

> It would be
> nice if emacs did the same, i.e. if emacs had a -client flag which made
> it work like emacsclient. Even if it did something as simple as passing
> the remaining arguments to emacsclient.

Isn't that the kind of thing that's easily done with a shell script?
(I certainly do much more complicated things to start emacs /
emacsclient with Windows' CMD.EXE, which is far less powerful that any
POSIX shell...)

    Juanma

bug#7741: 23.2.91; Please allow emacs to run emacsclient

[Reuben Thomas]

On 4 July 2011 12:43, Juanma Barranquero <lekktu@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 27, 2010 at 13:39, Reuben Thomas <rrt@sc3d.org> wrote:
>
>> It would be
>> nice if emacs did the same, i.e. if emacs had a -client flag which made
>> it work like emacsclient. Even if it did something as simple as passing
>> the remaining arguments to emacsclient.
>
> Isn't that the kind of thing that's easily done with a shell script?
> (I certainly do much more complicated things to start emacs /
> emacsclient with Windows' CMD.EXE, which is far less powerful that any
> POSIX shell...)

Of course, a shell script could do the task, it just would be good to
have out of the box. Given the amount of effort that has already gone
into making it possible to use emacsclient (e.g. ALTERNATE_EDITOR and
its magic behavior when it exists but is empty), it seems worth
pursuing making things simpler. Here, I'm after a solution that means
that one can set EDITOR=emacs, and it will just DTRT, i.e. start Emacs
if not already started, or use emacsclient otherwise.

All the required behavior already exists, but it's still necessary to
use emacsclient and set up some environment variables to make it all
work; it should be possible to do pretty much everything out of the
box, which would give users who don't have the time or expertise to
set everything up access to the same convenience and functionality.

-- 
http://rrt.sc3d.org

bug#7741: 23.2.91; Please allow emacs to run emacsclient

[Juanma Barranquero]

On Mon, Jul 4, 2011 at 18:23, Reuben Thomas <rrt@sc3d.org> wrote:

> it seems worth
> pursuing making things simpler. Here, I'm after a solution that means
> that one can set EDITOR=emacs, and it will just DTRT, i.e. start Emacs
> if not already started, or use emacsclient otherwise.

Simpler than using emacsclient -a "" or the emacs daemon?

> All the required behavior already exists, but it's still necessary to
> use emacsclient and set up some environment variables to make it all
> work; it should be possible to do pretty much everything out of the
> box, which would give users who don't have the time or expertise to
> set everything up access to the same convenience and functionality.

But what you're talking aboutis  saving a few keystrokes once... It is
possible to use Emacs out of the box, but even users without time or
expertise will have to set up more than that to make effective use of
Emacs, I think.

Doesn't seem worth the trouble to me, but that's just MHO.

    Juanma

bug#7741: 23.2.91; Please allow emacs to run emacsclient

[Reuben Thomas]

On 4 July 2011 18:32, Juanma Barranquero <lekktu@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 4, 2011 at 18:23, Reuben Thomas <rrt@sc3d.org> wrote:
>
>> it seems worth
>> pursuing making things simpler. Here, I'm after a solution that means
>> that one can set EDITOR=emacs, and it will just DTRT, i.e. start Emacs
>> if not already started, or use emacsclient otherwise.
>
> Simpler than using emacsclient -a "" or the emacs daemon?

Exactly.

> But what you're talking aboutis  saving a few keystrokes
> once...

Exactly.

> It is
> possible to use Emacs out of the box, but even users without time or
> expertise will have to set up more than that to make effective use of
> Emacs, I think.

Exactly, that is the problem.

> Doesn't seem worth the trouble to me, but that's just MHO.

It is certainly worth the trouble. Emacs is an extremely powerful
editor with an amazing wealth of functionality. In recent years there
has been some excellent work on making more of this work out of the
box, but far too much is still left untapped by most users. I am a
constant and moderately advanced user of Emacs, but there are many
exciting and potentially useful features I have never even tried
simply because I have not the time to configure them. Working out how
to activate powerful new features out of the box without either
confusing new users or annoying existing users is often tricky, but
once a feature has been introduced and found useful, it's pretty much
an essential step in order to make it widely available.

