Re: shell-like Emacs CLI, and my Usenet behaviour

[Pascal J. Bourguignon]

Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se> writes:

> After getting into several firefights, not just here but all over
> Usenet, I have decided to change my behaviour. So it happened,
> that my laptop (an old warhorse Dell Inspiron 1300), fell out of
> my backpack, and broke (but I salvaged the HDD), and I am a
> non-religious, "rational" believer in karma, so I interpreted this
> as a sign that I should change my behaviour, and not be so easily
> provoked, or as confrontational/high-energy in style.
>
> But, not dwelling on the past, I have been thinking if not Emacs
> would benefit from a shell-like CLI, instead of hammering the RET
> between each stage?
>
> Is this a new idea or did anyone do work on it?
>
> There are several advantages:
>
> For a simple example, the advantage is speed, less typing, and no
> visual "reorient" after the RET.
>
> In a shell:
>
> man emacs RET

  man SPC emacs RET

> In Emacs:
>
> M-x man RET emacs RET


The only thing that's earned in typing SPC instead of RET is that it
doesn't lock you in the command man. Perhaps you wanted actually woman,
so you can C-a wo RET before the final RET.


Now since emacs is a modeless editor, you couldn't (a-priori) edit the
commands in the same buffer as the normal text, so you would have to
switch to a command buffer.  

C-x b *command-buffer RET man SPC emacs RET C-x b pgm.txt RET
begins to feel much less interesting than:
M-x man RET emacs RET

otherwise, it is possible to edit commands directly in normal buffers.
In emacs, in most modes, C-x C-e is left bound to eval-last-sexp, so you
can always type (man "emacs") C-x C-e in any buffer.

You could write a command, bound for example to C-RET, that would take
the text on the current line and interpret it as an emacs command.  So
you could type:

RET man SPC emacs C-RET
instead of 
M-x man RET emacs RET


Still no obvious gain.  Actually, it may be quite useful to have such a
command, or otherwise a way to insert command "buttons" in any text
buffer.  It's rather easy to implement in emacs.


-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__
http://www.informatimago.com/