Your first two paragraphs reminded me of something:
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lo3fy1mswH1qanohb.jpg

-Steven


On Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 11:32 PM, Andrew Pennebaker <
andrew.pennebaker@gmail.com> wrote:

> With help from #macdev, I was finally able to write a more sophisticated
> Emacs shell script. If you download
> https://github.com/mcandre/dotfiles/blob/master/emacs.sh and soft link it
> as /usr/bin/emacs, it allows you to launch emacs from a terminal as a GUI
> app, or a pure command line ncurses app, by properly responding to the
> various emacs command line options.
>
> I'm fairly demanding of my programs, so I hassled a few communities to
> help the shell script meet a lot of constraints. The dependencies are Emacs
> for Mac OS X, bash, and Mac OS X, though conceivably the script could be
> ported to Aquamacs or Homebrew Emacs.
>
> The emacs shell script will work with a file to open, without a file to
> open, with and without other command line arguments such as -Q, --version,
> and --help, and files and command line flags can be passed to emacs in
> arbitrary order (${1+"$@"}).
>
> In GUI mode, Emacs will release control from the shell; you can keep
> entering commands in the terminal that Emacs was launched from without
> having to background the process with Control+Z. Emacs does not die with
> the shell, if you happen to close the terminal (nohup).
>
> Emacs will open in the foreground, not behind the terminal (osascript).
>
> Emacs will not interrupt your terminal experience with stdout messages (>
> /dev/null).
>
> If you do use the -nw flag, emacs will open inside the terminal in curses
> mode.
>
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 11:21 PM, Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com> wrote:
>
>> Steven Degutis wrote:
>> > Andrew Pennebaker wrote:
>> > > When I try open -a emacs --args ${1+"$@"}, I have to choose either
>> open a
>> > > file, or provide a command line argument. I can't do both.
>> >
>> > (1) Yes, that's true. That's a limitation of emacs, not the open
>> command.
>> > Do `emacs --help`
>>
>> You should be able to do 'emacs -Q filename.rb' however.
>>
>> I see you using the old idiom ${1+"$@"}.  That is fine.  That will
>> work everywhere.  But unless you are working on Solaris then that
>> idiom can be shorted to simply "$@" without checking $1 first.  All
>> modern shells treat "$@" correctly now and it is required by POSIX.
>>
>> You have been focusing on trying to get the "open" to work.  But you
>> could just for the experiment try emacs in a terminal window and get
>> the test done.
>>
>>   emacs -nw -Q
>>
>> Just ignore the who "open" problem for the moment and just test
>> whether -Q causes your curly brace problem to go away.  Because if
>> it does then you now the problem is in your emacs customization in
>> your ~/.emacs or wherever you are locating it.
>>
>> Bob
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Cheers,
>
> Andrew Pennebaker
> www.yellosoft.us
>