Re: gui emacs from terminal

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 16.07.2010 um 16:04 schrieb Cynthia Page:

> I had a basic misunderstanding of the processes I needed to  
> accomplish remote
> file editing. Originally I thought I was using the emacs that was  
> installed on
> my machine, when I edited files on a server that I was ssh' ing to.  
> Now I
> realize that when I ssh to a server, I am using a version of emacs  
> that has been
> installed on that server. Also that I need X11 on my machine so that  
> I can use
> xterm to run emacs application (from the server) in an xterm window  
> and with
> some menu driven support.


There are still some... I, for example, assumed you were trying to ssh  
to a Mac...

Can you locate the emacs binaries on the remote server? Is one of them  
an X client, i.e., is it using X11 libraries? In that case you can  
launch this emacs on the remote server and it will open an X11 window  
(an Emacs frame) on your local Mac with its X11 server running (in  
case firewalls allow this). When restrict Emacs inside a terminal  
emulation you really do not need X11 and X11 forwarding enabled in SSH  
protocol. You *can* connect via SSH from Apple's Terminal application  
and the remote Emacs will run inside it the same (actually a better)  
way as it does in Xterm. (It's better because of the well-integrated  
copy&paste support, it might be worse when Terminal supports only 16  
colours – some Xterm versions support 128 or 256 colours.)

To make this work you should not use the -X option but -Y or set  
ForwardX11Trusted in your remote server's SSH config file. This will  
set the environment variable DISPLAY in your remote login shell (as -X  
also does) that X clients will know where the X server is and where  
their windows will open.

To make GNU Emacs, the X client, open an X window (or Emacs frame) on  
your local screen you could invoke:

        ssh -Yf username@host emacs

Emacsen also have the command manual-entry built in. Upon invocation  
they ask for a topic and then they create buffers for each of the  
topics (man pages) given. This way it's really easy to study the "UNIX  
manual." You can also follow hyper-links in them...

--
Greetings

  Pete

Increase the size of your bike by at least *five* inches!