Embedding Emacs in other apps

Embedding Emacs in other apps

[Tassilo Horn]

Hi all,

I've wondered if it is possible to embed emacs in other applications, so
for example that I can edit textfields in my browser using emacs.  I
quickly found this NEWS entry for emacs 23.

,----
| *** Emacs now supports the XEmbed specification.
| You can embed Emacs in another application on X11.  The new command line
| option --parent-id is used to pass the parent window id to Emacs.  See
| http://standards.freedesktop.org/xembed-spec/xembed-spec-latest.html
| for details about XEmbed.
`----

But this --parent-id option is only available to emacs, not emacsclient.
Is that intended or technically not feasible otherwise?  My emacs needs
about 20 seconds to start, but I always have a server instance in the
background.  Clearly, I wouldn't want to wait 20 secs to start editing
some textfield, but simply embed a new frame...

The --parent-id option isn't documented in the texinfo docs, btw...

And the other thing: Is there some example code showing how I can embed
emacs in my own application?

Bye,
Tassilo

Re: Embedding Emacs in other apps

[Thierry Volpiatto]

Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org> writes:

> Hi all,
>
> I've wondered if it is possible to embed emacs in other applications, so
> for example that I can edit textfields in my browser using emacs.  I
> quickly found this NEWS entry for emacs 23.

You can use firefox extension called "it's all text".

> ,----
> | *** Emacs now supports the XEmbed specification.
> | You can embed Emacs in another application on X11.  The new command line
> | option --parent-id is used to pass the parent window id to Emacs.  See
> | http://standards.freedesktop.org/xembed-spec/xembed-spec-latest.html
> | for details about XEmbed.
> `----
>
> But this --parent-id option is only available to emacs, not emacsclient.
> Is that intended or technically not feasible otherwise?  My emacs needs
> about 20 seconds to start, but I always have a server instance in the
> background.  Clearly, I wouldn't want to wait 20 secs to start editing
> some textfield, but simply embed a new frame...
>
> The --parent-id option isn't documented in the texinfo docs, btw...
>
> And the other thing: Is there some example code showing how I can embed
> emacs in my own application?
>
> Bye,
> Tassilo
>
>
>

-- 
Thierry Volpiatto
Gpg key: http://pgp.mit.edu/

Re: Embedding Emacs in other apps

[joakim]

Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org> writes:

> Hi all,
>
> I've wondered if it is possible to embed emacs in other applications, so
> for example that I can edit textfields in my browser using emacs.  I
> quickly found this NEWS entry for emacs 23.
>
> ,----
> | *** Emacs now supports the XEmbed specification.
> | You can embed Emacs in another application on X11.  The new command line
> | option --parent-id is used to pass the parent window id to Emacs.  See
> | http://standards.freedesktop.org/xembed-spec/xembed-spec-latest.html| for details about XEmbed.
> `----
>
> But this --parent-id option is only available to emacs, not emacsclient.
> Is that intended or technically not feasible otherwise?  My emacs needs
> about 20 seconds to start, but I always have a server instance in the
> background.  Clearly, I wouldn't want to wait 20 secs to start editing
> some textfield, but simply embed a new frame...
>
> The --parent-id option isn't documented in the texinfo docs, btw...
>
> And the other thing: Is there some example code showing how I can embed
> emacs in my own application?

There are some examples in the emacswiki.

>
> Bye,
> Tassilo
>
-- 
Joakim Verona

Re: Embedding Emacs in other apps

[Chong Yidong]

Thierry Volpiatto <thierry.volpiatto@gmail.com> writes:

>> I've wondered if it is possible to embed emacs in other applications, so
>> for example that I can edit textfields in my browser using emacs.  I
>> quickly found this NEWS entry for emacs 23.
>
> You can use firefox extension called "it's all text".

That opens a separate X window.  As far as I know, no one has written
the code to support XEmbed for the frames of an existing Emacs process
(which would allow us to embed emacsclient frames).  Patches welcome.

