Re: Emacs Book Vs Emacs Manuals

[Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl>]

On 2015-06-26, at 17:03, Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se> wrote:

> Ken Goldman <kgoldman@us.ibm.com> writes:
>
>> As someone who uses keyboard macros constantly ...
>>
>> I think they're certainly faster to write than lisp,
>> since there's no debug time.
>>
>> For some specialized task I'll probably never use
>> again, I can probably write the macro with less
>> keystrokes than calling up .emacs and typing in
>> the elisp.
>>
>> For the rare times I think I'll need the command
>> again, I assign it to a key chord or save it.
>
> What do you typically produce with your macros? If you
> give me a good example where the macro is the life
> saver, I can think how I would do the same thing.

What about this: you have a LaTeX table with 4 columns, and you want to
delete the second one.  While you /can/ do it with LaTeX hackery
(essentially making one of the columns invisible), you want to deal with
it at the level of the source file.  You put the point at the beginning
of the first row and do something along these lines:

F3
C-s & RET C-SPC C-s C-s RET C-w C-a C-n
F4

and then press F4 once for each row (or even C-8 F4 if you know you have
8 more rows to go).

I cannot see how Elisp could be faster for this, even if you /think/ in
Elisp /and/ can touch-type.

Best,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science
Adam Mickiewicz University