In article <mailman.1926.1109544581.32256.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>,
 August <fusionfive@comhem.se> wrote:

> On sön, 2005-02-27 at 12:25 -0500, George Colpitts wrote:
> > I've installed the latest Carbon emacs, 21.3.50.1, and the frame is too 
> > long, the minibuffer is off the screen and I can't resize the window. 
> > How can I fix this ? 
> 
> Have you tried to customize `height' in `default-frame-alist'? To make
> the Emacs frame fit on my 15 inch monitor I have set `height' to 39.


Thanks this was the key, using Google I was able to figure out the 
details i.e. I added 


(setq default-frame-alist '((width . 100)
        (height . 38)))

to my .emacs file. 

I didn't understand many of the other responses. This is a binary, a 
.dmg, not something I built from CVS sources. This is a prepackaged dmg 
install mentioned in the weekly adc newsletter and also available at the 
download section of the Apple web site so I was a bit surprised that it 
started with this problem. I assume this version has been released

It seems to me that the default height and width should be tiny rather 
than large so that users could resize the window rather than having to 
learn the above. 

I agree that I should learn more about customization but its not trivial 
for me to go from a problem about the height of the window to the elisp 
form:

 (setq default-frame-alist '((width . 100)
        (height . 38)))

It's a big improvement over the standard emacs that comes on the Mac so 
I'm very grateful for all the help