Only works when a GUI frame is already open

[deadtrickster]

Thanks for quick response to the previous issue.
Now, perhaps it's just my setup but... When I do emacsclient -n -e '(yequake-toggle "Yequake & scratch")' when having only emacs server started and no existing frames I have the error from the title: *ERROR*: Unknown terminal type when no existing frames. Can toggle function automagically solve this? Desired behaviour I would be just creating needed frames I guess.

[alphapapa]

Hi,

I think this is fixable. Please see the documentation for the function make-frame. Try adding the frame parameter '(window-system . x) to the Yequake frame config and see if that fixes it. If so, maybe we should add that by default.

[deadtrickster]

with (window-system . x) it creates big Minibuf-0 frame and tiny scratch frame on top of that =)

[alphapapa]

with (window-system . x) it creates big Minibuf-0 frame and tiny scratch frame on top of that =)

I've reproduced that, but I'm not sure how to fix it. It seems like the frame-manipulating functions have no effect in the case that there wasn't already a GUI frame. Maybe you could implement a hack by moving some code to a hook that runs after the frame is opened, but it doesn't seem like that should be necessary. So I don't know if this is ultimately a bug in Yequake or in Emacs.

This would be a nice issue to fix, but I don't use Emacs in this way myself, so I don't know if I will investigate further. It seems that there are a lot of little issues like this that come up when there isn't already an Emacs frame.

For example, when I run emacs --daemon, my config file raises an error and doesn't even complete. Of course, that's a bug in my config, but only when using Emacs this way. I use the daemon, but I start it from my config with server-start, and I keep a frame open as long as Emacs is open, because I don't like having hidden Emacsen running in the background. (Ideally that would be fine, but there are too many little issues, at least with the way I use Emacs.)

So, patches welcome, I guess. :) Sorry that it isn't working with your config.

[emacsomancer]

I ran into the same issue with equake. I'm not certain there's an easy way round it - I usually have another Emacs frame open, so, while annoying, it's a fairly minor annoyance in the scheme of things.

[emacsomancer]

Here's a hacky way to address this, a shell script, which checks if there are any frames already and creates one if not, and this could be bound to the shortcut key:

#!/bin/sh

if [ $(emacsclient -n -e '(length (frame-list))') -lt 2 ]; then
    emacsclient -n -c
fi
[your emacsclient command here, e.g. emacsclient -n -e '(yequake-toggle)']

Now, if you already have an invisible frame or a minimised frame as your only frame, then this fails, but in a perhaps more typical situation of not having yet opened an emacsclient frame, it works.

(Emacs-internal solutions don't seem to work well - emacs doesn't seem to want to open frames programmatically if none are already open.)

[alphapapa]

@emacsomancer Have you tried this function? Sounds like it will properly open a GUI frame even if none are open already.

 -- Command: make-frame-on-display display &optional parameters
     This function creates and returns a new frame on DISPLAY, taking
     the other frame parameters from the alist PARAMETERS.  DISPLAY
     should be the name of an X display (a string).

     Before creating the frame, this function ensures that Emacs is set
     up to display graphics.  For instance, if Emacs has not processed X
     resources (e.g., if it was started on a text terminal), it does so
     at this time.  In all other respects, this function behaves like
     ‘make-frame’ (*note Creating Frames::).

[alphapapa]

I did not mean to click the close button...

[emacsomancer]

Ah, yes, emacsclient -n -e '(make-frame-on-display ":0")' seems to work even when no other frames are open.

[emacsomancer]

For Equake, @grepcake has done a good deal of work to address this issue (see Issue https://gitlab.com/emacsomancer/equake/-/issues/2 and the related Merge Request https://gitlab.com/emacsomancer/equake/-/merge_requests/1 (and subsequent related Merge Requests)).

(There is still an issue when the Emacs daemon is launched in a non-graphical environment (including via a systemd unit), see https://gitlab.com/emacsomancer/equake/-/issues/9 )

[alphapapa]

@emacsomancer Thanks!