shuddering initial frame, dump-emacs, source

shuddering initial frame, dump-emacs, source

[Joe Corneli]

The look of my emacs is pretty heavily customized (font, color,
absence of menubar, etc. are different from the standard settings).
When I load Emacs, it shudders and flashes spasmodically as it
transforms itself from the white background with a small font and a
menubar to the black background with a large font and no menubar.
I've considered running dump-emacs (but I can't get it to work, can
anyone?) - and other than that I don't know how to change the style
of the default frame. Is there a way to change the load order so
that Emacs never goes into the small font, white background mode?
Maybe I should rebuild by hand?  Any suggestions?  What are people
using to deal with heavily customized emaces?

Re: shuddering initial frame, dump-emacs, source

[V. L. Simpson]

>>>>> "Joe" == Joe Corneli <jcorneli@math.utexas.edu> writes:

    > The look of my emacs is pretty heavily customized (font, color,
    > absence of menubar, etc. are different from the standard
    > settings).  When I load Emacs, it shudders and flashes
    > spasmodically as it transforms itself from the white background
    > with a small font and a menubar to the black background with a
    > large font and no menubar.  I've considered running dump-emacs
    > (but I can't get it to work, can anyone?) - and other than that
    > I don't know how to change the style of the default frame. Is
    > there a way to change the load order so that Emacs never goes
    > into the small font, white background mode?  Maybe I should
    > rebuild by hand?  Any suggestions?  What are people using to
    > deal with heavily customized emaces?


You can set your options in .Xresources and then set the same options
in your emacs init file using 'initial-frame-alist' variable.

My setup follows: 

.Xresources
! emacs
emacs*background: DarkBlue
emacs*foreground: Wheat
emacs.geometry: 80x55+70+10
emacs.font: "-adobe-courier-medium-r-*-*-14-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"
Emacs.MenuBar: off
Emacs.ToolBar: 0
Emacs.ScrollBars: off

Elisp code:
(cond (window-system
       (setq initial-frame-alist
             '((top . 10) (left . 70)
               (width . 80) (height . 55)
	       (font . "-adobe-courier-medium-r-*-*-14-*-*-*-*-*-*-*")))
       (setq default-frame-alist
             '((top . 5) (left . 55)
               (width . 80) (height . 25)
               (font . "-adobe-courier-medium-r-*-*-14-*-*-*-*-*-*-*")))
       (blink-cursor-mode -1)
       (auto-image-file-mode 1)
       (tool-bar-mode -1)
       (tooltip-mode -1)
       (mouse-avoidance-mode 'jump)))

More details are in the manual.  Look up frames and Xresources.

Have fun,
vls

Re: shuddering initial frame, dump-emacs, source

[Joe Corneli]

I got it working fine, thanks for your help. 

I think it is a little weird that you have to set the defaults in
two places.  

I also noticed the following: on the one hand, we have this:

M-: (equal (scroll-bar-mode . (())) (scroll-bar-mode nil))
t

But on the other hand, putting (scroll-bar-mode nil) into the
default-frame-alist causes the flickering appearance of a scroll
bar.  Is this a bug? How is Emacs detecting the fact that
(scroll-bar-mode nil) is not dotted?

Re: shuddering initial frame, dump-emacs, source

[Kevin Rodgers]

Joe Corneli wrote:
 > I got it working fine, thanks for your help.
 >
 > I think it is a little weird that you have to set the defaults in
 > two places.

You don't have to, you can do it either way.  It's just that your .emacs
file isn't loaded until the initial frame is created, so you have to use
X resources to avoid redisplaying the initial frame.

 > I also noticed the following: on the one hand, we have this:
 >
 > M-: (equal (scroll-bar-mode . (())) (scroll-bar-mode nil))
 > t
 >
 > But on the other hand, putting (scroll-bar-mode nil) into the
 > default-frame-alist causes the flickering appearance of a scroll
 > bar.  Is this a bug? How is Emacs detecting the fact that
 > (scroll-bar-mode nil) is not dotted?

It doesn't:

(foo . ()) == (foo . nil) == (foo)
(foo . (())) == (foo . (nil)) == (foo nil)

As far as I know, scroll-bar-mode is not a recognized frame parameter.
The defined frame parameters are vertical-scroll-bars,
horizontal-scroll-bars, scroll-bar-width, scroll-bar-foreground, and
scroll-bar-background.

Perhaps you are inadvertantly calling the scroll-bar-mode function,
which toggles the display of scroll bars when the FLAG argument is nil
(if you want to force them off, use a negative number e.g. -1).

-- 
Kevin Rodgers