Xah Lee, 2010, …,
In emacs, you can define your own keyboard shortcuts such as F6 for frequently used commands. But if you use emacs extensively, you may have all easy keys used up. A alternative to keyboard shortcuts is to make command names 1 or 2 letters short.
For example, here's my aliases:
(defalias 'yes-or-no-p 'y-or-n-p) ; y or n is enough (defalias 'list-buffers 'ibuffer) ; always use ibuffer (defalias 'perl-mode 'cperl-mode) ; always use cperl-mode (defalias 'man 'woman) ; major modes, easy naming (defalias 'ahk-mode 'xahk-mode) (defalias 'bbcode-mode 'xbbcode-mode) (defalias 'cmd-mode 'dos-mode) (defalias 'lsl-mode 'xlsl-mode) (defalias 'ocaml-mode 'tuareg-mode) (defalias 'math-symbol-input-mode 'xmsi-mode) ; shortening of often used commands (defalias 'qrr 'query-replace-regexp) (defalias 'lml 'list-matching-lines) (defalias 'dml 'delete-matching-lines) (defalias 'dnml 'delete-non-matching-lines) (defalias 'dtw 'delete-trailing-whitespace) (defalias 'sl 'sort-lines) (defalias 'rr 'reverse-region) (defalias 'rs 'replace-string) (defalias 'g 'grep) (defalias 'gf 'grep-find) (defalias 'fd 'find-dired) (defalias 'rb 'revert-buffer) (defalias 'sh 'shell) (defalias 'ps 'powershell) (defalias 'fb 'flyspell-buffer) (defalias 'sbc 'set-background-color) (defalias 'rof 'recentf-open-files) (defalias 'lcd 'list-colors-display) (defalias 'cc 'calc) ; elisp (defalias 'eb 'eval-buffer) (defalias 'er 'eval-region) (defalias 'ed 'eval-defun) (defalias 'eis 'elisp-index-search) (defalias 'lf 'load-file) ; major modes (defalias 'hm 'html-mode) (defalias 'tm 'text-mode) (defalias 'elm 'emacs-lisp-mode) (defalias 'om 'org-mode) (defalias 'ssm 'shell-script-mode) (defalias 'html6-mode 'xah-html6-mode) ; minor modes (defalias 'wsm 'whitespace-mode) (defalias 'gwsm 'global-whitespace-mode) (defalias 'dsm 'desktop-save-mode) (defalias 'acm 'auto-complete-mode) (defalias 'vlm 'visual-line-mode) (defalias 'glm 'global-linum-mode) ;; xah personal (defalias '8w 'xwe-new-word-entry) (defalias '8d 'xwe-add-definition) (defalias '8s 'xwe-add-source) (defalias 'c 'xah-cite) (defalias 'cr 'compact-region) (defalias 'cw 'count-words-region-or-line) (defalias 'db 'dehtmlize-block) (defalias 'dr 'dehtmlize-region) (defalias 'dsc 'delete-secondlife-cache) (defalias 'dss 'desktop-settings-setup) (defalias 'dstp 'xah-fix-dstp) (defalias 'eol 'replace-eols-to-p) (defalias 'fs 'full-size-img-linkify) (defalias 'ft 'fix-timestamp) (defalias 'hb 'htmlize-block) (defalias 'il 'image-linkify) (defalias 'irh 'insert-random-hex) (defalias 'irs 'insert-random-string) (defalias 'k 'htmlize-keyboard-shortcut-notation) (defalias 'wl 'wikipedia-linkify) (defalias 'l 'xah-file-linkify) (defalias 'lb 'listify-block) (defalias 'mb 'make-blogger-entry) (defalias 'mht 'make-html-table) (defalias 'tb 'title-bracket-to-html-tag) (defalias 'tls 'toggle-line-spacing) (defalias 'xmae 'xah-make-atom-entry) (defalias 'z 'amazon-linkify) (defalias '~ 'make-backup) (defalias '\(1\) 'xah-fix-number-items-block) (defalias '& 'replace-html-chars) (defalias '\\ 'escape-quotes-region) (defalias '\[ 'remove-square-brackets) (defalias '\" 'replace-straight-quotes)
Save the above in file and name it 〔my_alias.el〕, then put it in your 〔~/.emacs.d/〕 directory. Then, in your emacs init file 〔.emacs〕, put:
(load "my_alias")
The default keyboard shortcut for execute-extended-command is 【Alt+x】.
You can define F5 to make it easy. (➲ How to Define Keyboard Shortcuts)
Even better, is to make Caps Lock key or Menu key do it. (aka Apps key, the key with a menu icon on PC Keyboards.)
To make it menu key, do this:
(global-set-key (kbd "<apps>") 'execute-extended-command) ; make the menu/apps key do M-x
To make it Caps Lock, you need a tool. See: System-wide ErgoEmacs Keybinding for Windows, Mac, Bash. For Mac, see: Mac OS X Keyboard Layout, Keymapping, Keybinding, Tools.
(On Linux, by default, execute-extended-command is assigned to the Menu key.)