Using 'repeat' isn't useful for inserting text

[ideasman42]

In VIM it's common to insert (or change) text, leave insert mode, navigate to a new location in normal mode, then repeat the previous action.

The problem with doing this in meow is the navigation commands (e.g. meow-prev or meow-next) are repeated.

What is a convenient way to repeat an insertion elsewehre?

[DogLooksGood]

For change, you can copy the inserted text after exiting insert mode. But there's no way to duplicate the insertion, unless using kmacro.

[okamsn]

I haven't tried it yet, but I have been looking at the package Dot Mode.

From the README:

It emulates the vi `redo’ command, repeating the immediately preceding sequence of commands. This is done by recording input commands which change the buffer, i.e. not motion commands.

[okamsn]

It's still not as simple as than Evil's ., but my experience has been made better by the improvements to the built-in Edmacro Mode in Emacs 30. This is what I am doing now for the complex cases:

• Bind kmacro-edit-lossage to ".
• Set the new edmacro-reverse-key-order to t so that newer keys are shown first.
• Select the recent keys I want, then use edmacro-set-macro-to-region-lines to delete the keys I don't want.
• Run edmacro-finish-edit to create the new keyboard macro.
• Use that new macro like Evil's ..

Using Meow's keypad feature, the process is:

• Press ".
• Go to a position near the top of the listing and spam meow-line (I have it on o).
• Press SPC c r.
• Press SPC c c.
• Use the macro with F4 like normal.

A wrapper command could combine SPC c r and SPC c c, but I haven't done that so far. The kmacro approach has the benefit of not being limited to the most recent change.

There's also the new options meow-select-on-insert and meow-select-on-append for the simple cases.

[ideasman42]

Since posting this thread I've developed a package to repeat which can group multiple commands:

• RFC: Repeat multiple actions, compatible with Meow #731
• https://codeberg.org/ideasman42/emacs-repeat-fu