Re: automatic selection of emacsclient/emacs?

[kgold@watson.ibm.com (kgold)]

Dan Elliott <dan-underscore-elliott-at-cox-dot-net@spamispathetic.org> writes:
> Hattuari wrote:
> > Is there a clean way to get Emacs to start as a client when there is an
> > available server?  I find it moderately annoying to have to look around to
> > see if there is already an instance of Emacs started in order to determine
> > if I should enter `emacs' or `emacsclient'. I much prefer running
> > emacsclient when I already have one instance of Emacs running.  One option
> > is to try and sniff for emacs with ps and filter out the current processes
> > such as grep emacs, and (assuming the script I'm running is also called
> > emacs) the launch script.  It would seem more correct to directly check to
> > see if the service is available.  Is there such a capability? 
> 
> Will I get flammed if I ask what the benefit of running emacs as a 
> client (opposed to the "usual" way) would be?  Could this be an 
> alternative to using TRAMP?

To Dan:

As your .emacs gets bigger, the emacs startup time can become several
seconds.  With client/server, you just start emacs as a server once
per login, and the new emacs clients attach very quickly.

To Hattuari:

I use gnuserv/gnuclient, but this might help.  

I use the command 'emacs' once to start the server at login.  From
then on, I alias 'e' to gnuclient to start clients.  Since I always
start the emacs server at login to read mail, my 'e' command never has
to check if the server is running.

-- 
Ken Goldman   kgold@watson.ibm.com   914-784-7646