;;; vi-dot.el --- Implementation of vi's dot command for Emacs ;; Copyright (C) 1998 Will Mengarini ;; Author: Will Mengarini ;; URL: ;; Created: Mo 02 Mar 98 ;; Version: 0.51, We 13 May 98 ;; Keywords: abbrev, vi, dot, ., universal argument, typematic, repeat ;; This file is part of GNU Emacs. ;; This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify ;; it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by ;; the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) ;; any later version. ;; This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, ;; but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of ;; MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the ;; GNU General Public License for more details. ;; You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License ;; along with GNU Emacs; see the file COPYING. If not, write to the ;; Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, ;; Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA. ;;; Commentary: ;; Sometimes the fastest way to get something done is just to lean on a key; ;; moving forward through a series of words by leaning on M-f is an example. ;; But 'forward-page is orthodoxily bound to C-x ], so moving forward through ;; several pages requires ;; Loop until desired page is reached: ;; Hold down control key with left pinkie. ;; Tap . ;; Lift left pinkie off control key. ;; Tap <]>. ;; This is a pain in the ass. ;; This package defines a command that repeats the preceding command, ;; whatever that was. The command is called `vi-dot' because the vi editor, ;; Emacs's arch-rival among the Great Unwashed, does that when "." is pressed ;; in its command mode. ;; Starting with GNU Emacs 20.3, this package is part of Emacs, and the ;; `vi-dot' command is bound to the key sequence C-x z. (You can actually ;; keep repeating the most recent command by just repeating the z after the ;; first C-x z.) However, you can use this package with older versions of ;; GNU Emacs by installing it yourself. Here's how: ;; [1] Copy this file to a directory that appears in your load-path. ;; `load-path' is the name of a variable that contains a list of ;; directories Emacs searches for files to load. To prepend another ;; directory to load-path, put a line like ;; (add-to-list 'load-path "c:/My_Directory") in your .emacs file. ;; [2] Then, put the line ;; (require 'vi-dot) ;; in your .emacs file. (Don't try to use an autoload, because then the ;; first time vi-dot is invoked, some data the command may need to know ;; about the preceding command won't have been set.) Then put the line ;; (global-set-key "\C-xz" 'vi-dot) ;; in your .emacs to give the command its orthodox binding of C-x z. ;; [3] Those lines in your .emacs will be evaluated every time you start a ;; new Emacs session, & will cause this package to be available in that ;; session. To make it available in the session in which you typed the ;; lines into your .emacs file, move the cursor to the (require) line, ;; type C-SPC to set the mark, move it to the beginning of the line after ;; the `global-set-key', and type M-x eval-region. You should then see ;; "nil" in the echo area; that's the value of the final form evaluated. ;; If you see an error message, there's a typo. You won't need to do ;; this `eval-region' again; in the future, when you load Emacs, that ;; region will be evaluated along with the rest of your .emacs at load ;; time. This is just for adding lines to .emacs during a running ;; session. ;; That's it; vi-dot is installed & ready for use. ;; Since the whole point of vi-dot is to let you repeat commands that are ;; bound to multiple keystrokes by leaning on a *single* key, it seems not to ;; make sense to bind vi-dot itself to a multiple-character key sequence, but ;; there aren't any appropriate single characters left in the orthodox global ;; map. (Meta characters don't count because they require two keystrokes if ;; you don't have a real meta key, and things like function keys can't be ;; relied on to be available to all users. We considered rebinding C-z, ;; since C-x C-z is also bound to the same command, but RMS decided too many ;; users were accustomed to the orthodox meaning of C-z.) So the vi-dot ;; command checks what key sequence it was invoked by, and allows you to ;; repeat the final key in that sequence to keep repeating the command. ;; For example, C-x ] C-x z z z will move forward 4 pages. ;; This