Creating a Desktop Launcher for Emacs Calc

On most Linux desktop environments you can create a launcher entry by adding a desktop file in ~/.local/share/applications/. Once added the app icon will appear in your applications list. Here is the calc.desktop file I created:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Calc (Emacs)
GenericName=Calculator
Comment=Emacs Calculator
Exec=emacs -Q --eval "(full-calc)" -l "~/.config/emacs/early-init.el"
Icon=emacs
Type=Application
Terminal=false
Categories=Utility;

To make sure it launches quickly I'm skipping my full init file with -Q and manually loading my early-init.el to hide the tool-bar etc.. See emacs(1) for all options.

This solution should work automatically in most mainstream Linux/BSD desktop environments. Although you may need to log out and back in to refresh your applications list. If you use a window manager like i3 or sway you can using a custom launcher that supports desktop files, or a script like j4-dmenu-desktop. I use the latter in conjunction with wmenu on sway to launch applications.

# Simple Application Launcher for Sway
bindsym $mod+space exec j4-dmenu-desktop --no-generic --dmenu="wmenu -b -f 'Monospace 16' -i" | xargs swaymsg exec --

If you run emacs as a daemon then you can launch calc directly into an emacsclient frame instead. This has the added benefit of maintaining your calc history and current emacs theme. For further discussion of emacsclient see my earlier blog post.

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Calc (Emacs Client)
GenericName=Calculator
Comment=Emacs Calculator
Exec=emacsclient -c --eval "(full-calc)"
Icon=emacs
Type=Application
Terminal=false
Categories=Utility;

• Calc Manual gnu.org Emacs Advance Desktop Calculator
• j4-dmenu-desktop github.com created by enkore et. al.
• Desktop File Specification freedesktop.org