Emacs minimised

Emacs minimised

[Keith O'Connell]

Hi,

I am looking for a command line option to load emacs minimised. At
present my ~/.xsession file has the line 

	emacs -i &

It's only cosmetic, but I would like a blank screen when I open my
desktop. Does such a command line exist?

Keith
-- 
___________________________________   _
  Keith O'Connell.                   -o)
  Maidstone, Kent. (UK)              /\\
  kroc@blueyonder.co.uk             _\_v

Re: Emacs minimised

[Jesper Harder]

Keith O'Connell <kroc@blueyonder.co.uk> writes:

> I am looking for a command line option to load emacs minimised.  It's
> only cosmetic, but I would like a blank screen when I open my
> desktop. Does such a command line exist?

`emacs -iconic &'

Re: Emacs minimised

[Keith O'Connell]

Jesper,

> `emacs -iconic &'

Thank you - I could not find that anywhere, and it was just what I was
after!	:-)

Keith
-- 
___________________________________   _
  Keith O'Connell.                   -o)
  Maidstone, Kent. (UK)              /\\
  kroc@blueyonder.co.uk             _\_v

Re: Emacs minimised

[Kai Großjohann]

Keith O'Connell <kroc@blueyonder.co.uk> writes:

> Jesper,
>
>> `emacs -iconic &'
>
> Thank you - I could not find that anywhere, and it was just what I was
> after!	:-)

Try "emacs --help".  Is it mentioned there?
-- 
A preposition is not a good thing to end a sentence with.

Re: Emacs minimised

[Keith O'Connell]

> > `emacs -iconic &'

> Try "emacs --help".  Is it mentioned there?

Yes its there, now I know to look. The problem is I did "man emacs" and
it wasn't there. I figured if it wasn't in the man file it was worth
asking.

Keith
-- 
___________________________________   _
  Keith O'Connell.                   -o)
  Maidstone, Kent. (UK)              /\\
  kroc@blueyonder.co.uk             _\_v

Re: Emacs minimised

[Kai Großjohann]

Keith O'Connell <kroc@blueyonder.co.uk> writes:

> Yes its there, now I know to look. The problem is I did "man emacs" and
> it wasn't there. I figured if it wasn't in the man file it was worth
> asking.

Well, the man page explicitly says it's out of date and incomplete.
Look in the info file for the full story.  From inside Emacs, do

    C-h i d m Emacs RET

to access the info file.

-- 
A preposition is not a good thing to end a sentence with.

Re: Emacs minimised

[Jesper Harder]

Keith O'Connell <kroc@blueyonder.co.uk> writes:

> Yes its there, now I know to look. The problem is I did "man emacs"
> and it wasn't there. I figured if it wasn't in the man file it was
> worth asking.

'-iconic' is documented in the "Icons X" node in the Emacs manual.  For
GNU programs it's usually always best to look in Info first:

,----[ (standards)Man Pages ]
|    In the GNU project, man pages are secondary.  It is not necessary or
| expected for every GNU program to have a man page, but some of them do.
| It's your choice whether to include a man page in your program.
| 
|    When you make this decision, consider that supporting a man page
| requires continual effort each time the program is changed.  The time
| you spend on the man page is time taken away from more useful work. [..]
| 
|    When a program changes only a little, you may feel that the
| discrepancies are small enough that the man page remains useful without
| updating.  If so, put a prominent note near the beginning of the man
| page explaining that you don't maintain it and that the Texinfo manual
| is more authoritative.
`----

Re: Emacs minimised

[Lee Sau Dan]

>>>>> "Jesper" == Jesper Harder <harder@myrealbox.com> writes:

    Jesper> Keith O'Connell <kroc@blueyonder.co.uk> writes:
    >> Yes its there, now I know to look. The problem is I did "man
    >> emacs" and it wasn't there. I figured if it wasn't in the man
    >> file it was worth asking.

    Jesper> '-iconic' is documented in the "Icons X" node in the Emacs
    Jesper> manual.  For GNU programs it's usually always best to look
    Jesper> in Info first:

That's true.  But this is also a problem.  Even though I've been using
Info to  look up  many things, I  still have  the unix habit  of using
'man'  when want  to  find something  in  a hurry,  and assuming  that
everything is  there.  Failing  to find something  in the man  page is
already frustrating!  So, I will forget about Info at that point!  :(

Info is good, if  I want to study the program for  15 minutes or more.
But for quick lookups, man  pages are still much better.  (Many people
are simply not interested in learning yet another program.)


The other problem  is that there are too many places  to look for such
information.  "--help"  is usually the most up-to-date,  but too brief
to  be useful  for studying.   Only helpful  in recalling  options and
their  names.  man pages  have the  tradition (on  unix, at  least) of
being "complete", but  the Gnu programs do not  follow this tradition.
This is  the problem.  The man  page of many Gnu  programs are already
very detailed,  and hence give people  a feeling that it  is, like the
other unix man pages, very complete.   But the truth is: the man pages
are not  complete and  sometimes even out-of-date.   One often  has no
clues  about  this by  just  studying the  man  page,  they miss  much
information.  

I  think a  reference to  the appropriate  Info page  in the  SEE ALSO
section would  be very  helpful.  This  is what a2ps  does in  its man
page:
SEE ALSO
       a2ps(1),   card(1),    fixps(1),    pdiff(1),    psset(1),
       texi2dvi4a2ps(1).

       The full documentation for a2ps is maintained as a Texinfo
       manual.  If  the  info  and  a2ps  programs  are  properly
       installed at your site, the command

              info a2ps

       should give you access to the complete manual.

Emacs's  man page  has  something similar,  but  NOT in  the SEE  ALSO
section.  It is in the  DESCRIPTION section.  It is thus easily missed
by the impatient who are looking for command line options.


BTW, I like the man page of 'xv'.  At least, I'm not confused.  Here's
an excerpt:

       The  documentation  for  XV  is  now distributed only as a
       PostScript file, as it has  gotten  enormous,  and  is  no
       longer very well suited to the 'man' page format.  Print a
       copy of the (100-ish page) manual found in docs/xvdocs.ps.
       If  you  are  unable  to  get  the manual to print on your
       printer, you may purchase a printed copy of the XV manual.
       Click on 'About XV' in the program to get further informa­
       tion.



-- 
Lee Sau Dan                     李守敦(Big5)                    ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ) 

E-mail: danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee

Re: Emacs minimised

[Kester Clegg]

Lee Sau Dan <danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> writes:

> Info is good, if  I want to study the program for  15 minutes or more.
> But for quick lookups, man  pages are still much better.  (Many people

And man pages still look better, after all these years...

-- 
************************************************************************
Kester Clegg				Dept. of Computer Science,
Research Assistant (UTC)		University of York, 
Tel (01904) 43 27 49			email: kester at cs.york.ac.uk
************************************************************************

Re: Emacs minimised

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Lee Sau Dan <danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de>
> Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help
> Date: 25 Feb 2003 15:32:47 +0100
> 
> Info is good, if  I want to study the program for  15 minutes or more.
> But for quick lookups, man  pages are still much better.

Try "info --usage emacs" some day, and you might be surprised.  (Of
course, --usage works with other manuals as well.)

Re: Emacs minimised

[Jesper Harder]

Lee Sau Dan <danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> writes:

> Info is good, if  I want to study the program for  15 minutes or more.
> But for quick lookups, man  pages are still much better.

I don't quite agree.  Info pages have a real, interactive index [1] --
this is really the killer feature that nearly all other documentation
systems lack.

`i <term>' usually takes me to correct spot instantly -- it's much
faster and more convenient than scrolling through huge man-pages.

If `i' fails, then there's the regexp search `s', a feature also missing
in many other formats.