works correctly inside a keyboard macro as far as recording and ;; playback go, but `edit-kbd-macro' gets it wrong. That shouldn't really ;; matter; if you need to edit something like ;; C-x ] ;; forward-page ;; C-x z ;; vi-dot ;; zz ;; self-insert-command * 2 ;; C-x ;; Control-X-prefix ;; you can just kill the bogus final 2 lines, then duplicate the vi-dot line ;; as many times as it's really needed. Also, `edit-kbd-macro' works ;; correctly if `vi-dot' is invoked through a rebinding to a single keystroke ;; and the global variable vi-dot-repeat-on-final-keystroke is set to a value ;; that doesn't include that keystroke. For example, the lines ;; (global-set-key "\C-z" 'vi-dot) ;; (setq vi-dot-repeat-on-final-keystroke "z") ;; in your .emacs would allow `edit-kbd-macro' to work correctly when C-z was ;; used in a keyboard macro to invoke `vi-dot', but would still allow C-x z ;; to be used for `vi-dot' elsewhere. The real reason for documenting this ;; isn't that anybody would need it for the `edit-kbd-macro' problem, but ;; that there might be other unexpected ramifications of re-executing on ;; repetitions of the final keystroke, and this shows how to do workarounds. ;; If the preceding command had a prefix argument, that argument is applied ;; to the vi-dot command, unless the vi-dot command is given a new prefix ;; argument, in which case it applies that new prefix argument to the ;; preceding command. This means a key sequence like C-u - C-x C-t can be ;; repeated. (It shoves the preceding line upward in the buffer.) ;; Here are some other key sequences with which vi-dot might be useful: ;; C-u - C-t [shove preceding character backward in line] ;; C-u - M-t [shove preceding word backward in sentence] ;; C-x ^ enlarge-window [one line] (assuming frame has > 1 window) ;; C-u - C-x ^ [shrink window one line] ;; C-x ` next-error ;; C-u - C-x ` [previous error] ;; C-x DEL backward-kill-sentence ;; C-x e call-last-kbd-macro ;; C-x r i insert-register ;; C-x r t string-rectangle ;; C-x TAB indent-rigidly [one character] ;; C-u - C-x TAB [outdent rigidly one character] ;; C-x { shrink-window-horizontally ;; C-x } enlarge-window-horizontally ;; Using vi-dot.el doesn't entail a performance hit. There's a ;; straightforward way to implement a package like this that would save some ;; data about each command as it was executed, but that Lisp would need to be ;; interpreted on every keystroke, which is Bad. This implementation doesn't ;; do it that way; the peformance impact on almost all keystrokes is 0. ;; Buried in the implementation is a reference to a function in my ;; typematic.el package, which isn't part of GNU Emacs. However, that ;; package is *not* required by vi-dot; the reference allows it to be used, ;; but doesn't require it. ;;; Code: (eval-when-compile (require 'cl)) ;;;;; ************************* USER OPTIONS ************************** ;;;;; (defvar vi-dot-too-dangerous '(kill-this-buffer) "Commands too dangerous to repeat with vi-dot.") ;; If the last command was self-insert-command, the char to be inserted was ;; obtained by that command from last-command-char, which has now been ;; clobbered by the command sequence that invoked vi-dot. We could get it ;; from (recent-keys) & set last-command-char to that, "unclobbering" it, but ;; this has the disadvantage that if the user types a sequence of different ;; chars then invokes vi-dot, only the final char will be inserted. In vi, ;; the dot command can reinsert the entire most-recently-inserted sequence. ;; To do the same thing here, we need to extract the string to insert from ;; the undo information, then insert a new copy in the buffer. However, the ;; built-in 'insert, which takes a string as an arg, is a little different ;; from 'self-insert-command, which takes only a prefix arg; 'insert ignores ;; 'overwrite-mode. GNU Emacs 19.34 has no self-insert-string. But there's ;; one in my dotemacs.el (on the web), so if you want to, you can define that ;; in your .emacs, & it'll Just Work, as it will in any future Emaecse that ;; have self-insert-string. Or users can code their own ;; insert-string-with-trumpet-fanfare and use that by customizing this: ;; Support XEmacs. (and (string-match "XEmacs" emacs-version) (not (fboundp 'self-insert-string)) (progn (defun self-insert-char (char) "Insert CHAR respecting things like overwrite mode & auto-fill." (or (characterp char) (error "self-insert-char: