Re: --daemon vs. server-start

[Stephen Berman]

On Fri, 23 Jan 2009 12:39:06 -0800 (PST) Dan Nicolaescu <address@hidden> wrote:

> You seem to assume that "emacs" and "emacs --daemon" are doing the same
> thing, they are not,
> emacs --daemon 
> is similar to 
> emacs -nw -f server-start

Thanks for the clarification.  Obviously, I did not understand this from
the documentation (Emacs manual, NEWS).  Did I overlook it?  If so,
would you please give me a pointer, and if not, could this please be
documented?

> so emacs --daemon it will ignore all the X11 related options.

Is this fundamental to starting Emacs without an initial frame, or an
artifact of the current implementation?  In other words, could --daemon
be implemented in a way that allows passing X11 options?  One thing that
makes me think this should be possible is the fact that I can "pass" X11
options that are exposed to Lisp; e.g., when I invoke Emacs like this:

emacs -Q --daemon --eval "(setq default-frame-alist '((font-backend . \"xft\") 
(font . \"Dejavu Sans-10\")))"

and then invoke `emacsclient -c', the frame that appears has the font
Dejavu Sans-10 with antialiasing.  In contrast, as I observed in my OP,
with this invocation:

emacs -Q --daemon -xrm "Emacs.FontBackend: xft" -fn "Dejavu Sans-10"

the frame that appears upon `emacsclient -c' has neither antialiasing
nor this font.  What I don't understand is why the former invocation
"works" and the latter doesn't.  (I accept that that's the way it is, I
just don't see why.)  I'd be interested in and grateful for an
explanation.

Steve Berman