As an example, look how many users still complain of Emacs's "lack" of
features found in other IDEs. Actually, many of these features are
available in Emacs, but they take time to set up. This means that many
users don't get to see them, and, just as important, the packages
themselves don't get the feedback or polish they deserve. One example
is CEDET, whose code comprehension and refactoring capabilities I've
tried to use more than once, but have always come up against minor
bugs which made it unusable for me. Another is nXhtml, which I use
despite some annoying minor bugs (fortunately for my use they are
mostly cosmetic), thanks to significant one-to-one help from the
author.

It would be unfair of me not to point out that Emacs is much better in
this regard than it was a few years ago (I remember when even syntax
coloring was off by default!), but it still suffers from
configurationitis worse than any other program I use regularly, and
unfortunately there is still a mentality of "that can be fixed by
adding an option". There are far too many options!

-- 
http://rrt.sc3d.org

bug#7741: 23.2.91; Please allow emacs to run emacsclient

[Juanma Barranquero]

On Mon, Jul 4, 2011 at 19:44, Reuben Thomas <rrt@sc3d.org> wrote:

> and
> unfortunately there is still a mentality of "that can be fixed by
> adding an option". There are far too many options!

Sometimes a behavior is so obviously good that it is really a bugfix,
and no option is needed. For all the rest, the alternative to options
is "please use the defaults that I find more useful". Hard to do for
every value of "I" greater than one.

As for the rest, my comment meant just that I don't find this change
worth the trouble. YM obviously V, and I'm sure there are developers
who agree with you.

    Juanma

bug#7741: More about folding emacsclient into emacs

[Reuben Thomas]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1462 bytes --]

I've just been drawn back to look at this bug. Another way of looking at
it: currently, "Emacs 24" is the default application for many text
filetypes under GNOME. For many users, this is annoying, as it starts a new
instance of Emacs each time.

I have configured "emacsclient" as a text editor in my system (this does
not seem to be available by default), but I then still have to configure it
as the default editor for each file type in Nautilus.

One option would be to offer "emacsclient" as the default, but that's also
confusing, for users who don't know about emacsclient.

So again, it would be good if emacsclient were folded into emacs. I just
had a look at their respective command-line options, and I can't see any
that clash (where the same option is used for both programs, it's used for
the same thing).

What would remain is to add options --[no]client to force "emacs" to [not]
behave as "emacsclient", and decide a sensible default policy. A sensible
place to start seems to be to behave like emacsclient when called with
--alternate-editor="", that is, try to connect to a server, and if one
can't be found, start normally (emacsclient would instead run "emacs
--daemon" here and try to connect to it).

Regardless of whether anyone feels like hacking on this, I'd like to know
whether it's a tractable design problem (have I missed anything major?) and
clikely to be accepted. If so, I might be up for hacking on it.

-- 
http://rrt.sc3d.org

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1815 bytes --]

bug#7741: More about folding emacsclient into emacs

[Glenn Morris]

Reuben Thomas wrote:

> So again, it would be good if emacsclient were folded into emacs. I just
> had a look at their respective command-line options, and I can't see any
> that clash (where the same option is used for both programs, it's used for
> the same thing).
>
> What would remain is to add options --[no]client to force "emacs" to [not]
> behave as "emacsclient", and decide a sensible default policy. A sensible
> place to start seems to be to behave like emacsclient when called with
> --alternate-editor="", that is, try to connect to a server, and if one
> can't be found, start normally (emacsclient would instead run "emacs
> --daemon" here and try to connect to it).
>
> Regardless of whether anyone feels like hacking on this, I'd like to know
> whether it's a tractable design problem (have I missed anything major?) and
> clikely to be accepted. If so, I might be up for hacking on it.

I had the same thoughts recently and found that, of course, there is
already an open report for it.

So I'm just chiming in very late to say that I agree with pretty much
everything you said, and I would like to see a patch for this.

bug#7741: More about folding emacsclient into emacs

[Vaidheeswaran C]

On Monday 13 July 2015 07:30 AM, Glenn Morris wrote:
> Reuben Thomas wrote:
> 
>> So again, it would be good if emacsclient were folded into emacs. I just
>> had a look at their respective command-line options, and I can't see any
>> that clash (where the same option is used for both programs, it's used for
>> the same thing).
>>
>> What would remain is to add options --[no]client to force "emacs" to [not]
>> behave as "emacsclient", and decide a sensible default policy. A sensible
>> place to start seems to be to behave like emacsclient when called with
>> --alternate-editor="", that is, try to connect to a server, and if one
>> can't be found, start normally (emacsclient would instead run "emacs
>> --daemon" here and try to connect to it).
>>
>> Regardless of whether anyone feels like hacking on this, I'd like to know
>> whether it's a tractable design problem (have I missed anything major?) and
>> clikely to be accepted. If so, I might be up for hacking on it.
> 
> I had the same thoughts recently and found that, of course, there is
> already an open report for it.
> 
> So I'm just chiming in very late to say that I agree with pretty much
> everything you said, and I would like to see a patch for this.