arg %S not a char" char)) (let ((last-command-char char)) (self-insert-command 1))) (defun self-insert-string (string) "Insert STRING respecting things like overwrite mode & auto-fill." (mapc 'self-insert-char string)) ;; self-insert-format expects to be used as a Zipfean alias ;; in the (eval-expression) minibuffer, for doing things like ;; inserting sequences of integers. (defun self-insert-format (format &rest exprs) "Self-insert each character of (format FORMAT &rest EXPRS)." (self-insert-string (apply 'format format exprs))) (defun vi-dot-quiet-message (fmt &rest args) "Like `message', but uses progress-priority `display-message' instead." (apply 'lmessage 'progress fmt args)))) (defvar vi-dot-insert-function (catch t (mapcar (lambda (f) (if (fboundp f) (throw t f))) [self-insert-string insert])) "Function used by vi-dot command to re-insert a string of characters. In a vanilla GNU Emacs this will default to 'insert, which doesn't respect overwrite-mode; customize with your own insertion function, taking a single string as an argument, if you have one.") (defvar vi-dot-message-function (if (fboundp 'vi-dot-quiet-message) 'vi-dot-quiet-message nil) "If non-nil, function used by vi-dot command to say what it's doing. Message is something like \"Repeating command glorp\". To disable such messages, assign 'ignore to this variable. To customize display, assign a function that takes one string as an arg and displays it however you want.") (defvar vi-dot-repeat-on-final-keystroke t "Allow `vi-dot' to re-execute every time a single keystroke is hit even if that keystroke isn't a complete key sequence to which `vi-dot' is bound. If this variable is t, `vi-dot' determines what key sequence it was invoked by, extracts the final character of that sequence, and re-executes as many times as that final character is hit; so for example if `vi-dot' is bound to C-x z, typing C-x z z z repeats the previous command 3 times. If this variable is a sequence of characters, then re-execution only occurs if the final character by which `vi-dot' was invoked is a member of that sequence. If this variable is nil, no re-execution occurs.") ;;;;; ****************** HACKS TO THE REST OF EMACS ******************* ;;;;; ;; The basic strategy is to use last-command, a variable built in to Emacs. ;; There are 2 issues that complicate this strategy. The first is that ;; last-command is given a bogus value when any kill command is executed; ;; this is done to make it easy for 'yank-pop to know that it's being invoked ;; after a kill command. The second is that the meaning of the command is ;; often altered by the prefix arg, but although Emacs (GNU 19.34) has a ;; builtin prefix-arg specifying the arg for the next command, as well as a ;; builtin current-prefix-arg, it has no builtin last-prefix-arg. ;; There's a builtin (this-command-keys), the return value of which could be ;; executed with (command-execute), but there's no (last-command-keys). ;; Using (last-command-keys) if it existed wouldn't be optimal, however, ;; since it would complicate checking membership in vi-dot-too-dangerous. ;; It would of course be trivial to implement last-prefix-arg & ;; true-last-command by putting something in post-command-hook, but that ;; entails a performance hit; the approach taken below avoids that. ;; First cope with (kill-region). It's straightforward to advise it to save ;; the true value of this-command before clobbering it. (require 'advice) (defvar vi-dot-last-kill-command nil "True value of this-command before (kill-region) clobbered it.") (defadvice kill-region (before vi-dot-save-last-kill-command act) "Remember true value of this-command before (kill-region) clobbers it." (setq vi-dot-last-kill-command this-command)) ;; Next cope with the prefix arg. I can advise the various functions that ;; create prefix args to save the arg in a variable ... (defvar vi-dot-prefix-arg nil "Prefix arg created as most recent universal argument.") ;; ... but alone that's not enough, because if last-command's prefix arg was ;; nil, none of those functions were ever called, so whatever command before ;; last-command did have a prefix arg has left it in vi-dot-prefix-arg, & I ;; need a way to tell whether whatever's in there applies to last-command. ;; From Info|ELisp|Command Loop|Reading Input|Key Sequence Input: ;; - Variable: num-input-keys ;; This variable's value is the number of key sequences