Re: Embedding Emacs in other apps

[Tassilo Horn]

On Tuesday 27 April 2010 20:14:01 Thierry Volpiatto wrote:

Hi Thierry,

> > I've wondered if it is possible to embed emacs in other
> > applications, so for example that I can edit textfields in my
> > browser using emacs.  I quickly found this NEWS entry for emacs 23.
> 
> You can use firefox extension called "it's all text".

I don't use firefox, but the browser story was more like the motivation
section of my mail. ;-)

What really interests me is how difficult it is to use emacs as embedded
text editor in KDE.

Bye,
Tassilo

Re: Embedding Emacs in other apps

[Tassilo Horn]

On Tuesday 27 April 2010 20:26:42 joakim@verona.se wrote:

> > And the other thing: Is there some example code showing how I can
> > embed emacs in my own application?
> 
> There are some examples in the emacswiki.

Thanks, I'll have a look.

Bye,
Tassilo

Re: Embedding Emacs in other apps

[Tassilo Horn]

On Tuesday 27 April 2010 20:26:42 joakim@verona.se wrote:

Hi Joakim,

> > And the other thing: Is there some example code showing how I can
> > embed emacs in my own application?
> 
> There are some examples in the emacswiki.

Unfortunately, I cannot find one of them.  There's

  http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsXembed

with a screenshot of emacs embedded in emacs (and some other gtk
widgets), and there's talk about a demo app, but its code is not linked
from there...

Bye,
Tassilo

Re: Embedding Emacs in other apps

[Jan Djärv]

Tassilo Horn skrev 2010-04-27 18.00:

> But this --parent-id option is only available to emacs, not emacsclient.
> Is that intended or technically not feasible otherwise?  My emacs needs
> about 20 seconds to start, but I always have a server instance in the
> background.  Clearly, I wouldn't want to wait 20 secs to start editing
> some textfield, but simply embed a new frame...

It should be possible to pass it along to  an emacs daemon.  Parent id is just 
another frame parameter, that --parent-id sets in initial-frame-alist.
Nobody saw the need, or did the code yet, thats all.

>
> The --parent-id option isn't documented in the texinfo docs, btw...

There are some out of date documentation, but its within an @ignore:

@ignore
@item parent-id
@c ??? Not yet working.
The X window number of the window that should be the parent of this one.
Specifying this lets you create an Emacs window inside some other
application's window.  (It is not certain this will be implemented; try
it and see if it works.)
@end ignore


>
> And the other thing: Is there some example code showing how I can embed
> emacs in my own application?
>

I have some Gtk+ examples, it is easy there.  But maybe you want straight X 
examples?

	Jan D.

Re: Embedding Emacs in other apps

[Tassilo Horn]

On Wednesday 28 April 2010 18:45:45 Jan Djärv wrote:

Hi Jan,

> > Clearly, I wouldn't want to wait 20 secs to start editing some
> > textfield, but simply embed a new frame...
> 
> It should be possible to pass it along to an emacs daemon.  Parent id
> is just another frame parameter, that --parent-id sets in
> initial-frame-alist.  Nobody saw the need, or did the code yet, thats
> all.

I guess it's only the latter reason. ;-)

> > And the other thing: Is there some example code showing how I can
> > embed emacs in my own application?
> 
> I have some Gtk+ examples, it is easy there.  But maybe you want
> straight X examples?

I wanted to investigate how much effort it would be to be able to use
emacs in all places in KDE where its "text editor kpart" is used.
Therefore, emacs (or an emacs frame) would need to implement this kpart
interface.  Currently, I don't know if and how that relates to XEmbed.
Possibly, it is a completely different approach.

When googling for emacs kpart, I found some few threads on
[x]emacs-devel and kde lists, where people were interested in
implementing such a emacs kpart.  Unfortunately, except comments like
"seems possible" the projects never seemed to get actually tackled.

I don't have much experiences with C/C++, and also my knowledge of
KDE/Emacs internals is nearby zero.  But maybe that would be a good
topic for a summer of code project mentored by an emacs as well as a KDE
dev.  I think I remember that Chong's and Stefan's plans for emacs 24
also include destop integration as a goal.

