From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: FCC Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Efficient Emacs usage? Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 15:58:26 +0100 Organization: UPC Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: deer.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1101146185 31052 80.91.229.6 (22 Nov 2004 17:56:25 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 17:56:25 +0000 (UTC) Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Nov 22 18:56:17 2004 Return-path: Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by deer.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1CWIQC-0003xm-00 for ; Mon, 22 Nov 2004 18:56:16 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.33) id 1CWIZG-0003i4-Aa for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Mon, 22 Nov 2004 13:05:38 -0500 Original-Path: shelby.stanford.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!newsmi-us.news.garr.it!newsmi-eu.news.garr.it!NewsITBone-GARR!irazu.switch.ch!switch.ch!news.rediris.es!news.cesca.es!news.upc.es!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 59 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: adca05.upc.es Original-X-Trace: defalla.upc.es 1101135512 29388 147.83.51.18 (22 Nov 2004 14:58:32 GMT) Original-X-Complaints-To: newsmngr@upc.es Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: 22 Nov 2004 14:58:32 GMT User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.8 (Windows/20040913) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en Original-Xref: shelby.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:126810 Original-To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:22210 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.help:22210 Hello all, Having been using Emacs for developing code and writing articles since 1998 on Windows which gave me enough time to discover its wealth of features, now I wonder if I am using it the most productive way possible. Yesterday, I was browsing the info node Emacs, and I came across the function find-dired. Then, I thought, in the morning, at work, how does one actually start working? Most of the time it is part of a file name that is remembered, sometimes a directory. Using Explorer to try to find it is probably the worst way of doing this (which, I admit, what I used to do; sort of walking around the city trying to go to a friend's place). Smarter is to search for a file or directory name using Explorer; use mouse to choose one particular type of search, next fill out a form (today's software world is very much in love with WYSIWYG type``forms", which is sort of an overshoot to search for a file - if not for many other things). Then, I discovered find-dired, and configured it to use Cygwin, and by pressing a key combination plus answering 2 questions on the minibuffer, my search was on the run already. The resulting *find* buffer has another big advantage: It is a dired buffer with tons of features: For example, I could copy the path to clipboard, and then I could use it in opening or saving documents with other Windows applications on the same directory, instead of browsing my way through all the directories on my hard drive. There are the desktop and session modes to remember all the open files from yesterday. But to locate that one, one has to still search for a file or directory name. Probably next comes the search-replace functions that work inside a buffer; specifically isearch-occur and isearch-forward-regexp. Then comes the grep and its variants, plus other functionality in dired... However, for file copying, renaming, moving, etc. I am using one of those freely available Norton Commander-style dual pane file managers, called freeCommander. Very intuitive. I would love to use such a mode that also supports the functionality of dired in Emacs. I know the mc.el, and ec.el; but I could never get the function-key bindings working with mc.el; and ec.el is too simple (it does not support dired). But what if one is starting a new file? Use skeletons and auto-inserting! I configured Emacs to auto-insert my template for that particular type of file; for example several LaTeX templates or an elisp function template. That is simply great; it not only saves you lots of keystrokes, but also it lets you concentrate on the more important parts of your work by freeing you from remembering all the exact syntax. I am wondering if I am missing anything of Emacs that could be of great use to me (sorry, gnus does not count for me, although I am very much aware of its popularity among Emacs users, because probably it would be more efficient for me if I did not have to check or send e-mails and also spend less time on the internet). Thanks in advance and best, -- FCC. === Assimilate my shorts! -Borg Simpson.