processed so far ;; in this Emacs session. This includes key sequences read from the ;; terminal and key sequences read from keyboard macros being executed. ;; num-input-keys counts key *sequences*, not key *strokes*; it's only ;; incremented after reading a complete key sequence mapping to a command. (defvar vi-dot-num-input-keys-at-prefix -1 "# of key sequences read in Emacs session when prefix-arg defined.") (mapcar (lambda (f) (eval `(defadvice ,f (after vi-dot-save-universal-arg act) (setq vi-dot-prefix-arg current-prefix-arg vi-dot-num-input-keys-at-prefix num-input-keys)))) [universal-argument-more universal-argument-other-key typematic-universal-argument-more-or-less]) ;; Coping with strings of self-insert commands gets hairy when they interact ;; with auto-filling. Most problems are eliminated by remembering what we're ;; self-inserting, so we only need to get it from the undo information once. (defvar vi-dot-last-self-insert nil "If last repeated command was self-insert-command, it inserted this.") ;; That'll require another keystroke count so we know we're in a string of ;; repetitions of self-insert commands: (defvar vi-dot-num-input-keys-at-self-insert -1 "# key sequences read in Emacs session when self-insert-command repeated.") ;;;;; *************** ANALOGOUS HACKS TO VI-DOT ITSELF **************** ;;;;; ;; That mechanism of checking num-input-keys to figure out what's really ;; going on can be useful to other commands that need to fine-tune their ;; interaction with vi-dot. Instead of requiring them to advise vi-dot, we ;; can just defvar the value they need here, & setq it in the vi-dot command: (defvar vi-dot-num-input-keys-at-vi-dot -1 "# key sequences read in Emacs session when vi-dot last invoked.") ;; Also, we can assign a name to the test for which that variable is ;; intended, which thereby documents here how to use it, & makes code that ;; uses it self-documenting: (defsubst vi-dot-is-really-this-command () "Return t if this command is happening because user invoked `vi-dot'. Usually, when a command is executing, the Emacs builtin variable `this-command' identifies the command the user invoked. Some commands modify that variable on the theory they're doing more good than harm; `vi-dot' does that, and usually does do more good than harm. However, like all do-gooders, sometimes `vi-dot' gets surprising results from its altruism. The value of this function is always whether the value of `this-command' would've been 'vi-dot if `vi-dot' hadn't modified it." (= vi-dot-num-input-keys-at-vi-dot num-input-keys)) ;; An example of the use of (vi-dot-is-really-this-command) may still be ;; available in ; search for ;; "defun wm-switch-buffer". ;;;;; ******************* THE VI-DOT COMMAND ITSELF ******************* ;;;;; (defun vi-dot (vi-dot-arg) "Repeat most recently executed command. With prefix arg, apply new prefix arg to that command; otherwise, maintain prefix arg of most recently executed command if it had one. This command is named after the `.' command in the Unix vi editor. If this command is invoked by a multi-character key sequence, it can then be repeated by repeating the final character of that sequence. This behavior can be modified by the global variable `vi-dot-repeat-on-final-keystroke'." ;; The most recently executed command could be anything, so surprises could ;; result if it were re-executed in a context where new dynamically ;; localized variables were shadowing global variables in a `let' clause in ;; here. (Remember that GNU Emacs 19 is dynamically localized.) ;; To avoid that, I tried the `lexical-let' of the Common Lisp extensions, ;; but that entails a very noticeable performance hit, so instead I use the ;; "vi-dot-" prefix, reserved by this package, for *local* variables that ;; might be visible to re-executed commands, including this function's arg. (interactive "P") (when (eq last-command 'kill-region) (setq last-command vi-dot-last-kill-command)) (setq this-command last-command vi-dot-num-input-keys-at-vi-dot num-input-keys) (when (eq last-command 'mode-exited) (error "last-command is mode-exited & can't be repeated")) (when (eq last-command t) (error "last-command errored & can't be repeated")) (when (memq last-command vi-dot-too-dangerous) (error "Command %S too dangerous to repeat automatically" last-command)) (when (and (null vi-dot-arg) (<= (- num-input-keys vi-dot-num-input-keys-at-prefix) 2)) (setq