bug#67671: Not a bug but something to enhance/adjust

[Eli Zaretskii]

tags 67671 notabug wontfix
thanks

> From: Michel Robitaille <Michel.Robitaille@concordia.ca>
> Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2023 22:14:59 +0000
> 
> Could it be possible to ensure that if I add emacs to the task bar it will 
> run correctly the proper emacs
> version for Windows.
> 
> Instead of having 
> 
> "C:\Program Files\Emacs\emacs-29.1\bin\emacs.exe"
> 
> It should be
> 
> "C:\Program Files\Emacs\emacs-29.1\bin\runemacs.exe"

This is a Windows issue, not an Emacs issue.  Windows pins programs to
the task bar by looking at the executable that is actually running.
runemacs.exe is a small GUI program that launches emacs.exe in a way
that doesn't open a command prompt window, and then exits.  (That
command window would otherwise pop up because emacs.exe is a console
program, not a GUI program.  It is built as a console program to allow
its invocation as in "emacs -nw" and "emacs -batch".)

So when you pin Emacs to the task bar, Windows doesn't know anything
about runemacs.exe, it only sees that emacs.exe is running.  You need
to manually edit the Properties of the pinned program to point to
runemacs.exe, to fix this.

> In fact, it could be easily resolved in the script generating the 
> distribution version for Windows (hope
> not to offend anyone).

The binary installer for Emacs on Windows and the Emacs Windows
binaries themselves are prepared by volunteers, they are not part of
the official upstream distribution of Emacs (which only provides
sources and scripts to build Emacs).  If those volunteers want to
include a script that pins Emacs to the Window task bar, they are
welcome to do that.  But please note that then installing Emacs would
require running such a script, and manually pinning a running Emacs to
the task bar will still exhibit the behavior described above.

> PS: years a ago I was officially part of the French translation team with the 
> help of François Pinard.

François was a dear personal friend, and I miss him very much...

The Translation Project robot still greets me in his welcome words
every time, though ("My nicest hello to all language team leaders.").
RIP François.