[OS X Emacs] How to efficiently work with shells/term? drag & drop, history, several instances

[Hofert Jan Marius]

On 2011-09-22, at 18:50 , Jonathan Groll wrote:

> On Thu, 22 Sep 2011 15:20:32 +0000, "Hofert  Jan Marius" <marius.hofert at math.ethz.ch> wrote:
>> Now I would like to know:
>> What is the currently known best practice with emacs to do the same
>> thing (navigating to this folder)?
> 
> Once again, take a look at dired. 

okay. I briefly took a look at it and tried it. With C-x d I could change to dired mode. It asks for a directory. In order to not having to type in the whole directory, I chose the default (believing that I could navigate from that directory to the one I am looking for). I could then access subdirectories of the default directory, but the ".." did not navigate to "one level higher". Not sure what's wrong here. Furthermore, everytime I picked a subdirectory, a new buffer window opened (instead of just having one buffer window). In the end, I had 8 buffer windows open, wasn't at the folder I was looking for, and could hardly see anything on my small laptop anymore :-)))

By the way, I saw that the dired mode is also what I get, when I drag & drop a folder into a shell.

In the end, let's make it simple and assume that I could navigate to the right folder. Then I have a buffer in which I see the directory (and I am in dired mode). How does this solve my problem of having a terminal running in this folder?
After navigating, I tried to execute M-x shell and then pwd. The pwd (clearly) did not show the directory of the path I was navigating to but the standard home folder.
 

> 
> Also, why not simply create links to the folders you are interested in
> from your home folder?

My folders change too quickly... and in order to setup a link, I also have to navigate to the folder, right? :-) But this would be helpful if it was a "stable" directory, yes.

> 
>> I typically have to navigate a lot between folders. I guess with the
>> Mac terminal I am at least 5 times as fast than having to type the
>> above path by hand (incl. using <tab> completion). If drag & drop is
>> not easily available, then emacs is simply not made for theses tasks.
>> I hope it was made for these tasks, too, since my intention was (and
>> still is), to work without the Mac's terminal. 
>> 
>> I have used textmate for some years now [not sure when it came out,
>> but I guess I used it for 3 years or so]. 
> 
> ECB can give you a side pane like Textmate too. See:
> http://ecb.sourceforge.net/screenshots/index.html

I briefly checked the website. I'm not sure (yet) if this can do what I want. I would like to navigate to a folder but within a *terminal*. Well, I should check ECB first before further talking about it here. But if it is more or less the same as dired mode does (just graphically), then I doubt that it solves the problem. Another drawback is that I don't want to waste additional space with a "navigation toolbar". 

I'll try to take a look at David's suggestion, but I'm not sure if I can get this to work.


> 
> Cheers,
> Jonathan
> --
> jjg: Jonathan J. Groll : groll co za
> has_one { :blog => "http://bloggroll.com" }
> Sent from my computer device which runs on free software
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