Emacs on Ubuntu advice

Emacs on Ubuntu advice

[Fabrice Popineau]

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I have compiled Emacs under Windows Subsystem for Linux, which is Ubuntu
16.04
and I have 2 questions :

- what is the preferred X toolkit if I run emacs-26 from Ubuntu with an
ms-windows X server like mobaxterm ? Is it Gtk2, Gtk3 or something else ?

- I have tried Gtk3 and I can't get my preferred font which is Consolas to
render perfectly sharp. I have fiddled a lot with various parameters
without success. The rendering of the font is quite different from the
ms-windows rendering. I don't know to what extent the X server is
responsible from the rendering. Any recipe or pointer to what need to be
looked at will be welcome.

Thanks in advance,

Fabrice

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Re: Emacs on Ubuntu advice

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > I have compiled Emacs under Windows Subsystem for Linux, which is Ubuntu
  > 16.04

1. It sounds like this is really the Windows Subsystem for GNU/Linux.

2. We try to make GNU Emacs run on various platforms,
but running Emacs on Windows in any fashion
cannot eliminate the injustice of Windows itself.
I hope you find the strength to escape from Windows.

See https://gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: Emacs on Ubuntu advice

[Fabrice Popineau]

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2017-10-14 3:35 GMT+02:00 Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > I have compiled Emacs under Windows Subsystem for Linux, which is
> Ubuntu
>   > 16.04
>
> 1. It sounds like this is really the Windows Subsystem for GNU/Linux.
>
>
Well, I understand your point but people keep calling it WSL and not WSGL
up to now
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/commandline/wsl/about
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Subsystem_for_Linux

2. We try to make GNU Emacs run on various platforms,
> but running Emacs on Windows in any fashion
> cannot eliminate the injustice of Windows itself.
> I hope you find the strength to escape from Windows.
>

Sincerely : _I don't want to_. Some of us are perfectly happy to pay for
what
we get (I praise Windows for its stability).

Back to my original question, I have spent quite a time looking for
settings to
get the same crisp rendering of the Consolas font with Emacs-w64 and the
one running from WSL
and failed to up to now.

Reminder: WSL is Ubuntu 16.04.
I have fiddled with X resources set up on the command line while running
Emacs and I couldn't
get anything better than :

/usr/local/emacs-26/bin/emacs -Q -fn "Consolas-11" -xrm "Xft.dpi:109" -xrm
"Xft.lcdfilter:lcdlight" \
 -xrm "Xft.rgba:rgb" -xrm "Xft.hintstyle:hintfull" -xrm "Xft.antialias:1"
-xrm "Xft.globaladvance:0" \
 -xrm "Xft.embeddedbitmap:1"  \
/mnt/c/Users/Fabrice/Downloads/0001-Do-not-under-align-pseudovectors.patch

embeddedbitmap does not seem to play any role here btw.
I had to set the dpi to 109 which is the closest value for my 27" 4k
display
(xdpyinfo reports 96dpi, but that is too low). If I use 108dpi, then the
font
rendering is very bad.
I tried all choices of rgba, hintstyle, lcdfilter but can't get something
close to
the native w32 rendering.

Emacs has been compiled with
system-configuration-features is a variable defined in ‘C source code’.
Its value is
"XPM JPEG TIFF GIF PNG RSVG IMAGEMAGICK SOUND GPM DBUS GSETTINGS NOTIFY ACL
LIBSELINUX GNUTLS LIBXML2 FREETYPE M17N_FLT LIBOTF XFT ZLIB
TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS GTK3 X11 MODULES LCMS2"
and
system-configuration-options is a variable defined in ‘C source code’.
Its value is
"--with-modules --with-x-toolkit=gtk3 --prefix=/usr/local/emacs-26"

The first of the pictures below is from Emacs-w64 and the second one
is from Emacs-WSL.

So if anybody can suggest some relevant documentation
(I mostly read https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI
and the fontconfig doc) or better the ideal set of parameters,
or even a reason why what I want to chieve is impossible,
I would be very grateful.