Bye,
Tassilo

Re: Embedding Emacs in other apps

[Jan Djärv]

Tassilo Horn skrev 2010-04-28 20.06:

> I wanted to investigate how much effort it would be to be able to use
> emacs in all places in KDE where its "text editor kpart" is used.
> Therefore, emacs (or an emacs frame) would need to implement this kpart
> interface.  Currently, I don't know if and how that relates to XEmbed.
> Possibly, it is a completely different approach.

I guess you can write a wrapper around XEmbed that implements that kpart 
interface.

>
> When googling for emacs kpart, I found some few threads on
> [x]emacs-devel and kde lists, where people were interested in
> implementing such a emacs kpart.  Unfortunately, except comments like
> "seems possible" the projects never seemed to get actually tackled.
>
> I don't have much experiences with C/C++, and also my knowledge of
> KDE/Emacs internals is nearby zero.  But maybe that would be a good
> topic for a summer of code project mentored by an emacs as well as a KDE
> dev.  I think I remember that Chong's and Stefan's plans for emacs 24
> also include destop integration as a goal.
>

Qt is what KDE uses, and Qt has XEmbed support.
There is some helpful Qt documents about Xembed here:

http://doc.trolltech.com/solutions/qtxembed/qtxembedcontainer.html

	Jan D.

Re: Embedding Emacs in other apps

[Stefan Reichör]

Hi Tassilo!

> On Tuesday 27 April 2010 20:26:42 joakim@verona.se wrote:
>
> Hi Joakim,
>
>> > And the other thing: Is there some example code showing how I can
>> > embed emacs in my own application?
>> 
>> There are some examples in the emacswiki.
>
> Unfortunately, I cannot find one of them.  There's
>
>   http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsXembed
>
> with a screenshot of emacs embedded in emacs (and some other gtk
> widgets), and there's talk about a demo app, but its code is not linked
> from there...

AFAIK the XEmbed feature was used by pida in the past.

However they switched to DBUS now:
http://pida.co.uk/wiki/EmacsSupport


Perhaps googling for "pida xembed" will help.

Stefan.

Re: Embedding Emacs in other apps

[Chong Yidong]

> I've wondered if it is possible to embed emacs in other applications,
> so for example that I can edit textfields in my browser using emacs.
> I quickly found this NEWS entry for emacs 23.
>
> | *** Emacs now supports the XEmbed specification.
>
> But this --parent-id option is only available to emacs, not
> emacsclient.  Is that intended or technically not feasible otherwise?

I've just added a --parent-id option to emacsclient.  Thanks to Jan for
a helpful testcase.

Re: Embedding Emacs in other apps

[Eric Schulte]

Chong Yidong <cyd@stupidchicken.com> writes:

>> I've wondered if it is possible to embed emacs in other applications,
>> so for example that I can edit textfields in my browser using emacs.
>> I quickly found this NEWS entry for emacs 23.
>>
>> | *** Emacs now supports the XEmbed specification.
>>
>> But this --parent-id option is only available to emacs, not
>> emacsclient.  Is that intended or technically not feasible otherwise?
>
> I've just added a --parent-id option to emacsclient.  Thanks to Jan for
> a helpful testcase.

Has any progress been made in this area?

It seems that given the existence of Emacs support for Xembed and the
existence of Firefox support for XEmbed'd plugins (e.g. [1]) most of the
hard work for integrating Emacs into a web-browser has already been
accomplished.

Is there some reason that putting these pieces together is more
difficult than it appear on the surface?

Are there any existing demos of an XEmbedding Emacs into another
application?

Thanks -- Eric

Footnotes: 
[1]  http://multimedia.cx/diamondx/

Re: Embedding Emacs in other apps

[Tassilo Horn]

On Sunday 06 June 2010 23:14:37 Eric Schulte wrote:

Hi Eric,

> >> I've wondered if it is possible to embed emacs in other
> >> applications, so for example that I can edit textfields in my
> >> browser using emacs.  I quickly found this NEWS entry for emacs 23.
> >>
> >> | *** Emacs now supports the XEmbed specification.
> >>
> >> But this --parent-id option is only available to emacs, not
> >> emacsclient.  Is that intended or technically not feasible
> >> otherwise?
> >
> > I've just added a --parent-id option to emacsclient.  Thanks to Jan
> > for a helpful testcase.
> 
> Has any progress been made in this area?

