Re: EmacsW32 invocation options

[Lennart Borgman (gmail)]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > From: Will <schimpanski@gmx.de>
> > Date: Tue, 01 May 2007 15:15:24 +0200
> >
> > I'd like to use a shortcut on my desktop to start GNU Emacs with W32 
> > bundle (patched, V1.46 - V1.50) so that my personal init-file is 
> > evaluated at start-up, which is _not_ in my home directory. The 
> > following commands however do not work (cf. Shortcut > Target):
> >
> > "C:\Program Files\Emacs\emacs\bin\emacsclientw.exe" -n  -e 
> > "Z:\00_Preferences\Emacs\.emacs"
> >
> > "C:\Program Files\Emacs\emacs\bin\emacsclientw.exe" -n  --eval 
> > "Z:\00_Preferences\Emacs\.emacs"
> >
> > What am I doing wrong?
>
> Why do you make this so complicated?  Why not
>
>    "C:\Program Files\Emacs\emacs\bin\runemacs.exe" --eval 
>          "Z:\00_Preferences\Emacs\.emacs"
>
> ? why use emacsclientw?


That is good advice for the unpatched version of Emacs, but for the 
patched version that comes with Emacs+EmacsW32 it should be handled 
differently.

The reason is that with the patched version you do not have to start 
Emacs server in your .emacs, it is started automatically by the first 
invocation of emacsclient. To still use that feature you can do 
something like this:

  emacsclientw.exe -n -e "load-file \"path-to-your-file\""

BTW there is a misunderstanding above. When you use -e the parameter is 
evaled, not the contents in the file. So you are trying to use the file 
name as an emacs lisp expression. (Fortunately that fails.)