Question

I am switching to GNU emacs for my python and bash scripting. I really enjoy this, but I don’t like the X-window portion of emacs. As such, I always use emacs -nw <my_file> to edit my files. However, when I associate my .py and .sh files with emacs, I end up opening emacs in X-window mode when I double-click on them from gnome-nautilus (Ubuntu 10.10).

What I would like to know is: What should I add to my .emacs file in order to use emacs without X-window when I double click on my files? Note: I do want emacs to open a terminal, possibly resize it according to my specifications (already have a .sh script for that), launch itself and open my file.

How should I accomplish that?

Cheers!

EDIT: Thanks for all the answers! I have to give the check to the most complete one, although of course it builds on the preceding ones.

Answer 1

Building on Gareth’s answer:

To open a file in an existing emacs session if one is running, but open a new one in a terminal if there isn’t one, you can do the following:

1. Add (server-start) to your .emacs

2. Create a script run_emacs with the following contents:

   #!/bin/bash
   gnome-terminal -e "emacs -nw $@"
   

   and make it executable.

3. Set your application to open python and bash files to be emacsclient -a /path/to/run_emacs %F (if you place run_emacs somewhere in your $PATH, you can leave out the /path/to/ bit).