For the record, I can run emacs natively or from WSL using my very
same .emacs.d directory. My init.el is quite large:
fabrice@LOBSANG:~$ wc -l ~/.emacs.d/init.el
5467 /home/fabrice/.emacs.d/init.el
and I have about 170 packages in ~/.emacs.d/elpa which are loaded
by this init.el file.

Best regards,

Fabrice



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Re: Emacs on Ubuntu advice

[Ingo Lohmar]

On Sun, Oct 15 2017 21:09 (+0200), Fabrice Popineau wrote:
> 2. We try to make GNU Emacs run on various platforms,
>> but running Emacs on Windows in any fashion
>> cannot eliminate the injustice of Windows itself.
>> I hope you find the strength to escape from Windows.
>>
>
> Sincerely : _I don't want to_. Some of us are perfectly happy to pay for
> what
> we get (I praise Windows for its stability).

It appears that you do not want to talk about moral issues, but your
offhanded words severely mischaracterize the GNU project (hence Emacs in
particular), and that, I feel, should be corrected.

"The injustice of Windows itself", as I understand it, is not that
people should pay for it (and the GNU project never has opposed paying
for software), but that Windows staunchly denies its users the most
basic freedoms they deserve --- on practically any level, and, BTW, with
grave practical consequences.

Also, I presume that a very "stable" oppressive regime is worse than an
unstable one, at least in the long run.

I was tempted to put a smiley after the last sentence, but on second
thought it does not seem appropriate.

Re: Re: Emacs on Ubuntu advice

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > Well, I understand your point but people keep calling it WSL and not WSGL
  > up to now
  > https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/commandline/wsl/about
  > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Subsystem_for_Linux

Many people keep calling the GNU system "Linux", in other contexts
as well as this one.  Each time they do it, they attribute our work
to someone else.

That's treating us unfairly; that you're not the only one
makes the point more important.  Would you please treat us right?

See https://gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html and
https://gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html, plus the history in
https://gnu.org/gnu/the-gnu-project.html.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: Re: Emacs on Ubuntu advice

[Fabrice Popineau]

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2017-10-16 3:55 GMT+02:00 Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>:


>   Would you please treat us right?
>
>
Are you sure you treat right people who don't share your opinions
but nevertheless contribute to your project ?

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Re: Re: Emacs on Ubuntu advice

[Rostislav Svoboda]

Sorry. You're right. Let's stick to tech. Pardon.

2017-10-16 12:25 GMT+02:00 Fabrice Popineau <fabrice.popineau@gmail.com>:
>
>
> 2017-10-16 3:55 GMT+02:00 Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>:
>
>>
>>   Would you please treat us right?
>>
>
> Are you sure you treat right people who don't share your opinions
> but nevertheless contribute to your project ?
>

Re: Emacs on Ubuntu advice

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > Are you sure you treat right people who don't share your opinions
  > but nevertheless contribute to your project ?

Nobody can ever be sure of that -- but I believe I have treated you
right.

I asked you to please give us credit for our work, and questioned the
wisdom of your approach to choosing software, but I did not criticize
you personally.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: Re: Emacs on Ubuntu advice

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > Sincerely : _I don't want to_. Some of us are perfectly happy to pay for
  > what
  > we get (I praise Windows for its stability).

I'm glad our technical work is of some use to you,
but if you choose stability over freedom, you won't
have freedom for long.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: Emacs on Ubuntu advice

[Matthew Carter]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > Sincerely : _I don't want to_. Some of us are perfectly happy to pay for
>   > what
>   > we get (I praise Windows for its stability).
>
> I'm glad our technical work is of some use to you,
> but if you choose stability over freedom, you won't
> have freedom for long.

Wonderful quote, thanks.

