bug#49195: Starting Emacs if required from emacsclient.desktop

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2021 14:28:29 +0100 (BST)
> From: Peter Oliver <p.d.oliver@mavit.org.uk>
> cc: 49195@debbugs.gnu.org
> 
> > FWIW, I would find this change surprising,
> 
> For someone to be unpleasantly surprised by this, they would need to launch 
> emacsclient.desktop with the hope that it would fail because an Emacs daemon 
> is not already running.  If they want it to fail, why would they try to 
> launch it?

Because they don't remember whether they did or didn't start a server?
Happens to me from time to time.

> > and therefore would suggest to leave this off by default.  But that's me.
> 
> I’m not sure what off by default would mean in this context.

What it is now.

> > More generally, I'm not sure we should even say this in the Emacs
> > manual, as these features belong to the desktop, not to Emacs.
> 
> This section of the manual already describes how to start Emacs from systemd, 
> which isn’t part of Emacs either.

systemd support code is in emacs.c, so that is (borderline) okay.
What you describe is just normal desktop invocation, AFAIU.

> +  If your operating system’s desktop environment is
> +@url{https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/,,freedesktop.org-compatible}
> +(which is true of most GNU/Linux and other recent Unix-like GUIs), you
> +may use the @dfn{Emacs (Client)} menu entry to connect to an Emacs

It is wrong to use @dfn here, since this is not new terminology you
are introducing.  Better use @samp.

> +server with @command{emacsclient}.  If the daemon is not already
> +running, it will be started for you.
            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Please try rephrasing this to avoid passive tense.

Thanks.