Re: zsh outside of Emacs (was: Why do we need a number of different terminal modes in Emacs?)

[Robert Thorpe]

Karl Voit <devnull@Karl-Voit.at> 
> * Robert Thorpe <rt@robertthorpeconsulting.com> wrote:
>> Karl Voit <devnull@Karl-Voit.at> writes:
>>
...
>>> And what advantages would I get?
>>
>> You get to work inside Emacs and Screen should stop your terminals from
>> getting hosed when Emacs crashes.
>
> Sorry, I meant what advantages do I get compared to a separate
> Terminal emulation running my GNU screen sessions?
>
> I don't see much difference between Alt-TAB + XOrg-copy&paste and
> C-x b + Emacs-copy&paste

It depends on how much use you make of Emacs specific features.  Since
bash has the same cursor movement commands as Emacs those aren't so
important.  In terminal line-mode or shell mode you can use M-/
(dabbrev-expand).  So, if you're writing a shell script or I have a file
open that contains shell commands you don't need to copy & paste so
much, you can write a few character of the command and complete it with
M-/.  If you don't use these facilities though then it's best to xterm
because it does better terminal emulation.

> The package is called emacs-snapshot. Debian GNU/Linux Wheezy was
> providing no Emacs 24 to me. Therefore I installed the snapshot
> package.

Snapshots are generally not very reliable.

> Which Debian Wheezy packages from which source do you recommend?

I don't know about Debian.  Others have posted about that.

I understand that Debian & Ubuntu are similar though.  On Ubuntu there
are things called "PPAs", "personal package archives".  People can host
them and put up things they've built.  Someone has put up a backport of
Emacs 23.4 which uses the libraries I already have (which avoids the
problem of regular backports which is the huge number of libraries they
drag along).  Perhaps something similar is available under Debian.

BR,
Robert Thorpe