Re: GNU Emacs raison d'etre

[martin rudalics]

> I finally understood what I was doing wrong: I tried to visit the file
> and 'M-x eval-buffer' from an existing graphical frame. That got me
> the error.

Right.  In a "normal" session you have to create a minibuffer-only frame
first and then delete the normal frame to get uniform behavior.  Emacs
does not offer a function to remove the minibuffer window from a normal
frame so this is the best you can get.

> If I load it from init.el, the result is fairly functional (though
> with a number of glitches),

Since I use it with my customizations only, such glitches are to be
expected.  And, as you know, mutter is not very child-frame friendly.

> and it really does look like an
> improvement over the current situation. Even if the main benefit is
> simply locality: it displays the "minibuffer" at the bottom of the
> current window, not frame.

You can put it anywhere on the parent frame via 'pop-up-mini-host'
and/or 'pop-up-mini-position'.  If something is lacking here, it can be
added easily.

martin