-- 
Matthew Carter (m@ahungry.com)
http://ahungry.com

Re: Emacs on Ubuntu advice

[Jay Kamat]

Hi Fabrice,

> Back to my original question, I have spent quite a time looking for settings to 
> get the same crisp rendering of the Consolas font with Emacs-w64 and the one running from WSL
> and failed to up to now.

I remember this distinctly from a while ago (but I can't test it now,
because I don't have a windows box anymore).

My 2c is that:

1. GUI Applications aren't supported at all with WSL. Are you sure
whatever 3rd party X server you are running isn't the problem? (The one
I found seemed very questionable).
2. When I tried it a while back, I had this problem with all
applications (terrible, blurry font rendering), not just Emacs.

I ended up moving back to a native windows Emacs installation (and
occasionally a cygwin one) for the times I'm stuck on windows for some
reason. I find the cygwin works much better than WSL, but I guess that's
personal preference. I think you may be able to access files in WSL from
the native windows port of emacs (and it has better integration to the
rest of the system too, such as putty).

Please let me know if you're able to figure this out (I'm interested),
and good luck.

-Jay

Re: Emacs on Ubuntu advice

[Fabrice Popineau]

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2017-10-16 16:04 GMT+02:00 Jay Kamat <jaygkamat@gmail.com>:

> Hi Fabrice,
>
> > Back to my original question, I have spent quite a time looking for
> settings to
> > get the same crisp rendering of the Consolas font with Emacs-w64 and the
> one running from WSL
> > and failed to up to now.
>
> I remember this distinctly from a while ago (but I can't test it now,
> because I don't have a windows box anymore).
>
> My 2c is that:
>
> 1. GUI Applications aren't supported at all with WSL. Are you sure
> whatever 3rd party X server you are running isn't the problem? (The one
> I found seemed very questionable).
>

Actually, the X server was the problem.
Albeit Mobaxterm seems to be a very fine product , it doesn't seem to
advertise
Windows that it is high-dpi compatible.
This can be solved easily by checking the compatibility tab of mobaxterm,
and setting
that the application is responsible for any scaling.

I had to do this a few years ago (Windows 8.1), but forgot about it because
no application required
this recently (and Mobaxterm is from august of this year, so I didn't
expect a problem like this).


2. When I tried it a while back, I had this problem with all
> applications (terrible, blurry font rendering), not just Emacs.
>
> I ended up moving back to a native windows Emacs installation (and
> occasionally a cygwin one) for the times I'm stuck on windows for some
> reason. I find the cygwin works much better than WSL, but I guess that's
> personal preference. I think you may be able to access files in WSL from
> the native windows port of emacs (and it has better integration to the
> rest of the system too, such as putty).
>

Actually, I use both MSYS2/Mingw64 and WSL much more recently.
I have stopped with Cygwin long ago because of some options they took
that I didn't find very user friendly.

WSL seems stable these days and the ability to share files transparently is
great.
 (I am on the slow insider ring however, so Windows 10 is 1709 16299.19)

Emacs works perfectly with minor parts of my single init.el file depending
on the system.
All of my Org directory is avalaible to both versions and render perfectly.


Fabrice

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Re: Emacs on Ubuntu advice

[Yuri Khan]

On Sat, Oct 14, 2017 at 8:35 AM, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

> 1. It sounds like this is really the Windows Subsystem for GNU/Linux.

More like GNU/“Windows Subsystem for Linux”. It is literally the GNU
userspace (as distributed by Ubuntu) working over a Microsoft
reimplementation of the Linux kernel API.

Re: Emacs on Ubuntu advice

[Paul Eggert]

Yuri Khan wrote:
> More like GNU/“Windows Subsystem for Linux”.

Yes, that is a more technically-accurate name. Mike Gerwitz goes into this issue 
at more length here:

Gerwitz M. GNU/kWindows. 2016-04-06. https://mikegerwitz.com/2016/04/GNU-kWindows

where he calls it "GNU/kWindows", a name that is shorter and easier to remember. 
I suppose another possibility might be "GNU/WSL", though this relies on people 
knowing what "WSL" stands for. All these names are more accurate than "Windows 
Subsystem for GNU/Linux" would be.

