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bmedina · May 29, 2002, 10:33 PM

Okay, I'm a newbie at X Windows, so bear with me.

I've installed XDarwin and am using OborOSX as a window manager (is that the correct terminology?). How do I get emacs to open up in it own X11 window? For example, if I type "emacs document" into Terminal.app, it doesn't open up a new window but displays the emacs output inside Terminal.app instead.

I can ssh -X into other machines and have it work (if I do it from within xterm), but not locally. I guess a related question is how to get remote forwarding working from within Terminal.app (instead of using xterm). Thanks in advance!

[ 05-29-2002, 10:35 PM: Message edited by: bmedina ]

kangoo_boo · May 29, 2002, 10:41 PM

try xemacs =)

howardm4 · May 29, 2002, 11:11 PM

he's right.

The version of emacs supplied w/ OSX does NOT support X windows
(think about it, why would they?).

So, you do need XEmacs or figure out how to compile GNU Emacs for OSX.
Or get the emacs source ball from darwin.apple.com (or whatever) and
rebuild it w/ X support

rw · May 30, 2002, 12:12 AM

I'm even more a newbie than bmedina, so please bear with me, too.

Isn't emacs supposed to open up in the Terminal? I mean, isn't that really the whole idea behind emacs -- to have a text editor that runs in a terminal window? Making emacs into an independent app with its own windows and pull-down menus and so on seems sort of like going camping to "rough it" but bringing along a TV set.

P · May 30, 2002, 01:05 AM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by rw:
I'm even more a newbie than bmedina, so please bear with me, too.

Isn't emacs supposed to open up in the Terminal? I mean, isn't that really the whole idea behind emacs -- to have a text editor that runs in a terminal window? Making emacs into an independent app with its own windows and pull-down menus and so on seems sort of like going camping to "rough it" but bringing along a TV set.<hr /></blockquote>Emacs can run both in a window of its own and in the Terminal - it will usually run in its own window if it detects an X server running (ie it sees a DISPLAY variable).

Personally, I don't like Emacs that much, but the rationale is that a power user used to Emacs knows most keycombinations by heart and can work very quickly this way, but might need menus once in a while.

shellsuit · May 30, 2002, 06:22 AM

The version of emacs that comes with OS X has no X11 support- you'll need to grab a version that has (you can use fink). Furthermore, even with X11 support, you'd have trouble starting an X11 emacs window from Terminal.app unless you set DISPLAY to :0.0

Sven G · May 30, 2002, 12:10 PM

A double-clickable Carbon Emacs (version 21.1.3) port:

<a href="http://www.porkrind.org/emacs/" target="_blank">http://www.porkrind.org/emacs/</a>

Sven G · May 30, 2002, 12:13 PM

... And there's also a Carbon version of the Vim text editor (version 6.1), for those who might be interested:

<a href="http://homepage.mac.com/fisherbb/index.html" target="_blank">http://homepage.mac.com/fisherbb/index.html</a>

bmedina · May 30, 2002, 06:28 PM

Thanks for all the help, guys! When I reboot to 10.1, I'll check fink for xemacs.

shellsuit · May 30, 2002, 10:46 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by bmedina:
Thanks for all the help, guys! When I reboot to 10.1, I'll check fink for xemacs.<hr /></blockquote>both xemacs and GNU emacs-x11 will do what you need - I prefer emacs-x11 though