Re: Emacs's popularity

[Phil Carmody]

"Juanma Barranquero" <lekktu@gmail.com> writes:
>> The reason I don't use the client/server setup is that I absolutely
>> do not want C/Perl code buffers appearing or being offered to me
>> while I'm doing stuff in GNUS, and I absolutely do not want newsgroup/
>> SCORE buffers appearing or being offered to me when I'm doing stuff
>> with coding. Is there any way to keep these two sessions independent
>> and still use the client/server setup?
>
> I think the variable `server-window' could be useful. Or did you try
> it already and didn't suit your needs?

I've never tried it, and, looking at the documentation, I can't
work out how to use it.
"""
Documentation:
Specification of the window to use for selecting Emacs server buffers.
If nil, use the selected window.
If it is a function, it should take one argument (a buffer) and
display and select it.  A common value is `pop-to-buffer'.
If it is a window, use that.
If it is a frame, use the frame's selected window.
"""

So I just created a new frame, and dragged it to my coding desktop,
how do I find out how to identify that frame? Going there and 
C-h v frame TAB gives:
"""
Possible completions are:
frame-background-mode              frame-creation-function
frame-initial-frame                frame-initial-frame-alist
frame-initial-geometry-arguments   frame-name-history
frame-notice-user-settings         frame-title-format
"""
Which looks useless.

Maybe there's a function which will tell me how to identify the
frame I'm in. C-h a frame doesn't really list much that seems useful.
Maybe there's something that's not listed. M-x frame TAB does list
a few more functions (why aren't they in the apropos?) - in particular
frame-list. Something which looked like it appears to be identifiers
for frames appears in the message bar, but annoyingly isn't selectable
by the mouse (why isn't the text there selectable?). So I go to 
the *Messages* buffer:
"""
(#<frame *scratch* 0x85e1500> #<frame *followup to Juanma Barranquero on 
gnu.emacs.help* 0x85d5fd0>)
"""

So, let's try to use the former as an identifier for M-x set-variable 
server-window
"""
if: Invalid read syntax: "#"
byte-code: Beginning of buffer
"""

So the function that "Return[s] a list of all frames." apparently doesn't
return anthing that can be directly used as an identifier for frames. 

So how should I set server-window to be on my new frame?
And how should it be done automatically?

And here's one extra thing that's a bit puzzling - why is it a 
server-*window*? Windows come and go, get split, resized and what-
have-you. When I started the new frame, it had the windows, 
according to M-x window-list, 
(#<window 454 on *scratch*> #<window 464 on *scratch*>).
But a few C-x 2, C-x o, and C-x 0 later, it's now 
(#<window 490 on *scratch*> #<window 491 on *scratch*>).
What good would it have done if I had succeded in setting the 
server-window to one of the two original windows? Wouldn't a 
server-frame be far more useful?


Assuming "Emacs server buffers" means the buffers that were opened
via the server, then that's only going to be a subset of the buffers
that I'll want to be sandboxed together. M-x ff-f, and I'll have my 
header files in there too; M-x compile or M-x ediff, and I could 
have arbitrary other files and non-file buffers. So "being opened 
via the server or not" is not a good way to separate the code buffers 
from the GNUS buffers.

And this is why I run 2 emacses, one for news, and one for coding.

Phil
-- 
I tried the Vista speech recognition by running the tutorial. I was 
amazed, it was awesome, recognised every word I said. Then I said the 
wrong word ... and it typed the right one. It was actually just 
detecting a sound and printing the expected word! -- pbhj on /.