site-start.el: inhibit-startup-screen?

site-start.el: inhibit-startup-screen?

[Stefan Vollmar]

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Hello,

we need to have an internal rollout of Emacs where we want to put some institute-specific defaults in a site-start.el (or default.el) file. I can see why one generally should not set "inhibit-startup-screen" as a default for new users, in our case (we try to provide internal documentation and courses) it seems justified. If we put

(setq inhibit-startup-screen t)

in site-start.el we still get the Emacs splashscreen. Is there a way to avoid the splashscreen other than using user-specific .emacs files?

Many thanks in advance.
Warm regards,
 Stefan
-- 
Dr. Stefan Vollmar, Dipl.-Phys.
Head of IT group
Max-Planck-Institut für neurologische Forschung
Gleuelerstr. 50, 50931 Köln, Germany
Tel.: +49-221-4726-213  FAX +49-221-4726-298
Tel.: +49-221-478-5713  Mobile: 0160-93874279
Email: vollmar@nf.mpg.de   http://www.nf.mpg.de







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RE: site-start.el: inhibit-startup-screen?

[Drew Adams]

> we need to have an internal rollout of Emacs where we want to 
> put some institute-specific defaults in a site-start.el (or 
> default.el) file. I can see why one generally should not set 
> "inhibit-startup-screen" as a default for new users, in our 
> case (we try to provide internal documentation and courses) 
> it seems justified. If we put
> 
> (setq inhibit-startup-screen t)
> 
> in site-start.el we still get the Emacs splashscreen. Is 
> there a way to avoid the splashscreen other than using 
> user-specific .emacs files?

I would think, following the doc, that (setq inhibit-startup-screen t) would
work. You might want to check whether the value is actually t after Emacs starts
up. If it is not, figure out where it gets changed.

Other than that, take a look also at option `initial-buffer-choice'.

Re: site-start.el: inhibit-startup-screen?

[Stefan Vollmar]

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Dear Drew,

On 19.05.2010, at 17:07, Drew Adams wrote:

>> we need to have an internal rollout of Emacs where we want to 
>> put some institute-specific defaults in a site-start.el (or 
>> default.el) file. I can see why one generally should not set 
>> "inhibit-startup-screen" as a default for new users, in our 
>> case (we try to provide internal documentation and courses) 
>> it seems justified. If we put
>> 
>> (setq inhibit-startup-screen t)
>> 
>> in site-start.el we still get the Emacs splashscreen. Is 
>> there a way to avoid the splashscreen other than using 
>> user-specific .emacs files?
> 
> I would think, following the doc, that (setq inhibit-startup-screen t) would
> work. You might want to check whether the value is actually t after Emacs starts
> up. If it is not, figure out where it gets changed.
> 
> Other than that, take a look also at option `initial-buffer-choice'.

The latter solves the problem partially:

(find-file "~/untitled")
(setq initial-buffer-choice "~/untitled")

will indeed display an "untitled" buffer (no more splash screen), however, dropping a file on the Emacs icon no longer opens that file but also displays the "untitled" buffer (to be fair: I never mentioned that this drag & drop feature was desirable in our case).

Without "initial-buffer-choice" drag & drop works as expected - but yields a split screen with the splash screen in the lower part (and a full splash screen if the Emacs icon is just clicked).

So it seems that there is no easy way to configure Emacs 23.2 to not display the splash screen (split or full screen), apart from using a "--no-splash" start option or a user specific .emacs file where inhibit-startup-screen does work (if one still wants to have drag & drop support for the Emacs icon). This is not a big deal for individual users, but still a bit awkward if you want to have a ready-to-run-distribution for a specific purpose.

It seems to me that it would be a good thing if inhibit-startup-screen would also work in a site-start.el-file.

Thanks for all the other answers, too!

Warm regards,
 Stefan
-- 
Dr. Stefan Vollmar, Dipl.-Phys.
Head of IT group
Max-Planck-Institut für neurologische Forschung
Gleuelerstr. 50, 50931 Köln, Germany
Tel.: +49-221-4726-213  FAX +49-221-4726-298
Tel.: +49-221-478-5713  Mobile: 0160-93874279
Email: vollmar@nf.mpg.de   http://www.nf.mpg.de







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RE: site-start.el: inhibit-startup-screen?

