process management question

[John E. Davis]

Hi,

I use emacs as my editor on VMS. I run it as a kept editor so that a ^Z in
it will return control back to the parent process that spawned it. This is
very useful allowing me continue editing later. In addition I use the logical
mail$edit to point to a file that mail spawns which attaches itself to the
emacs process so that I can use the currently spawned emacs to edit mail.

However, when I issue a ^Z from within emacs to exit back to mail, I come
back to mail leaving the mail$edit process spawned by mail hanging. This is
because a ^Z in emacs causes it to return to its parent which is currently
running mail but not back to the mail$edit process which attached itself to
emacs.

This works fine except for the fact that I have mail$edit processes waiting
in the background. To get rid of them I type 'attach davis_1' from within
mail. This allows the spawned process to exit properly and kill itself.
However this 'mail,..., attach davis_1' cycle is annoying.

I have tried to attach to emacs then kill the mail$edit process but then
mail thinks the process has completed and thinks no message was sent. The
other solution I have looked for is to redefine a command from within mail
that attaches to davis_1 if it exists allowing it to exit gracefully then
execute the command. (eg. mail/edit ---> attach davis_1,mail/edit). However I
know of no such way of redefining mail commands.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

--
--John

bitnet: davis@ohstpy
internet: da...@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu