Comment 3 for bug 601452

Looking at the conkeror documentation here:
http://conkeror.org/UserVariables

editor_shell_command
"Shell command used to invoke an external editor. Default is the value of the environment variable EDITOR. "

Explains why it works when run from a shell as I have the EDITOR env variable set in my .bashrc.

However, it also says:
Default is getenv("VISUAL") || getenv("EDITOR") || "emacs"

So it should be falling through to 'emacs' (which my EDITOR variable is set to). When I manual set the 'editor_shell_command' variable in my .conkerorrc I am able to launch the external editor.