[Drew Adams]

> The latter solves the problem partially:
> (find-file "~/untitled")
> (setq initial-buffer-choice "~/untitled")
> 
> will indeed display an "untitled" buffer (no more splash 
> screen), however, dropping a file on the Emacs icon no longer 
> opens that file but also displays the "untitled" buffer (to 
> be fair: I never mentioned that this drag & drop feature was 
> desirable in our case).
> 
> Without "initial-buffer-choice" drag & drop works as expected 
> - but yields a split screen with the splash screen in the 
> lower part (and a full splash screen if the Emacs icon is 
> just clicked).
> 
> So it seems that there is no easy way to configure Emacs 23.2 
> to not display the splash screen (split or full screen), 
> apart from using a "--no-splash" start option or a user 
> specific .emacs file where inhibit-startup-screen does work 
> (if one still wants to have drag & drop support for the Emacs 
> icon). This is not a big deal for individual users, but still 
> a bit awkward if you want to have a ready-to-run-distribution 
> for a specific purpose.
> 
> It seems to me that it would be a good thing if 
> inhibit-startup-screen would also work in a site-start.el-file.

I don't think I have the answer. If you do not find a solution, consider filing
an Emacs bug (or enhancement request), using `M-x report-emacs-bug'.

Re: site-start.el: inhibit-startup-screen?

[Joel J. Adamson]

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Stefan Vollmar <vollmar@nf.mpg.de> wrote:

> Dear Drew,
> 
> On 19.05.2010, at 17:07, Drew Adams wrote:
> 
> >> we need to have an internal rollout of Emacs where we want to 
> >> put some institute-specific defaults in a site-start.el (or 
> >> default.el) file. I can see why one generally should not set 
> >> "inhibit-startup-screen" as a default for new users, in our 
> >> case (we try to provide internal documentation and courses) 
> >> it seems justified. If we put
> >> 
> >> (setq inhibit-startup-screen t)
> >> 
> >> in site-start.el we still get the Emacs splashscreen. Is 
> >> there a way to avoid the splashscreen other than using 
> >> user-specific .emacs files?-- 

Just curious: Why do so many people loathe the splash screen?  Why is it
controversial?

Joel
--
Joel J. Adamson
Servedio Lab
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

FSF Member #8164
http://www.unc.edu/~adamsonj

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Re: site-start.el: inhibit-startup-screen?

[Stefan Vollmar]

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Dear Joel,

On 20.05.2010, at 21:04, Joel J. Adamson wrote:

[...]
> Just curious: Why do so many people loathe the splash screen?  Why is it
> controversial?


I hasten to emphasize that I do not loathe the splash screen - in fact, I can honestly say that I quite like the design and the overall idea. However, I think I can justify why I put some effort today into the inhibit-startup-screen discussion:

We are trying to convince some MS Windows users at our institute to use Emacs (for now, just for a specific purpose). These users have certain expectations (some of them actually do make sense) and one of them is that they can drop a file on the Emacs icon shortcut and that file is then opened with Emacs, another is that when they open Emacs with a double-click it should present an "untitled" buffer ready-for-input. 

Unless a user manually disables the splashscreen, neither of these requirements works. 

If you know that the splashscreen behaves just like another buffer (in some respects), that just opening another file will make it disappear and that there really (really) is no need to always quit Emacs immediately after using it - you are not in a good position to appreciate the irritation about the splashscreen that some Windows users have reported. Naturally, we tell them about just keeping Emacs open and use multiple buffers - but old habits die hard.

Here is another reason: we have had requests from Windows users that could they please have some keyboard shortcuts that they are accustomed to such as this one:

(global-set-key [(S-kp-insert)] 'cua-paste)

This and a couple of other things were very easy to implement, it was fun to do and these guys were really impressed by how flexible Emacs is (and, yes, that was a very nice kind of feedback).