At least not on my side.

> Are there any existing demos of an XEmbedding Emacs into another
> application?

Joakim Verona has embedded emacs in emacs.  Have a look at the Xembed
page on emacswiki, which shows a nice screenshot:
http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsXembed

Bye,
Tassilo

Re: Embedding Emacs in other apps

[Chong Yidong]

"Eric Schulte" <schulte.eric@gmail.com> writes:

> Has any progress been made in this area?
>
> It seems that given the existence of Emacs support for Xembed and the
> existence of Firefox support for XEmbed'd plugins (e.g. [1]) most of the
> hard work for integrating Emacs into a web-browser has already been
> accomplished.
>
> Is there some reason that putting these pieces together is more
> difficult than it appear on the surface?

Starting with DiamondX example plugin, it is straightforward to embed
Emacs (directly or via emacsclient) into Firefox.  But to get Firefox to
change browser text areas into XEmbedded Emacs windows, some more
Firefox extension code is needed; I don't know how big a job this is.

Re: Embedding Emacs in other apps

[Lennart Borgman]

On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 4:52 PM, Chong Yidong <cyd@stupidchicken.com> wrote:
> "Eric Schulte" <schulte.eric@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Has any progress been made in this area?
>>
>> It seems that given the existence of Emacs support for Xembed and the
>> existence of Firefox support for XEmbed'd plugins (e.g. [1]) most of the
>> hard work for integrating Emacs into a web-browser has already been
>> accomplished.
>>
>> Is there some reason that putting these pieces together is more
>> difficult than it appear on the surface?
>
> Starting with DiamondX example plugin, it is straightforward to embed
> Emacs (directly or via emacsclient) into Firefox.  But to get Firefox to
> change browser text areas into XEmbedded Emacs windows, some more
> Firefox extension code is needed; I don't know how big a job this is.


I think we are in a hurry. The Vim developers are also working on
xembed. We must of course be first ;-)

Re: Embedding Emacs in other apps

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Lennart Borgman writes:

 > I think we are in a hurry. The Vim developers are also working on
 > xembed. We must of course be first ;-)

Forget being first.  XEmacs has had it since 1998 at the latest.

Concentrate on being best, instead.

Re: Embedding Emacs in other apps

[David Kastrup]

"Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org> writes:

> Lennart Borgman writes:
>
>  > I think we are in a hurry. The Vim developers are also working on
>  > xembed. We must of course be first ;-)
>
> Forget being first.  XEmacs has had it since 1998 at the latest.

So either the feature's potential is overhyped, its use in the existing
XEmacs implementation is too complex to be used by a "typical"
developer, or something else is amiss.

> Concentrate on being best, instead.

Based on your experience with XEmacs, would you have suggestions what
uses this feature has been _advertised_ for (perhaps it was so easy to
get in that no advertisement was needed and consequently nobody got
interested enough to try it?), and what made the advertisements, if any,
fall short in execution of their promises?

It is a good goal to concentrate on being best, but we need to think
about best for exactly _what_.

-- 
David Kastrup

Re: Embedding Emacs in other apps

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

David Kastrup writes:
 > "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org> writes:
 > 
 > > Lennart Borgman writes:
 > >
 > >  > I think we are in a hurry. The Vim developers are also working on
 > >  > xembed. We must of course be first ;-)
 > >
 > > Forget being first.  XEmacs has had it since 1998 at the latest.
 > 
 > So either the feature's potential is overhyped, its use in the existing
 > XEmacs implementation is too complex to be used by a "typical"
 > developer,

The existing XEmacs implementation is very much a kludge; there was no
xembed standard at the time.  The major users are large corporations
in their internal distributions.  They presumably have special
applications that makes this useful.

 > or something else is amiss.

