Re: split window

[Richard Wordingham <richard.wordingham@ntlworld.com>]

On Tue, 26 May 2015 23:26:46 -0700
Dale Snell <ddsnell@frontier.com> wrote:

> You might check your Ubuntu setup to see if you've got all the
> packages that you should, and that they're all up to date.  If it
> were up to me, I'd update to the latest version of emacs in the
> Ubuntu repos.  Probably 24.5 or thereabouts.  Version 23 is pretty
> old.

Emacs 23.3.1 is the latest for Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin, which is
in long-term support until 2017.  It was built for Ubuntu in May 2013.
I've tried switching to Emacs 24.4, but the debugger interface (M-x gdb
-i mi) makes horrible window and frame choices.  I've gone back to
Emacs 23 for running the debugger.  I might even wind up integrating
the m17n bug fixes and improvements into my copy. 

Emacs 24.4 was the latest stable Emacs release a few months ago.  It
might even be the last version for me as an editor - the news for
Emacs 24.5 (https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/news/NEWS.24.5) says
'tpu-edt.el' is now obsolete, so I may have to find a new editor.  I
only need the EDT bits from tpu-edt.

> This is what lead me to think it was something in the init file.
> Try "emacs -q your-file.here", instead.  The "-Q" inhibits the
> startup screen as well as the site-init and user init files.  The
> lowercase "-q" option inhibits the user init file only.

I did some archaeology with the Windows builds - command line uses
runemacs.  Version 22.1.1 opens a single window; without a file
argument, it displays the startup screen.

On Windows, Emacs 23.0.60.1 (and 23.2 and 24.4) displays two windows,
the startup screen and the file to be visited, whether or not the -q
option is specified. It looks like new Emacs behaviour at Version 23. 

It looks as though the answer to the original problem is to have
one of the lines

(setq inhibit-splash-screen t)
(setq inhibit-startup-screen t)

in one's .emacs.  (One of the variables is an alias of the other.)  I
haven't experimented with it.  It looks though the quick way to get the
start-up screen will then be the menu sequence "help; about Emacs".

Richard.