How to show popup on Emacs?

Question

I intend to change certain features/functions in Emacs. I was wondering whether there is any feature in Emacs to popup a windows to show a warning message? Also, I would appreciate any alternative ideas if this feature is not available.

Cheers all.

Rocha

Any specific platform (eg, MS Windows), or for all platforms? – Praenomen

@MichaelPaulukonis all platforms solution will be the most favorite. But Unix/Linux platform is the main focus. The user is expected to interact with a GUI though. Cheers mate. – Rocha

I don't know how to popup modal GUI dialog boxes (and I'm rather glad that this usually isn't done in Emacsland), but since you're also asking for alternatives: Usually, one would just print the warning message in the echo area (using message, which also appends it to the *Messages* buffer), or use warn/display-warning which append to and pop up the *Warnings* buffer. You might also be able to do what you want using D-Bus, but let's wait for other answers to come in – maybe what you're asking for is possibe after all. – Trevar

@Trevar thanks for your reply mate. Can you please give me more information about the D-Bus idea? or just direct me toward a link or anything that may help? Cheers. – Rocha

I've never used it myself. Documentation: M-: (info "(dbus)"). There are also some blog posts in the first hits for "emacs dbus". – Trevar

Answer 1

(message-box "World's on fire")

You might also want to M-x apropos RET ^x- to find out about other GUI features emacs supports.

If you want something more sophisticated, you have to use/write separte programs.
Emacs GUI support is limited, but it interacts quite well with other processes.

Sophistry

Thanks for your reply mate. As for using/writing programs suggestion, can you please advice me on where I can find more information about this? Is this included in the documentation. Unfortunately I couldn't find it in there :-(. I'm just learning Emacs so if I'm wrong please accept my apologies. Cheers – Rocha

I meant using something outside Emacs, such as QT, XULRunner or existing applications with a command line interface – Sophistry

Answer 2

You might want to look at the following. These are the popups that autocomplete uses.

https://github.com/m2ym/popup-el/tree/v0.4

Vehicular