[1868] in testers
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daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Tue Aug 13 12:09:55 1991
From: vanharen@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 91 12:10:08 -0400
To: ckclark@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Cc: testers@ATHENA.MIT.EDU, jfc@ATHENA.MIT.EDU, sauron@ATHENA.MIT.EDU,
> With the following line in my .startup.X file,
>
> emacs -rv -display `/bin/hostname`:0.0 -geometry 80x64+200+0 &
>
> emacs starts up with two buffers, one named "-display" and the other
> named "w20-575-105:0.0" (the machine I am on). It only happens on
> this machine. Something is not passing the switches to emacs
> correctly. Obviously this is not major, but is simply annoying.
Your reply:
> The there are some command-line arguments to emacs must be at the
> beginning of the common line, and if they are, they must appear in a
> specific order. If you violate the order, the out-of-order arguments
> will be interpreted as buffer names. This is documented in the man page
> and in the emacs info documentation for `emacs,' but not very clearly or
> correctly in either. (It never has been.) I will make sure it is
> explained better when I submit a new man page. I will also update the
> info file to describe the additional arguments which are not described
> there.
Wait a minute. Are you going to tell me that the user is doing
something wrong here? I would argue that emacs is very broken, if the
command that the user used to type no longer works correctly. I realize
that emacs has changed drastically since 18.54, and that the new code
may do things "differently", but in this case, that difference is a bug.
I don't care if it's documented in the manpage or not, it's a bug. Can
you give me any real reason that emacs needs flags in a particular order
when every other well-behaved X program in the world can deal with the
args in any order?
Furthermore, the manpage lists four options as having to be first on the
command line if they are used. What if I want to use two of these
options at the same time?
At the very *least*, this is a *major* change to emacs and needs to be
strongly advertised in the release notes; however, it might very well be
suggested that if this is not fixed, emacs 18.57 not be released, since
it will undoubtedly cause breakage and frustration for many people.
Especially considering that there is another substantial breakage...
(the x-mouse stuff).
It used to work. It doesn't work now. It's broken.
-C.
