Emacs 24 Ubuntu Menu Bar

Question

Emacs 24 has just been installed on the exact Ubuntu OS. The menu bar on the top panel does not have a number of options (for example, using Auctex, all Latex options).

I remember seeing somewhere on the Internet that it was possible to have a menu on top of an Emacs frame, rather than the default unity of the top bar. There is an answer on SO on how to enable the global menu in ubuntu. Can someone please tell me how to disable it in the global menu until it reaches the point at which they play well together.

thanks

Answer 1

Ubuntu has a hardcoded hack to disable the global menu for applications matching specific file name patterns. emacs is one of those that has firefox , another popular program that suffers from the same problems with individual GTK editors that are not updated in the usual way that their programs expect.

Try using update alternatives to select emacs24 as your default Emacs, then use emacs to run it, not emacs24 .

Answer 2

I used the symlink method mentioned by @Bernhard Kausler, but found that I could not pin the icon that appeared as a result of viewing emacs from the shell in this way, without returning to using the global menu.

I got a shortcut to launch working unity with this .desktop file:

 #!/usr/bin/env xdg-open [Desktop Entry] Version=1.0 Type=Application Terminal=false Icon[en_NZ]=emacs Name[en_NZ]=Gnu Emacs 24 Exec=emacs Name=Gnu Emacs 24 Icon=emacs StartupWMClass=Emacs24 

Now I have emacs attached to the launcher and it starts with its own menu bar.

Answer 3

Can you just create a symlink to emacs ??? which you use to start emacs, and if the symbolic link name is exactly "emacs", it will not use the global menu at startup.

This is a known bug with Emacs dynamic menus, where changing the main modes adds or removes entries from the menu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/appmenu-gtk/+bug/673302

It is unfortunate that the names of the blacklisted applications are hardcoded in the appmenu-gtk package and that there seems to be no way to add elements without touching the source code.