bug#2204: 23.0.90; minibuffer font and frame size

[Marshall, Simon]

Hi guys,

I've always used a separate minibuffer frame with a larger font.  With Emacs 22, it correctly uses the larger font in the minibuffer, but sizes the minibuffer frame according to the default smaller font.  As such, descender letters are difficult to read in the minibuffer.  However, I can use set-frame-font in the minibuffer with the larger font to force Emacs 22 to resize the minibuffer frame (even though the font has not actually changed).  Since I start Emacs rarely, I've grown to live with it. 

With Emacs 23, cleverly, it does not resize the minibuffer frame if the font has not changed.  This cleverness is unfortunate, since the size is wrong.

Replace .emacs with:

(setq inhibit-startup-screen t)

(setq default-frame-alist
      '((width . 80) (height . 40)
        (minibuffer . nil)))

(setq initial-frame-alist
      '((width . 80) (height . 40)
        (minibuffer . nil)))

(setq minibuffer-frame-alist
      '((width . 100) (height . 1)
        (cursor-type . bar)
        (reverse . t)
        (font . "9x15bold")))

My Xresources include:

Emacs*font:     8x13bold

Start Emacs 22 without any flags.  In Emacs 22, the minibuffer comes up with a 9x15bold font but sized for a 8x13bold font.  Oh well.  But I can move my mouse into the minibuffer and do M-x set-frame-font RET 9x15bold RET and the frame is redrawn with the correct size.  Yay!

Start Emacs 23 without any flags.  As before, the minibuffer comes up with a 9x15bold font but sized for a 8x13bold font.  However, this time, M-x set-frame-font RET 9x15bold RET has no effect.

I guess in Emacs 23 I can change the font away from 9x15bold and then back again, but perhaps it would be possible to fix the underlying problem or find some other solution?

In GNU Emacs 23.0.90.1 (sparc-sun-solaris2.8, Motif Version 2.1.0)
 of 2009-02-03 on risksun2
Windowing system distributor `Hummingbird Ltd.', version 11.0.100015
configured using `configure  '--x-includes=/usr/openwin/include:/usr/dt/include:/usr/local/include:/usr/local/X11/include' '--x-libraries=/usr/openwin/lib:/usr/dt/lib:/usr/local/lib:/usr/local/X11/lib' '--with-x-toolkit=motif' '--with-jpeg=no' '--with-gif=no' '--with-tiff=no''

Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: nil
  value of $LC_COLLATE: nil
  value of $LC_CTYPE: nil
  value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
  value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
  value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
  value of $LC_TIME: nil
  value of $LANG: C
  value of $XMODIFIERS: nil
  locale-coding-system: nil
  default-enable-multibyte-characters: t

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