Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bbn!gateway!PEBBLES.BBN.COM!jr
From: jr@PEBBLES.BBN.COM (John Robinson)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re: Playing with the minibuffer
Message-ID: <367.582840018@pebbles>
Date: 20 Jun 88 20:00:18 GMT
References: <8806201232.AA03336@marvin.cme.nbs.gov>
Sender: news@bbn.COM
Reply-To: jr@bbn.com
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Lines: 50

Stephe Leake <leake@CME-DURER.ARPA> had a good idea:

> In DEC's LSE, _all_ messages (system broadcast, editor error messages,
> etc) get _appended_ to a $MESSAGE buffer, which the user can edit as a normal
> buffer. I find this _very_ useful for keeping track of what I'm doing,
> since I usually seem to be doing several things at once (waiting for
> something to compile or link, answering a mail message that just came
> in, etc). It appears that this approach would satisfy the recent
> requests for minibuffer string access. How 'bout it? Is there anyway
> to automatically capture any string written to the minibuffer, and
> stuff it in $MESSAGE? Perhaps we could just rewrite (message), or
> something. 

I tried to do this with only some success.  My code follows at the end
of this message.  It uses code Mark Weissman <apollo!weissman> posted
for adding before- and after-hooks to functions.

This does not work perfectly.  The problem is that the functions
(message) and (error) are built-in.  While the hooks are applied any
time the functions are called from ELisp, the old definitions remain
in force for calls from C (which are linked).  I am going to give up
on this for now, hoping that someone with a stronger stomach might
take on the C mods.  It may turn out that the minibuffer needs to be
rethought, so be warned.

I like Stephe's approach, though.

I apologize if this isn't the best of ELisp.

/jr
jr@bbn.com or bbn!jr
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(load-library "hooks")		; Mark Weissman's hooks library

(defun save-to-message-buffer (string &rest args)
  "Before-hook for (message) and (error).
Appends a copy of each minibuffer message to the buffer *messages*."
  (interactive)
  (save-window-excursion
    (set-buffer (get-buffer-create "*messages*"))
    (goto-char (point-max))
    (insert-string (format string args))
    (insert-char ?\n 1)))

(mdw:add-hooks message)
(setq mdw:message-before-hooks '(save-to-message-buffer))

(mdw:add-hooks error)
(setq mdw:error-before-hooks '(save-to-message-buffer))
-------