Re: Org Clock Timer in Frame Title bug

[George Kettleborough <g.kettleborough@uea.ac.uk>]

On Sun, Apr 22 2012, Matt Lundin wrote:
> Mike McLean <mike.mclean@pobox.com> writes:
>
>> It appears that there is a small problem with commit
>> 37fafb7b9e4e8e1eeb6b8faa76a1621c28970ef5 (Option for clock and timer to
>> be displayed in frame-title). The default value offrame-title-format in
>> my setup is t and this causes an error when clocking in/out.
>
> I can confirm this bug. The problem is that org-clock-out calls a delq
> on frame-title-format regardless of the value of
> org-clock-clocked-in-display. This is a problem because
> frame-title-format can be either a list or a string. Note: the same
> problem will occur when calling org-clock-in if the value of
> frame-title-format is a string and if org-clock-clocked-in-display is
> set to 'frame-title.

Checking (listp frame-title-format) ensures there will be no error when
calling delq, but it doesn't fix the feature.  If the user's
frame-title-format is not a list then the feature will not work for no
apparent reason.  The same thing goes for global-mode-string too, which
the current release of org-mode modifies.

For the clock and timer display features to work as intended both of
these variables need to be lists with either a string or a list as the
first element.  Note that simply being a list is not enough, it must
contain a string or list as first element.  This format causes the
elements of the list to be treated as mode-line-formats recursively.

The following in both org-clock.el and org-timer.el will ensure both
variables have the correct format to begin with:

(unless (and (listp frame-title-format)
             (or (stringp (first frame-title-format))
                 (listp (first frame-title-format))))
  (setq frame-title-format (list "" frame-title-format)))

(unless (and (listp global-mode-string)
             (or (stringp (first global-mode-string))
                 (listp (first global-mode-string))))
  (setq global-mode-string (list "" global-mode-string)))

It might be better to do this just once in org.el or org-install.el,
since maybe other modules might want to put stuff in the mode-line or
frame-title.

Of course the user or another mode might edit either of the variables to
something bad (like a symbol or string) afterwards.  Maybe this should
be done every time before clock-in/timer-start or any time we wish to
append stuff to either of these lists?

Thanks,

George.