Re: Pretest

[David Kastrup]

Lennart Borgman <address@hidden> writes:

> David Kastrup wrote:
>> Lennart Borgman <address@hidden> writes:
>>> What is missing is something that allows you to just use
>>>
>>>    emacsclient -n myfile
>>>
>>> without doing any setup whatever, without having to start Emacs
>>> before. It should in my opinion work right out of the box.
>>
>> Are there really typical use cases which require -n?  If so, is there
>> a need for them to wait for --alternate-editor?
>
>
> Sorry, I did not mean that
>
>    emacsclient myfile
>
> is not equally important. There are of course many typical use cases
> both with and without -n.
>
>>> The reason? The threshold is already high to start to use Emacs. For
>>> new users it is very important to be able to start immediately right
>>> after installing Emacs. Otherwise a lot of potential user might
>>> never start using Emacs.
>>
>> What is the problem with the invocation I gave?  The _technical_
>> problem?  If a shorthand option for that invocation would be
>> desirable, it would be possible to implement this in about three lines
>> of code, so why is something different required?
>
>
> Are you saying that you could implement this in a general way so that
> a new user right after installation can just type something like
>
>    emacsclient myfile
> or
>    emacsclient -n myfile
>
> in just three lines of code? I did actually not add many lines to do
> this (most was restructuring of existing code), but I added quite a
> bit more than tree lines.

Again: what is the problem with

emacsclient -a 'emacs --eval (server-start)'

? If there is no problem with that, I don't see why implement a
shorthand option that does nothing but that would not do the trick.

>>> The possibility to do something like the line you propose should
>>> still be there, but with my patch you should be able to just use
>>>
>>>    emacsclient --alternative-editor="whateveryoulike" myfile
>>>
>>> instead.
>>
>> Why would that not work with the existing code?  It did work up to
>> now, didn't it?
>
> I think Juanma gave you a reason before.

I must be dense.

> It seems impossible to implement the wait this way. (And I am sure
> you can see the details yourself.)

Which wait?

Could you explain a use case where the invocation

    emacsclient -a 'emacs --eval (server-start)'

would not work?

That was my question and I still don't see that it has been answered.
Maybe I am too stupid to get it.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum