Re: Reuse frame with emacsclient and/or use shell aliases when finding files

[Thorsten Jolitz <tjolitz@gmail.com>]

Jacob Gerlach <jacobgerlach@gmail.com> writes:

Hi,

> I'm trying to better integrate my workflow in emacs. I've read a lot
> about using emacs server, and experimented a little bit with setting
> it up. If I open files with emacsclient, I end up with multiple
> separate frames (I think I mean frame and not window. I've never been
> positive I correctly understand the terminology). Although the frames
> are connected through the server, I miss some of the navigation
> functionality I get when I have multiple windows in a frame
> (other-window, kill-buffer-and-window, etc).

when using a terminal multiplexer like tmux or gnu-screen or a tiling
window-manager like stumpwm or awesome or so, and configuring them with
emacs key-bindings, frame navigation is pretty similar to window
navigation in Emacs, only with a special preserved prefix like
e.g. C-o. The nice thing is that you can have an external browser, a
shell and an emacsclient side by side almost as if they were 3 Emacs
buffers. 

> What I think that I want to do is figure out how to reuse an existing
> GUI frame if it exists. In other words, if I run `emacsclient -c
> foofile' from my shell and I already have a frame open, I would like
> foofile to open in that frame (and have the option to split the frame
> if possible). If no frame is open (i.e. just the server), I would 
> like the normal behavior of opening a new frame.

Thats something I tried to figure out to - how to address a specific
already open emacsclient instance, i.e. start it, figure out its process
id or so, and later on communicate with it (programmatically, not
interactively)

> I realize that another (perhaps better option) is to use emacs as my
> shell. I'm experimenting with this but I am not sold yet.
>
> Another problem, and the reason I'm opening multiple files from the
> shell in the first place (instead of from within emacs), is that I
> mostly navigate around between different projects using shell aliases.
> Is there any way to use those aliases so that when I find-file I don't
> have to manually navigate to the desired directory?
>
> Any other recommendations that come to mind to migrate work from the
> shell to emacs are welcome.

dired + ido? recent-files?

-- 
cheers,
Thorsten