All adaptions were done by simply adding to a site-start.el file in site-lisp, starting with a plain vanilla emacs-23.2 build from the GNU site (great work, thanks!).

inhibit-startup-screen was the only thing we could not accomplish in this manner and so, in a way, this violates the truly great flexibility of Emacs. Maybe this is a source of irritation for me: it is an unnecessary restriction of my freedom to customize Emacs.

I can see why it is important, useful and wise to show the splashscreen by default. However, I vote that there should a way to switch it off in site-start.el in order to create specific distributions (adding personal .emacs files for Windows users is not practical). 

Warm regards,
 Stefan
-- 
Dr. Stefan Vollmar, Dipl.-Phys.
Head of IT group
Max-Planck-Institut für neurologische Forschung
Gleuelerstr. 50, 50931 Köln, Germany
Tel.: +49-221-4726-213  FAX +49-221-4726-298
Tel.: +49-221-478-5713  Mobile: 0160-93874279
Email: vollmar@nf.mpg.de   http://www.nf.mpg.de







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Re: site-start.el: inhibit-startup-screen?

[Kevin Rodgers]

Stefan Vollmar wrote:
...
> We are trying to convince some MS Windows users at our institute to
> use Emacs (for now, just for a specific purpose). These users have
> certain expectations (some of them actually do make sense) and one of
> them is that they can drop a file on the Emacs icon shortcut and that
> file is then opened with Emacs, another is that when they open Emacs
> with a double-click it should present an "untitled" buffer
> ready-for-input.
> 
> Unless a user manually disables the splashscreen, neither of these
> requirements works. 

Why not distribute a 1-line .emacs to each user's PC?

-- 
Kevin Rodgers
Denver, Colorado, USA

Re: site-start.el: inhibit-startup-screen?

[Stefan Vollmar]

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On 21.05.2010, at 03:44, Kevin Rodgers wrote:

> Stefan Vollmar wrote:
> ...
>> We are trying to convince some MS Windows users at our institute to
>> use Emacs (for now, just for a specific purpose). These users have
>> certain expectations (some of them actually do make sense) and one of
>> them is that they can drop a file on the Emacs icon shortcut and that
>> file is then opened with Emacs, another is that when they open Emacs
>> with a double-click it should present an "untitled" buffer
>> ready-for-input.
>> Unless a user manually disables the splashscreen, neither of these
>> requirements works. 
> 
> Why not distribute a 1-line .emacs to each user's PC?

I actually considered something like this and it would be a good solution for homogeneous environments where every user has his or her own centrally managed desktop machine. However, we also use terminal servers where user profiles are generated only when and if users log into that system. Even more difficult, there are Windows laptops where we do not have full control over the installation - a case in which you want to keep things as simple as possible.

My goal is to give people a gentle exposure to Emacs in the (possibly naive) hope that we can build on a good first impression which might spark some further interest later.

Warm regards,
Stefan
-- 
Dr. Stefan Vollmar, Dipl.-Phys.
Head of IT group
Max-Planck-Institut für neurologische Forschung
Gleuelerstr. 50, 50931 Köln, Germany
Tel.: +49-221-4726-213  FAX +49-221-4726-298
Tel.: +49-221-478-5713  Mobile: 0160-93874279
Email: vollmar@nf.mpg.de   http://www.nf.mpg.de







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Re: site-start.el: inhibit-startup-screen?

[tomas]

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On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 03:04:40PM -0400, Joel J. Adamson wrote:

[...]

> Just curious: Why do so many people loathe the splash screen?  Why is it
> controversial?

Hi, Joel,

not in this discussion, but since you asked generally I feel addressed:

I do hate splash-screens with passion. I can't stand programs
forcefully "treating" me to such a thing: when I invoke a program, I
have something I want to do. The splash screen is (to me) very
disrupting in this flow. On the plus side, there's nothing (after the
first few invocations of the program, at least). I'b being re-told
innumerable times things I already know (or can easily look up in the
docs).

The worst species are those programs that try to hide that they are slow
and bloated with a little ad show. I don't use those unless I really
must.

Regards
- -- tomás

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Re: site-start.el: inhibit-startup-screen?

