Emacs 23, OS X, multi-tty and emacsclient

Question

How can I get emacs 23 working nicely in multi-tty mode on OS X?

I've added (server-start) to my .emacs, and have discovered that running /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin/emacsclient -n ~/myfile.txt will open it in my emacs.app, but it doesn't bring emacs to the front.

So, how can I get emacs.app to come to the front when I run emacsclient? (I've considered writing a function that puts the current frame to the front every time a file is opened, or maybe writing an Applescript to do a similar job that could be called at the same time as emacsclient)

Is the emacsclient within emacs.app the best one to use? I assume I'll write an alias to it if so, but it seems weird to be using that rather than something in /usr/local/bin

Has anyone got any other tips or examples of getting this working?

Answer 1

The AppleScript would be simple:

tell app "Emacs" to activate

Answer 2

Perhaps this would work, just calling raise-frame when the client attaches:

(add-hook 'server-visit-hook 'call-raise-frame)
(defun call-raise-frame ()
  (raise-frame))

(It happens to be redundant on my Linux machine.)

Answer 3

I have an alias from emacs to

open -a /Applications/Emacs.app "$@"

If you are annoyed by the fact that it opens a new frame (window) for each file -- add

(setq ns-pop-up-frames nil)

to your .emacs and fixed.

Answer 4

I define this function in my .emacs

(defun ns-raise-emacs ()
  (ns-do-applescript "tell application \"Emacs\" to activate"))

Then use this to raise the frame:

emacsclient -e '(ns-raise-emacs)'

I recommend doing it this way instead of calling osascript. It seems to respond faster (significantly faster sometimes) than using osascript.

Answer 5

To expand on the answers given by Trey Jackson and the comment by Singletoned: I have the following in my .emacs file

;;;
;;; Run in server-mode so other sessions can connet
;;;
(defun call-raise-frame ()
   (raise-frame))
(defun end-server-edit ()
   (shell-command "osascript -e \"tell application \\\"System Events\\\" to keystroke tab using command down\""))
(add-hook 'server-visit-hook 'call-raise-frame)
(add-hook 'server-done-hook 'end-server-edit)
(server-start)

And in my shell init file I have the following aliases:

alias e='emacsclient'      # edit
alias enw='emacsclient -n' #edit (no wait)

Now I can have a shell open side-by-side with my CocoaEmacs instance and use the two seamlessly together. I can call the editor "inline" with my current terminal flow by using the e alias and once I finish editing in emacs focus will be returned to the calling terminal.