reader@newsguy.com wrote:
> Mick <michaelkintzios@gmail.com> writes:
>
>   
>> Don't know the first thing about emacs, but it may need bringing up
>> a terminal first which in turn runs emacs.  You may want to try
>> selecting the "Run in terminal" or invoke it like so:
>>
>> xterm -e /usr/bin/emacs
>>     
>
> This should not be a factor with X enabled emacs.  And in fact calling
> emacs at a cmd prompt just brigs up emacs in it own window, not
> another xterm.
>
> However, and surprisingly it does work... Inserting the xterm -e
> command  at: 
>    right click/ open with/ other
>
> Brings first an xterm which immediately spawns a new emacs window (not
> in the xterm but on its own)
>
> I'm pretty sure this is not what SHOULD happen though.  I SHOULD be
> able to just insert /usr/bin/emacs  since it does not run in an
> xterm. But... thanks .. at least I can edit a page with emacs now.
>
>   
I have this same problem on some machines. Notably the ones where I've 
put the most cruft in .emacs. I suspect that there is some bug that 
stops garbage-collection from happening during startup so emacs runs out 
of memory. Somehow having a tty attached works around that. A way to 
test is to launch emacs in the background from a terminal (with & at the 
end). If emacs hangs, I do "fg" in the shell  and hit enter a couple of 
times and emacs will (sometimes) continue its initialization process.

A better work-around than firing off emacs in the foreground is to make 
more of your .emacs do AUTOLOAD rather than REQUIRE or LOAD.

Better yet is to have emacs-server or gnuserv running, and putting 
emacsclient/gnuclient in the browser "editor"-config.