[Stefan Monnier]

>> Just curious: Why do so many people loathe the splash screen?  Why is it
>> controversial?

Especially since it's easy to turn off:
From the splash screen, click "customize startup", click the "toggle" of the
"inhibit startup screen" setting, then click "save for future sessions"
and you're done.


        Stefan

Re: site-start.el: inhibit-startup-screen?

[Johan Bockgård]

Stefan Vollmar <vollmar@nf.mpg.de> writes:

> Without "initial-buffer-choice" drag & drop works as expected - but
> yields a split screen with the splash screen in the lower part (and a
> full splash screen if the Emacs icon is just clicked).

Try

    (setq initial-buffer-choice 'none)

Re: site-start.el: inhibit-startup-screen?

[Stefan Vollmar]

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Dear Johan,
dear Drew,
dear Chong,
dear Joel,

On 20.05.2010, at 21:34, Johan Bockgård wrote:

> [...]
> Try
>    (setq initial-buffer-choice 'none)


this solves my problem beautifully.

Apparently, if you want the equivalent of
(setq inhibit-startup-screen t)
which works fine in .emacs, 
(setq initial-buffer-choice 'none)
is the way to do it if it should work in site-start.el.

I have tested it with the Emacs 23.2 on Windows and even dropping a file onto the Emacs icon shortcut will now work as expected.

Thank you and sorry for the noise.

Warm regards,
 Stefan
-- 
Dr. Stefan Vollmar, Dipl.-Phys.
Head of IT group
Max-Planck-Institut für neurologische Forschung
Gleuelerstr. 50, 50931 Köln, Germany
Tel.: +49-221-4726-213  FAX +49-221-4726-298
Tel.: +49-221-478-5713  Mobile: 0160-93874279
Email: vollmar@nf.mpg.de   http://www.nf.mpg.de







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Re: bug#6234: site-start.el: inhibit-startup-screen?

[Štěpán Němec]

Stefan Vollmar <vollmar@nf.mpg.de> writes:

> Dear Johan,
> dear Drew,
> dear Chong,
> dear Joel,
>
> On 20.05.2010, at 21:34, Johan Bockgård wrote:
>
>> [...]
>> Try
>>    (setq initial-buffer-choice 'none)

Could this please be documented somewhere? I don't see `none' as a
possible value in `initial-buffer-choice' docstring or the Elisp manual.

Štěpán

Re: bug#6234: site-start.el: inhibit-startup-screen?

[Joel J. Adamson]

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Štěpán Němec <stepnem@gmail.com> wrote:

> Stefan Vollmar <vollmar@nf.mpg.de> writes:
> 
> > Dear Johan,
> > dear Drew,
> > dear Chong,
> > dear Joel,
> >
> > On 20.05.2010, at 21:34, Johan Bockgård wrote:
> >
> >> [...]
> >> Try
> >>    (setq initial-buffer-choice 'none)
> 
> Could this please be documented somewhere? I don't see `none' as a
> possible value in `initial-buffer-choice' docstring or the Elisp manual.

Would any quoted symbol work?

Joel
-- 
Joel J. Adamson
Servedio Lab
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

FSF Member #8164
http://www.unc.edu/~adamsonj

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Re: bug#6234: site-start.el: inhibit-startup-screen?

[Stefan Vollmar]

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Dear Joel,

On 21.05.2010, at 17:32, Joel J. Adamson wrote:

> Štěpán Němec <stepnem@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Stefan Vollmar <vollmar@nf.mpg.de> writes:
>> 
>>> Dear Johan,
>>> dear Drew,
>>> dear Chong,
>>> dear Joel,
>>> 
>>> On 20.05.2010, at 21:34, Johan Bockgård wrote:
>>> 
>>>> [...]
>>>> Try
>>>>   (setq initial-buffer-choice 'none)
>> 
>> Could this please be documented somewhere? I don't see `none' as a
>> possible value in `initial-buffer-choice' docstring or the Elisp manual.
> 
> Would any quoted symbol work?


I just tried 'xyz and that seems to work, so I assume any other quote symbol will do, too.

