Here’s how I set mine up.

1) Autostart emacs –daemon using your choice of methods (autostart, Xsession, whatever)

2) In your .emacs you need this:

(if (and (daemonp) (locate-library "edit-server"))

(progn

(require 'edit-server)

; can add options here like (setq edit-server-new-frame-mode-line t) (setq edit-server-new-frame-minibuffer t)

(edit-server-start)))

3) Then in your .bashrc put this:

if [ -z "$DISPLAY" ]

then

  alias emacs='emacsclient -t'

  export EDITOR='emacsclient -t'

else

   alias emacs='emacsclient -c -n'

   export EDITOR='emacsclient -c -n'

fi

Works great. Of course, you need to start the daemon manually THIS TIME (and execute the script lines) or log out and log back on for this to work.

By the way, once you set up the alias, you can’t easily restart the emacs daemon. Remember you can override an alias with quotes: ‘emacs’ –daemon

Update: you can set ALTERNATE_EDITOR in your environment to the empty string and emacsclient will start a daemon if one is not running. So that means you could skip step 1 if you add:

export ALTERNATE_EDITOR=""

to step 3. This is nice because if you kill the server (to reload your .emacs, for example) or it dies (unlikely) then things till work without the user having to reload the daemon manually. Of course, you can still keep step 1 as well which makes your initial load a little faster, and still protects you against a dead daemon.

The problem with getting those Emacs commands ingrained in your head (or your fingers) is that you then have to use other programs! It is very painful to use Word or an IDE without those Emacs keystrokes.

I’m writing this on a Windows box using Firefox in a Blogger HTML editor. But guess what? Control+A takes me to the start of the line, Control+W cuts, and Control+Y pastes! Why? I’m running xkeymacs, a nice free program that lets you map Emacs keystrokes for Windows applications.

It does take a little work to get everything just right. For example, I added ^X-0 (zero) to send Firefox a Control+W which closes the current tab. ^X-2 can create a new tab. It is a little tricky to add new things (but not too bad, you just have to edit a text file with a lisp-like syntax). You also need to set it up so each program has its own settings (which means you can disable it for certain programs, or change Control+W to send escape (for Thunderbird, for example).

You can find xkeymacs here: http://www.cam.hi-ho.ne.jp/oishi/indexen.html

If you prefer just “fixing” Office applications, you might try: http://www.rath.ca/Misc/VBacs/

Oh, and if you don’t think Emacs is powerful enough, here’s some food for thought: http://www.informatimago.com/linux/emacs-on-user-mode-linux.html