Have you tried starting emacs with:
emacsclient -c -a ""

That should start a daemon if one isn't already running. I can't easily
check the value of (display-graphic-p) during loadup right now, but it
would be easy to try.

On Tue, Dec 13, 2016 at 6:02 PM, Filipe Silva <filipe.silva@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Dear developers of the mighty emacs editor,
>
> I'd like to load emacs with emacs --daemon=gui and then connect to it with
> emacsclient -c --sever-file=gui.
>
> This works almost right. The problem is that various popular packages make
> extensive use of the (display-graphic-p) function/predicate to query frame
> capabilities. For example, a theme package may query (display-graphic-p)
> and assign gui or tty colors accordingly.
>
> the thing is that(display-graphic-p) always returns nil in a emacs
> --deamon type of loading, because emacs does not know if you are using
> emacsclient with a gui or a tty.
>
> Is there a way to say to emacs something like, "look, I'm starting you as
> a daemon, but I promise I'll only connect to you with gui frames, so for
> all intents and purposes, pretend that you are being started up as a gui".
>
> If there is not a way to do that, maybe we could add that kind of option?
>
> The impact of not having this options is that cosmetic packages that make
> use of (display-graphic-p) always look off in a emacs --daemon loading
> scenario.
>
> thanks in advance,
>
> Ninrod
>



-- 
Alex Hutcheson
alexhutcheson@google.com