RE: icicle and emacs --daemon

[Drew Adams]

Hi Thierry,

Dunno if you still use Icicles, but here is an update on this.

It turns out that the behavior of "text terminal" (that is, emacs -nw) is
variable, and depends mostly on the platform. The good news is that nowadays
most platforms do support "fancy" keys in a text terminal.

This means that, depending on your platform, Icicles, like Emacs, does in fact
work with emacs -nw - I was mistaken in thinking that it does not.

I did some testing on MS Windows - all of the "fancy" keys work fine there.

I also tried using "emacs -nw" (with Emacs 21) from a terminal in a Gnome
desktop on a Linux box, using VNC from Windows. There, because of VNC and Gnome,
some "fancy" keys (e.g. `C-next') are not available to Emacs, but others (e.g.
`S-TAB') are. I didn't try without Gnome, and I can't try on Linux without using
VNC, but I suspect, from speaking with others, that there is no problem
generally on Linux either - many, perhaps all, of the "fancy" keys should be
available.

I also checked to make sure that it's OK to use library hexrgb.el even in a
context where few colors are available. No problem. The Linux/VNC context, for
example, has only 6 or 8 colors available.

The bottom line is that I was mistaken in thinking that Icicles would not work
well without a graphics display. I've updated the Icicles libraries accordingly
(cleaned up the doc and code a bit).

HTH - Drew

> From: Drew Adams Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2008 6:43 AM
> > when using the new emacs --daemon, icicle complain that we 
> > are not in a window-system.So i modify the starting
> > message of icicles.el like that:
> > 
> > (unless (or (and (fboundp 'daemonp) (daemonp))
> ... 
> > It work fine here.
> 
> Thanks, Thierry. I've added that.
> 
> BTW, it seems that some people do use Icicles with a console 
> (i.e. without a
> window mgr). I would be interested in knowing how you do so - 
> which key changes
> you have made etc., in order to either provide for that as an 
> option or at least
> document some of your suggestions for other users. Thx.