Re: Full screen mode on windows

[Evans Winner <thorne@timbral.net>]

Ivan Kanis <expire-by-2008-06-07@kanis.fr> writes:

    AFAIK Emacs in the command prompt will not display
    picture and bdf fonts, I use both extensively.  I don't
    think it has mouse support either which I use from time
    to time.

I have wanted a feature like this for a long time for W32.
I started a brief gnu.emacs.help thread on the question in
March [1].  At home I use stumpwm which puts all
applications in a true fullscreen mode that maximizes
available screen area while still allowing the use of GUI
tools like the mouse and nice fonts, etc.  But at work I am
stuck with W32 and can't get that effect easily.

Also, I suspect that a nice presentation package would be
fairly easy to write for Emacs and could be quite useful,
but it would be helpful for such a program to have access by
way of Emacs lisp to a true fullscreen toggle on all
platforms.  The problem is that the W32 environment does not
seem to provide a high-level or easily accessed function to
do that.  An attempt seems to have been made that requires
python[2].

There is also some interest in programs like Dark Room or
Writeroom which are text editors that are designed to be
visually minimalistic for the purpose of reducing
distractions.  (There is a page on the EmacsWiki that
describes some related hacks [3].)  Emacs is evolved for use
as a text editor for coding and some related things;
features like a totally blank screen save text (no title
bars or tool bars, etc.) seem to be of interest more to
writers of fiction and poetry, and so forth.  A related
feature that would be nice for the ``Writeroom'' editing
style, or for a presentation manager, is that of a
disappearing mode-line, similar to the ``auto-hide''
function available for the ``task-bar'' used in the Windows
GUI.  I know one attempt has been made to implement this for
Emacs[4], though it does not reclaim that space (or
minibuffer space) for editing use, which would be nice.


Footnotes:
[1] I don't know how to cite Usenet messages.
The Google archive says it is:
Message-ID: <3112661d-c08e-412b-91f1-9e7ec192dc67@s37g2000prg.googlegroups.com>
A direct link to the Google web archived thread is: 
http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.emacs.help/browse_thread/thread/d97ba81a2428d37e/4e4024398a44deba?lnk=st&q=emacsw32+fullscreen#4e4024398a44deba

[2]  http://www.martyn.se/code/emacs/darkroom-mode/

[3]  http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/WriteRoom

[4]  http://dse.livejournal.com/66834.html