Hello,

I'm writing for help with a problem involving Emacs and KSMServer. I
couldn't find a more appropriate place than this, but if there's a better
place to ask, please let me know.

I'm using KDE 3.5.4, with KSMServer 0.4. I recently upgraded from
Emacs 21.4 to Emacs 23.3. When I use Emacs 21, I can open a file in
Emacs, log out, log in again, and have the same file open in Emacs.
When I use Emacs 23, I can open a file, log out, log in again, and get
an Emacs window the same size and shape as my old one, but not with
the old file. I would like to get the same behavior in Emacs 23 that I
had in Emacs 21.

I figured out that KSMServer is the program that manages sessions, but
I couldn't find much documentation for how it works. One thing that
may be important is that Emacs 21 does not implement the XSMP session
management protocol, but Emacs 23 at least claims to. Does KSMServer
have a fallback mode for programs that don't use XSMP? If so, how does
it decide when to use its fallback mode?

I'm happy to help debug this, but I don't know where to start yet.

Thanks,
Noah Lavine

Please provide details about your system such as what versions of Plasma and Emacs you are using.

Admittedly I'm not that familiar with the mechanics of the session management features of Plasma, but I know that they work pretty well most of the time for KDE apps and Firefox - including which browser tabs I have open in my myriad browser windows strewn across umpteen plasma activities (most of the time). In general, I would expect that it's largely up to the application to determine what it will do when you close and reopen it with Plasma's session management just being about opening the application and positioning it in the same spot+desktop+activity that it was in when the session closed. However, I'm sure there's more to it as for example Dolphin and Kwrite just open to default states whenever they are launched, but will reopen whatever documents or locations you had open upon logout+login.