vi-dot-arg vi-dot-prefix-arg)) ;; Now determine whether to loop on repeated taps of the final character ;; of the key sequence that invoked vi-dot. The Emacs global ;; last-command-char contains the final character now, but may not still ;; contain it after the previous command is repeated, so the character ;; needs to be saved. (let ((vi-dot-repeat-char (if (eq vi-dot-repeat-on-final-keystroke t) ;; allow any final input event that was a character (when (eq last-command-char (event-to-character last-command-event)) last-command-char) ;; allow only specified final keystrokes (car (memq last-command-char vi-dot-repeat-on-final-keystroke))))) (if (memq last-command '(exit-minibuffer minibuffer-complete-and-exit self-insert-and-exit)) (let ((vi-dot-command (car command-history))) (vi-dot-message "Repeating %S" vi-dot-command) (eval vi-dot-command)) (if (null vi-dot-arg) (vi-dot-message "Repeating command %S" last-command) (setq vi-dot-num-input-keys-at-prefix num-input-keys current-prefix-arg vi-dot-arg) (vi-dot-message "Repeating command %S %S" vi-dot-arg last-command)) (if (eq last-command 'self-insert-command) (let ((insertion (if (<= (- num-input-keys vi-dot-num-input-keys-at-self-insert) 1) vi-dot-last-self-insert (let ((range (nth 1 buffer-undo-list))) (condition-case nil (setq vi-dot-last-self-insert (buffer-substring (car range) (cdr range))) (error (error "%s %s %s" ;Danger, Will Robinson! "vi-dot can't intuit what you" "inserted before auto-fill" "clobbered it, sorry"))))))) (setq vi-dot-num-input-keys-at-self-insert num-input-keys) (loop repeat (prefix-numeric-value vi-dot-arg) do (funcall vi-dot-insert-function insertion))) (call-interactively last-command))) (when vi-dot-repeat-char ;; A simple recursion here gets into trouble with max-lisp-eval-depth ;; on long sequences of repetitions of a command like `forward-word' ;; (only 32 repetitions are possible given the default value of 200 for ;; max-lisp-eval-depth), but if I now locally disable the repeat char I ;; can iterate indefinitely here around a single level of recursion. (let ((vi-dot-repeat-on-final-keystroke) (event (make-event))) (while (eq (event-to-character (next-command-event event)) vi-dot-repeat-char) (vi-dot vi-dot-arg)) (setq unread-command-events (list event)))))) (defun vi-dot-message (format &rest args) "Like `message' but displays with vi-dot-message-function if non-nil." (let ((message (apply 'format format args))) (if vi-dot-message-function (funcall vi-dot-message-function message) (message "%s" message)))) ;; OK, there's one situation left where that doesn't work correctly: when the ;; most recent self-insertion provoked an auto-fill. The problem is that ;; unravelling the undo information after an auto-fill is too hard, since all ;; kinds of stuff can get in there as a result of comment prefixes etc. It'd ;; be possible to advise do-auto-fill to record the most recent ;; self-insertion before it does its thing, but that's a performance hit on ;; auto-fill, which already has performance problems; so it's better to just ;; leave it like this. If text didn't provoke an auto-fill when the user ;; typed it, this'll correctly repeat its self-insertion, even if the ;; repetition does cause auto-fill. ;; If you wanted perfection, probably it'd be necessary to hack do-auto-fill ;; into 2 functions, maybe-do-auto-fill & really-do-auto-fill, because only ;; really-do-auto-fill should be advised. As things are, either the undo ;; information would need to be scanned on every do-auto-fill invocation, or ;; the code at the top of do-auto-fill deciding whether filling is necessary ;; would need to be duplicated in the advice, wasting execution time when ;; filling does turn out to be necessary. ;; I thought maybe this story had a moral, something about functional ;; decomposition; but now I'm not even sure of that, since a function ;; call per se is a performance hit, & even the code that would ;; correspond to really-do-auto-fill has performance problems that ;; can make it necessary to stop typing while Emacs catches up. ;; Maybe the real moral is that perfection is a chimera. ;; Ah, hell, it's all going to fall into a black hole someday anyway. ;;;;; ************************* EMACS CONTROL ************************* ;;;;; ;; Local Variables: ;; mode: outline-minor ;; fill-column: 77 ;; outline-regexp: ";;;;+" ;; page-delimiter: "^;;;;" ;; End: (provide 'vi-dot) ;;; vi-dot.el ends here