[OS X Emacs] various Aquamacs questions - init files and fonts

[Jim Crossley]

Hi David, I had the same issues as you...

David Rogoff <cs80 at therogoffs.com> writes:

> First, it's not reading my init file!  Any idea why?  I thought it was
> because I had all my fonts and colors, but it was apparently just
> loading ~/.emacs.desktop which had them from me manually evaluating my
> init file from a previous run.  What other files does Aquamacs load on
> startup for customization?

It will load your init files (~/.emacs, ~/.emacs.d/init.el), because it
loads mine, but it does seem to prefer the init files beneath
"~/Library/Preferences/Aquamacs Emacs".  You could try blowing that
away, I guess.  I think it'll restore what it needs if you do.

[...]

> Why isn't Aquamacs using files in the home directory or ~/.emacs.d ?
> I want to be able to switch back and forth with vanilla 23, but I
> don't know if it's possible now.

It is possible.

> Next, fonts seem really messed up.  Sometimes everything is in the
> nice, fixed-width font that also works on Linux. Other times, all my
> buffers are in different (usually proportional) fonts.   I can't
> increase/decrease font size, either. If I try c-x, c-= or c-x,c-- I
> get
> Wrong type arguement: listp, ((:height 1.2))
> Doesn't Aquamacs support text-scale-adjust?

Welcome to Auto Faces!  :)

The only way I found to make text-scale-adjust work was to turn off Auto
Faces:  M-x aquamacs-autoface-mode

> Should I just use the emacs from here:
> http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsForMacOS ?   What is Aquamacs
> getting me, other than some Mac keyboard bindings?

IMHO, Aquamacs is targeted specifically to sophisticated MacOS users who
have not used Emacs before.  You may be happier with Emacs.app,
available from the above link or via macports as 'emacs-app', I think.

Regards,
Jim