Problem: I usually work on several different tasks in parallel in
Emacs (for example on several different software projects). I wish for
these tasks to be isolated from each other, in the sense that buffers,
current working directory and other global configuration state in
Emacs is separate.

Working in an X windows environment, a solution is to start up one
Emacs instance for every task. This works quite well, and Emacs can be
made to start up quick.

The Mac environment limits me to a single instance, causing all tasks
to mix up (buffers, configuration state, working directory and so on).
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to tackle this problem of
multiple Emacs instance on Mac? A few solutions I have considered:

- Run Emacs in text mode in Terminal -- Allows me to at any time open
a new Terminal window with a new Emacs instance. However,
fontification abilities are too limited (only 8 colors supported by
Terminal, and other third-party terminals are unacceptably slow)
compared to Carbon Emacs to consider using it for eight hours a day.
Additionally, there are some unresolved keybinding issues. (Can't get
C-( or C-/ to be recognized -- these are really important in my
editing modes)

- Start several Carbon Emacs instances -- Possible to create
additional instances by copying and renaming the Emacs.app directory,
but limits to the renamed copies available. Not satisfactory solution

- Make a low-level Emacs hack to handle multiple "instances" within a
single Emacs by keeping all state under a pointer which can be
switched. If all Emacs state was available under such a pointer/
variable, which could be swapped to switch instances (buffers and all
state in the Emacs process), but keep the current frame, then maybe
that could serve the purposes. But this doesn't sound very realistic.
Would probably be better to spend time on supporting 256 colors in
Terminal and work out possible keybinding issue. But, Terminal is
closed source, as far as I know.

Any thoughts?

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