Well, yes.  What's missing in availability in Emacs.  Use of images is
a no-brainer, but it took Emacs 10 years to learn to display images,
so most libraries don't have facilities for them even today.

 > > Concentrate on being best, instead.
 > 
 > Based on your experience with XEmacs, would you have suggestions what
 > uses this feature has been _advertised_ for (perhaps it was so easy to
 > get in that no advertisement was needed and consequently nobody got
 > interested enough to try it?), and what made the advertisements, if any,
 > fall short in execution of their promises?

The big problem is that it requires substantial cooperation between
applications because (until xembed, which is a fairly recent standard)
the communication protocols had to be designed ad hoc.  And even with
xembed, it's not clear to me whether it will become more than toy for
developers.  What we'd really like, I think, would be a common editor
protocol so that you could just put

firefox*editprotocol: xembed
firefox*xembededitor: /usr/bin/emacsclient ! or /usr/bin/vim

in .XResources.  But xembed doesn't yet give us that.

Re: Embedding Emacs in other apps

[Chong Yidong]

"Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org> writes:

> Lennart Borgman writes:
>
>  > I think we are in a hurry. The Vim developers are also working on
>  > xembed. We must of course be first ;-)
>
> Forget being first.  XEmacs has had it since 1998 at the latest.
>
> Concentrate on being best, instead.

The "it" under discussion is a Firefox extension to replace text boxes
with embedded Emacs frames.  Since Firefox has only been around since
2003, I strongly suspect that XEmacs has not had "it" since "1998 at the
latest".

Re: Embedding Emacs in other apps

[Chad Brown]

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On Jul 2, 2010, at 3:16 PM, Chong Yidong wrote:
> The "it" under discussion is a Firefox extension to replace text boxes
> with embedded Emacs frames.  Since Firefox has only been around since
> 2003, I strongly suspect that XEmacs has not had "it" since "1998 at the
> latest".

If you consider Firefox to be a continuation of Mozilla, Mosaic, and Netscape, 
then your suspicion wouldn't be entirely correct.

That bit of ``but I was there!'' history-snark aside (and with my apologies; some 
habits die hard), it is very helpful to have a concrete goal given.  I can easily 
imagine situations where emacs-inside-Firefox and webkit-inside-emacs (ezbl 
style) lead to divergent solutions.  From what I can see of the xembed branch, 
it's closer to the latter than the former.

*Chad


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Re: Embedding Emacs in other apps

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Chong Yidong writes:
 > "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org> writes:
 > 
 > > Lennart Borgman writes:
 > >
 > >  > I think we are in a hurry. The Vim developers are also working on
 > >  > xembed. We must of course be first ;-)
 > >
 > > Forget being first.  XEmacs has had it since 1998 at the latest.
 > >
 > > Concentrate on being best, instead.
 > 
 > The "it" under discussion is a Firefox extension to replace text boxes
 > with embedded Emacs frames.  Since Firefox has only been around since
 > 2003, I strongly suspect that XEmacs has not had "it" since "1998 at the
 > latest".

Not you too!  Why do you care?

Please, just do your users a favor.  Don't try to be first, try to be
*good*, OK?  This stuff is not easy, and tends to bitrot *really* fast
because the communications protocol depends on both sides.  That's why
XEmacs doesn't have a practical application (publicly available) IMO.
Don't make the mistake of putting something hackish in, and putting
off the developers who'd like to use it.

Re: Embedding Emacs in other apps

[Chong Yidong]

"Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org> writes:

>  > The "it" under discussion is a Firefox extension to replace text boxes
>  > with embedded Emacs frames.  Since Firefox has only been around since
>  > 2003, I strongly suspect that XEmacs has not had "it" since "1998 at the
>  > latest".
>
> Not you too!  Why do you care?

I am not making any statement about priorities, just correcting the
topic of discussion.  Anyway, I don't think such an endeavor, though a
worthy one, fits into the Emacs project.  (The hard part---hacking the
Firefox DOM to replace text boxes with XEmbedded windows---has nothing
to do with Emacs at all, and it should not be difficult to make it
handle any kind of editor that supports XEmbed.)