[h-e-w] Want a hybrid of traditional Emacs and EmacsW32

[Mark Ludwig]

Lennart, et al.,

I am a professional computer programmer, have been using Emacs for 
longer than I care to admit, and had Emacs 19 or 20 working well on my 
previous Windows Laptop (including the "Edit with Emacs" entry on the 
Windows Explorer shortcut menu via a Registry entry I entered manually) 
using Emacs client/server technology.  That setup worked, so there was a 
single executing instance of Emacs that got started via "Edit with 
Emacs" only if necessary.

I can't seem to get Emacs 22 to sit up and perform the same way, and I 
don't want all the command switching that I seem to be forced into if I 
take EmacsW32.  I just want "Edit with Emacs" and file associations to 
work again.  My Emacs 19/20 environment used gnuserv if I recall 
correctly (the disk was dying after I got my user data off it).

I can get emacsclient/emacsserver to work for "Edit with Emacs" once 
Emacs is running, but can't get it to start the first time.  How do I do 
this?  Can EmacsW32 be configured to leave the keyboard alone?  I know 
it's confusing -- and even occasionally find myself scrolling forward 
when I want to paste -- but I use Emacs on UNIX for work, too, so my 
fingers mostly know the original key bindings.

(The solution to starting Emacs the first time using 
emacsclient/emacsserver on UNIX leverages the ALTERNATE_EDITOR 
environmental variable, a concept that does not exist on Windows, as far 
as I know.)

Thanks!

Mark Ludwig

--
"I didn't care where Hemingway drank 
or Alice B. Toklas had her moustache trimmed."
-- David Sedaris, touring Paris