[1] Not a fake, auto-generated one like Microsoft Windows help, or _no_
index at all like man-pages, or HTML documentation.

Re: Emacs minimised

[Unknown]

Lee Sau Dan wrote:

>>>>>> "Jesper" == Jesper Harder <harder@myrealbox.com> writes:
> 
>     Jesper> Keith O'Connell <kroc@blueyonder.co.uk> writes:
>     >> Yes its there, now I know to look. The problem is I did "man
>     >> emacs" and it wasn't there. I figured if it wasn't in the man
>     >> file it was worth asking.
> 
>     Jesper> '-iconic' is documented in the "Icons X" node in the Emacs
>     Jesper> manual.  For GNU programs it's usually always best to look
>     Jesper> in Info first:
> 
> That's true.  But this is also a problem.  Even though I've been using
> Info to  look up  many things, I  still have  the unix habit  of using
> 'man'  when want  to  find something  in  a hurry,  and assuming  that
> everything is  there.  Failing  to find something  in the man  page is
> already frustrating!  So, I will forget about Info at that point!  :(
> 
> Info is good, if  I want to study the program for  15 minutes or more.
> But for quick lookups, man  pages are still much better.  (Many people
> are simply not interested in learning yet another program.)

That's outrageous.  Everybody knows nearly 78% of all dentists surveyed prefer 
Info to man pages.



--
Le

Re: Emacs minimised

[Lee Sau Dan]

>>>>> "Eli" == Eli Zaretskii <eliz@elta.co.il> writes:

    Eli> Try "info --usage emacs" some day, and you might be
    Eli> surprised.  (Of course, --usage works with other manuals as
    Eli> well.)

Wow!  But how to do that from within Emacs (or info)?



-- 
Lee Sau Dan                     李守敦(Big5)                    ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ) 

E-mail: danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee

Re: Emacs minimised

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Lee Sau Dan <danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de>
> Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help
> Date: 26 Feb 2003 18:19:48 +0100
> 
>     Eli> Try "info --usage emacs" some day, and you might be
>     Eli> surprised.  (Of course, --usage works with other manuals as
>     Eli> well.)
> 
> Wow!  But how to do that from within Emacs (or info)?

I don't think the Emacs Info reader supports this feature; feel free
to send a feature request to emacs-devel@gnu.org.

Inside the stand-alone Info reader (the one that comes with Texinfo),
the appropriate command is invoked by typing `O' (upper-case `oh', not
the digit zero).  You must be inside the appropriate manual before
you invoke that command.  That is, to get the command-line options of
GNU Make, load the Make manual inside Info, and then type `O'.

Re: Emacs minimised

[Kai Großjohann]

Lee Sau Dan <danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> writes:

> Info is good, if  I want to study the program for  15 minutes or more.
> But for quick lookups, man  pages are still much better.  (Many people
> are simply not interested in learning yet another program.)

I just tried C-h i d m Emacs RET, then i icon RET warped me to the
right spot right away.

i is my friend.
-- 
A preposition is not a good thing to end a sentence with.

Re: Emacs minimised

[Kester Clegg]

kai.grossjohann@uni-duisburg.de (Kai Großjohann) writes:

> i is my friend.

I think you need to spend more time away from the computer.  ;-)

-- 
************************************************************************
Kester Clegg				Dept. of Computer Science,
Research Assistant (UTC)		University of York, 
Tel (01904) 43 27 49			email: kester at cs.york.ac.uk
************************************************************************

Re: Emacs minimised

[Lucas]

Un beau jour, Kester Clegg <kester@cs.york.ac.uk> nous a dit:

> kai.grossjohann@uni-duisburg.de (Kai Großjohann) writes:
>
>> i is my friend.
>
> I think you need to spend more time away from the computer.  ;-)

Hmmm, do you mean there's something else than computers ? I can't
believe it !

-- 
Lucas
"I'm An Addict"