In an earlier post I had listed the server-mode mechanism to allow client/server editing using Emacs. However, this require some setup and also an active Emacs session.
With the latest version of Emacs (23.1), a new mechanism to invoke Emacs in a server mode has been introduced. Basically, emacs can be invoked with the –daemon option from the shell command line:
$ emacs --daemon
This will run emacs in the background as a daemon which will be listening in to emacsclient connections. To actually start a edit session, use emacsclient from the command line as before with the file name as a parameter.
A couple of new options have been added to the 23.1 emacsclient which allow the client to either
- Invoke a terminal editing session (via the -t option to emacsclient), or
- Create or reuse a GUI frame for the editing session (default behavior)
The advantage here is that Emacs can now truly act as a server (without any visible window or terminal session) and can be added to the logon/start up scripts.
/usr 