Some doubts I had while using emacsclient:

1. Can I control what emacs (i.e., from which path) the emacs daemon
   will be loaded from.

2. I had to use the "-F" option to keep the client frame maximized.
   It is not obvious how to pass in an ALIST on command line.  I was
   wondering if there is an use case where the client would need an
   init script of it's own.  This tiny script can store FRAME params
   for example.

So, frame maximization and an init script is a __behaviour__ that both
the emacsclient and regular emacs possibly share.

bug#7741: More about folding emacsclient into emacs

[Reuben Thomas]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 374 bytes --]

On 13 July 2015 at 03:00, Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org> wrote:

>
> So I'm just chiming in very late to say that I agree with pretty much
> everything you said, and I would like to see a patch for this.
>

​Thanks for the expression of support! I've highlighted this issue on my
personal Emacs to-do list, in case I can find time for it.

-- 
http://rrt.sc3d.org

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 825 bytes --]

bug#7741: More about folding emacsclient into emacs

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Vaidheeswaran C <vaidheeswaran.chinnaraju@gmail.com>
> Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2015 08:40:44 +0530
> 
> 2. I had to use the "-F" option to keep the client frame maximized.
>    It is not obvious how to pass in an ALIST on command line.  I was
>    wondering if there is an use case where the client would need an
>    init script of it's own.  This tiny script can store FRAME params
>    for example.

Is something wrong with --eval?

bug#7741: More about folding emacsclient into emacs

[Xue Fuqiao]

On Mon, Jul 13, 2015 at 11:10 AM, Vaidheeswaran C
<vaidheeswaran.chinnaraju@gmail.com> wrote:

> 1. Can I control what emacs (i.e., from which path) the emacs daemon
>    will be loaded from.

You can set the variable `server-name' on the Emacs server and use the
`-s' option of emacsclient.  (Although it's not supported on
MS-Windows.)

bug#7741: More about folding emacsclient into emacs

[Vaidheeswaran C]

On Tuesday 14 July 2015 04:37 AM, Xue Fuqiao wrote:
>> 1. Can I control what emacs (i.e., from which path) the emacs daemon
>> >    will be loaded from.

> You can set the variable `server-name' on the Emacs server and use the
> `-s' option of emacsclient.  (Although it's not supported on
> MS-Windows.)

I don't work on remote machines across a network connection.  I was
asking more like:

    "Does the `-a' option take a full path.  For eg, can the daemon
    use my git checkout binary or the local installation?"

bug#7741: More about folding emacsclient into emacs

[Vaidheeswaran C]

On Monday 13 July 2015 09:32 PM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> From: Vaidheeswaran C <vaidheeswaran.chinnaraju@gmail.com>
>> > Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2015 08:40:44 +0530
>> > 
>> > 2. I had to use the "-F" option to keep the client frame maximized.
>> >    It is not obvious how to pass in an ALIST on command line.  I was
>> >    wondering if there is an use case where the client would need an
>> >    init script of it's own.  This tiny script can store FRAME params
>> >    for example.
> Is something wrong with --eval?

I discovered it late.  I would have re-vised my comments if only I
could see my posts on this list sooner that it usually appears.

bug#7741: More about folding emacsclient into emacs

[Xue Fuqiao]

On Tue, Jul 14, 2015 at 9:09 AM, Vaidheeswaran C
<vaidheeswaran.chinnaraju@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tuesday 14 July 2015 04:37 AM, Xue Fuqiao wrote:
>>> 1. Can I control what emacs (i.e., from which path) the emacs daemon
>>> >    will be loaded from.
>
>> You can set the variable `server-name' on the Emacs server and use the
>> `-s' option of emacsclient.  (Although it's not supported on
>> MS-Windows.)
>
> I don't work on remote machines across a network connection.

You don't have to.  See below.

>     can the daemon use my git checkout binary or the local
>     installation?"

IIUC you can start the git checkout emacs binary and the local
installation with:

  $ /path/to/git/checkout/src/emacs --daemon=git
  $ emacs --daemon=local

and use `emacsclient -s git' or `emacsclient -s local' to connect to the
daemon you want to use.