Re: Emacs on Ubuntu advice

[Rostislav Svoboda]

> Some of us are perfectly happy to pay for what we get (I praise Windows for its stability)

"You have to understand [Neo] that most of these people [...] are so
hopelessly dependent on the system, they will fight to protect it."

Re: Emacs on Ubuntu advice

[Fabrice Popineau]

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2017-10-16 11:18 GMT+02:00 Rostislav Svoboda <rostislav.svoboda@gmail.com>:

> > Some of us are perfectly happy to pay for what we get (I praise Windows
> for its stability)
>
> "You have to understand [Neo] that most of these people [...] are so
> hopelessly dependent on the system, they will fight to protect it."
>

Insults now ?

Please, don't assume anything about people you know nothing about.

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Re: Emacs on Ubuntu advice

[Mike Gerwitz]

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On Sun, Oct 15, 2017 at 23:28:20 -0700, Paul Eggert wrote:
> Yes, that is a more technically-accurate name. Mike Gerwitz goes into this
> issue at more length here:
>
> Gerwitz M. GNU/kWindows. 2016-04-06. https://mikegerwitz.com/2016/04/GNU-kWindows
>
> where he calls it "GNU/kWindows", a name that is shorter and easier to
> remember. I suppose another possibility might be "GNU/WSL", though this
> relies on people knowing what "WSL" stands for. All these names are more
> accurate than "Windows Subsystem for GNU/Linux" would be.

rms came up with the name; I wrote that article with his input.  He
chose the name for clarity's sake; I can't say whether something else
may or may not be more appropriate.

If another term does happen to be more appropriate (and rms agrees),
I'll change it in the article.

-- 
Mike Gerwitz
Free Software Hacker+Activist | GNU Maintainer & Volunteer
GPG: D6E9 B930 028A 6C38 F43B  2388 FEF6 3574 5E6F 6D05
https://mikegerwitz.com

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Re: Emacs on Ubuntu advice

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > Gerwitz M. GNU/kWindows. 2016-04-06. https://mikegerwitz.com/2016/04/GNU-kWindows

  > where he calls it "GNU/kWindows", a name that is shorter and easier to remember. 

GNU/kWindows is a good name for the whole operating system that is being
used in these cases.

It has been pointed out that the "Windows Subsystem for Linux" is
actually one specific piece of this system.  As a consequence, to say
"I am running the Windows Subsystem for Linux" would be misleading,
much as "I'm running Linux" is misleading.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: Emacs on Ubuntu advice

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Yuri Khan <yuri.v.khan@gmail.com>
> Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2017 12:49:15 +0700
> Cc: Fabrice Popineau <fabrice.popineau@gmail.com>,
> 	Emacs developers <emacs-devel@gnu.org>
> 
> On Sat, Oct 14, 2017 at 8:35 AM, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
> 
> > 1. It sounds like this is really the Windows Subsystem for GNU/Linux.
> 
> More like GNU/“Windows Subsystem for Linux”. It is literally the GNU
> userspace (as distributed by Ubuntu) working over a Microsoft
> reimplementation of the Linux kernel API.

Actually, the WSL is neither GNU nor Linux.  It is a collection of
kernel drivers and other OS components required to run on Windows
ELF64 executables that issue Linux syscalls.  That's what the term
"Windows subsystem" means: it is not about utilities or user-space,
it's about system services that create a certain environment which
applications of some class need in order to run.  According to MS,
none of the WSL is Linux or GNU code, they say it's all a "clean-room
implementation" of the Linux APIs.

What Mike Gerwitz calls "GNU/kWindows" is not the WSL, it includes the
WSL, the Windows NT OS kernel and other core OS components, and
whatever applications the user decided to install on top of that from
the Ubuntu distribution sites, not all of it free software, let alone
GNU (according to https://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.en.html).

If we want to chastise people for their inaccurate terminology, let's
at least be accurate ourselves.