Warm regards,
 Stefan
-- 
Dr. Stefan Vollmar, Dipl.-Phys.
Head of IT group
Max-Planck-Institut für neurologische Forschung
Gleuelerstr. 50, 50931 Köln, Germany
Tel.: +49-221-4726-213  FAX +49-221-4726-298
Tel.: +49-221-478-5713  Mobile: 0160-93874279
Email: vollmar@nf.mpg.de   http://www.nf.mpg.de







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Re: site-start.el: inhibit-startup-screen?

[Leo]

On 2010-05-19 16:02 +0100, Stefan Vollmar wrote:
> (setq inhibit-startup-screen t)
>

I have a similar situation last year. Unfortunately it was deliberately
disallowed disabling splash screen in site-start.el, which annoys
everyone of course.

I can't remember exactly what I did but try disabling in after-init-hook
or modify startup.el and recompile emacs.

Leo

Re: site-start.el: inhibit-startup-screen?

[Suvayu Ali]

On Wednesday 19 May 2010 08:02 AM, Stefan Vollmar wrote:
> Hello,
>
> we need to have an internal rollout of Emacs where we want to put some institute-specific defaults in a site-start.el (or default.el) file. I can see why one generally should not set "inhibit-startup-screen" as a default for new users, in our case (we try to provide internal documentation and courses) it seems justified. If we put
>
> (setq inhibit-startup-screen t)
>
> in site-start.el we still get the Emacs splashscreen. Is there a way to avoid the splashscreen other than using user-specific .emacs files?
>

How about using a /etc/skeleton.emacs with that variable set. Then every 
new user has that setting saved in their dotemacs. Which they can still 
change if they want to. :)

> Many thanks in advance.
> Warm regards,
>   Stefan


-- 
Suvayu

Open source is the future. It sets us free.

Re: site-start.el: inhibit-startup-screen?

[Stefan Vollmar]

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Dear Suvayu,

On 19.05.2010, at 23:04, Suvayu Ali wrote:

> How about using a /etc/skeleton.emacs with that variable set. Then every new user has that setting saved in their dotemacs. Which they can still change if they want to. :)


in this particular case, we are talking about a MS Windows distribution (not my favourite platform; however, Emacs works really well with a few tweaks - many thanks to all developers who obviously put a lot of effort in to this!). The idea is to pre-package something that should work out-of-the-box in our setting (running a current Org-mode with some adaptions) and, indeed, apart from the splashscreen issue, we have reached our goal.

But I will keep your suggestion in mind for our Unix users - is this the setup for all flavours of Linux and Solaris for current Emacsen?

Warm regards,
 Stefan
-- 
Dr. Stefan Vollmar, Dipl.-Phys.
Head of IT group
Max-Planck-Institut für neurologische Forschung
Gleuelerstr. 50, 50931 Köln, Germany
Tel.: +49-221-4726-213  FAX +49-221-4726-298
Tel.: +49-221-478-5713  Mobile: 0160-93874279
Email: vollmar@nf.mpg.de   http://www.nf.mpg.de







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Re: site-start.el: inhibit-startup-screen?

[Suvayu Ali]

On Wednesday 19 May 2010 02:50 PM, Stefan Vollmar wrote:
> Dear Suvayu,
>
> On 19.05.2010, at 23:04, Suvayu Ali wrote:
>
>> How about using a /etc/skeleton.emacs with that variable set. Then every new user has that setting saved in their dotemacs. Which they can still change if they want to. :)
>
> But I will keep your suggestion in mind for our Unix users - is this the setup for all flavours of Linux and Solaris for current Emacsen?
>

More or less its true for GNU/Linux systems, I am not aware of other 
platforms though.

For example both on Fedora and Ubuntu, all the skeleton dot files reside 
in /etc/skel/ (note the minor correction to my previous suggestion). Few 
months back I successfully built a Fedora livecd from a kickstart file 
with a custom .emacs skeleton file which translated into a pretty 
customised emacs for the live user.

In other words this could be very easily scalable solution to large *nix 
deployments. :)

> Warm regards,
>   Stefan

GL
-- 
Suvayu

Open source is the future. It sets us free.