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

["Ames Andreas (MPA/DF)" <Andreas.Ames@tenovis.com>]

Hi all,

I've got two questions for which I'd welcome your experienced advice.

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.).

   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?

2) I use separate filesystem directories for separate programming (and
   other) projects (surprise, surprise).  When I begin working on one
   project, I usually dired its toplevel directory and then I open
   buffers below that one.  When I switch to another project I oftenly
   want to close all buffers related to the first project.  This is
   even a necessity when the project is in a directory that I have
   mounted from a mobile computer because I want/must to unmount when
   I stop working.

   Currently I just close all these buffers manually.  I'm wondering
   if there isn't someone who has already written a command that
   closes all buffers which are visiting files below a given
   directory.


TIA,

andreas