Re: [Q] Several emacs instances / dired and "derived" buffers

[Kai Grossjohann <kai@emptydomain.de>]

"Ames Andreas (MPA/DF)" <Andreas.Ames@tenovis.com> writes:

> 1) I use emacs not only for editing but also as calendar, mua etc (I
>    think this is not extraordinary around here).  From time to time
>    emacs freezes and I'm suspecting gnus (I use procmail and I'm not
>    sure I have the locking right; furthermore I'm using nnimap with an
>    MS Exchange which seems sometimes to be unreachable).  It is not
>    enough of a problem for me to try to find the error(s) but I'm
>    thinking of separating the non-editing tasks of my emacs into its
>    own emacs instance/process.  That would also be an opportunity to
>    make my .emacs more lightweight and faster (because I could do
>    without starting calendar etc.).

Please note that Gnus gets very angry if something else frobs its
files.  So it is best to tell procmail to deliver mail for the group
nnml:foo.bar into the file ~/spool/foo.bar.in, and then to set up
mail-sources like this:

(setq mail-sources '((directory :path "~/spool" :suffix ".in")))

Please note that the file is ~/spool/foo.bar.in (with a dot between
foo and bar) even if Gnus uses the directory ~/Mail/foo/bar (with a
slash between foo and bar) for the group.

The same setup also works for nnfolder and other backends, you do not
have to change the mail-sources setting, just
gnus-secondary-select-methods.

>    Does it make sense to have sevaral instances of emacs running?  How
>    can I start emacs with a separate startup file (and not my default
>    .emacs)?  How can I make sure that gnuclient and friends finds only
>    my emacs-for-editing instance?  Are there other potential problems
>    I do not recognise yet?

I define a function kai-gnus which does the Gnus-specific setup.  Then
the Gnus Emacs is started as "emacs -f kai-gnus".

The other Emacs is started as "emacs -f server-start".

Kai