Re: Emacs making questions while starting in daemon mode

[Dan Nicolaescu]

Óscar Fuentes <address@hidden> writes:

> Dan Nicolaescu <address@hidden> writes:
>
>>> I'm thinking on the case where there is no terminal, or you can not
>>> assume that there is a human watching it.
>>
>> If there's no terminal, the only absolutely safe way is to use:
>> emacs -Q --daemon
>
> This is precisely to avoid the case where emacs asks for user input
> while initializing, isn't it?

More precisely is to prevent the user from shooting himself in the foot.

>>>> This assumes that there's a default correct answer to any of these
>>>> questions, which is doubtful.
>>>
>>> The absolutely wrong answer is to hang until the user figures out that
>>> emacs' initialization froze and starts pulling his hair about the
>>> cause. Then, if the cause is on emacs's own code, he needs to find a
>>> workaround.
>>
>> Can you show a case where it's hanging?  It should not detach from the
>> tty until .emacs is processed.
>
> If you start emacs --daemon from KRunner, for instance, there is no
> visible console. (KRunner is a KDE tool used for executing applications
> by its name. I guess Gnome has something similar.)

What happens if you start any other program that requires tty input in
the same conditions?

>>> IMO, an acceptable "answer" on those cases is to act as if the user
>>> pressed C-g to abort the question, leave some notice on *Messages* and
>>> keep going with the initialization.
>>
>> How is that different than having a default answer of "no" (or "yes")?
>
> "yes" and "no" can express very different intentions depending on the
> question ("are you sure you want to launch the ICBM?" "start process for
> establishing world peace?") C-g means "cancel," which arguably can cause
> confussion too, but less so, I hope.

What does C-g mean for `yes-or-no-p'?
How hard it is to do something that the user does not expect based on that?