What is it?
dot-mode.el is a minor mode for GNU Emacs / XEmacs that emulates the '.' command in vi. The original version was written in 1995 by James Gillespie. I took over maintenance in 2000 and did a much needed update to code portability and also added some nice features. Much of the code was re-written, but the original design was sound and remains intact. It is distributed under the GNU General Public License.
Why was it written?
For those of you not in the know, the '.' command in vi simply repeats the last edit made. In my experience, this is/has been the biggest feature that vi users claim they just can't live without. After having developed this feature for emacs, I'd have to say I agree with them.
dot-mode.el was written so that vi users no longer have an excuse for not switching to an emacs variant. Emacs is, of course, superior in every other way... ;) Features
- New keybinding C-. emulates . command in vi.
- Calls to extended commands (M-x some-command) are also captured.
- There is an "override" mode that allows you to record keystrokes that don't change the buffer.
- You can specify whether dot-mode remembers "undo" commands.
- dot-mode can either share a single command buffer between all windows with dot-mode on, or each window can have it's own command buffer.
- You can copy the saved keystrokes into the keyboard macro.
- Works on GNU Emacs (including NT Emacs) and XEmacs.
Limitations
- Certain interactive commands such as query-replace or query-replace-regexp are not recorded properly. There is no plan to fix this. You can still record a keyboard macro to capture these types of functions.