Re: emacs --batch and --geometry (no joke)

[Tim X <timx@nospam.dev.null>]

"Sven Bretfeld" <sven.bretfeld@gmx.ch> writes:

> Hi to all
>
> This might seem an absurd question. I'm looking for a possibility to
> start emacs --batch with geometry parameters. Of course, I know that
> emacs --batch will have no frame.
>
> The reason is this: I start emacs --batch as a cronjob to regularly
> create some html files of org-agenda-views (org-export-as-html). How the
> html files look like is dependent on the frame-size in which the export
> is done. So, in batch-mode there are many line-breaks and the output
> looks ugly. The default frame-size set in a load-file is ignored, as
> well as a --geometry option.
>
> It would be an option to execute the export function with run-at-time
> within my always running Emacs session (daemon), but since the function
> needs some time to finish, my workflow would be interrupted for about 20
> seconds.
>
> The only workaround I can imagine, is an always running independent
> Emacs session which runs the function regularly via run-at-time. 
>

I must be missing something, but I would suggest something is very wrong
with the HTML generation if it depends on the size of the frame/window
it will be browsed in at a later time or even worse, the size of the
window/frame at the time it is generated. A major aim of HTML was/is to
provide a markup language that can be rendered by clients using
different display parameters (i.e. window size, font size, etc).

As far as I know, there is no way of having both -batch and -geometry
mean something at the same time. Part of the rationale behaind batch is
to speed things up by not having to worry about all the display stuff.

I'd be looking at the html generation to find out what it is doing that
'hard codes' display sizes and remove that. Such formatting should be
left to the client, not the generator of the HTML (yes, you may need to
use additional techniques, such as CSS div etc and provide enough
details to the client so that it will render appropriately). 

Tim

-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au