Emacs command frequencies: [was: emacs-w3m question]

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hi, Xah!

On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 02:38:24PM -0800, Xah wrote:

> also note, when i did research on emacs command frequency, one
> surprising result is that a programer types shortcuts more than he
> actually type letters.

Not _quite_ true from my afternoon session!  See below, or the attached
file.  I was into a heavy edebugging session (the utility recorded hardly
any of these commands; presumably, edebug nullified the hook, somehow),
and writing a log of this activity at the same time.

However, I used frame switching commands 114 times, putting them into
fifth place.  This quite surprised me.

> Of my Emacs Commands Frequency study, 37% of key strokes involves data
> entry (that is, calling the commands ???self-insert-command??? and
> ???newline??? (pressing return), while the rest 63% are calling all other
> commands. This seems counter-intuitive, because one might think typing
> should probably be the bulk of activity and moving cursor and deleting
> text or other commands are only done few times per minute.

You should perhaps include `newline-and-indent' (C-j) in this category
too.

> If we consider commands invoked by the Backspace key as data entry
> too, then 40% are data entry, while 60% are editing commands. Still
> surprising. Going one step further, if we consider the next group of
> most used commands of moving the cursor by the smallest unit (i.e.
> previous-line (C-p), next-line (C-n), backward-char (C-b), forward-
> char (C-f) (also invoked by the arrow keys)) as part of data entry,
> then, 64% are ???data entry??? and 36% are other command calls.

> This data suggests that better shortcut placement is more important
> than better placement of letter keys for programing.

> »
> --------------------

> if you are interested to find out your own pattern of emacs command
> use, you can try the lisp file at the bottom of this page:

> http://xahlee.org/emacs/command-frequency.html

> If you can send me your result, that'll be great.

> Alan, you are very welcome to send me your result too.

Thanks!  Please see the attached file.

>   Xah

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).

Alan_Mackenzie_command-frequencies.txt
Description: Text document