Interesting that this specifically mentions Vim modes but not the M-x prompt Emacs uses to invoke functions by name. I would think that is the grandparent of most of these, including the Mozilla Ubiquity experiment from over a decade ago, and Quicksilver which predates Alfred. Otherwise this is a well-thought-out article.
Huh, I wasn’t aware Aza Raskin was involved. Jef was involved with the Cat, Archy, and SwyftCard, which was trying a very different approach to a GUI based around searching. Perhaps some of that trickled into Ubiquity?
Not only that, M-x has had some kind of searching for a very long time. Once upon a time, it was only completion, but I’m pretty sure it’s been possible to rig up fuzzy searching in it since… 2005-ish? I remember using ‘anything.el’, a predecessor to ‘helm’, and I’m pretty sure it had it.
Version control tells me that I hooked up ido-mode with M-x back in 2009. (And also advised completing-read to use ido – yay for fuzzy tag finding!) And those had been based on snippets that I found on EmacsWiki.
Yes that sounds right by my memory. I remember anything.el as coming before helm also. Plus there was always “slumming it” with hippie-expand which worked in the minibuffer as well! Does that sound right to you?
Interesting that this specifically mentions Vim modes but not the
M-xprompt Emacs uses to invoke functions by name. I would think that is the grandparent of most of these, including the Mozilla Ubiquity experiment from over a decade ago, and Quicksilver which predates Alfred. Otherwise this is a well-thought-out article.Huh, I wasn’t aware Aza Raskin was involved. Jef was involved with the Cat, Archy, and SwyftCard, which was trying a very different approach to a GUI based around searching. Perhaps some of that trickled into Ubiquity?
Not only that, M-x has had some kind of searching for a very long time. Once upon a time, it was only completion, but I’m pretty sure it’s been possible to rig up fuzzy searching in it since… 2005-ish? I remember using ‘anything.el’, a predecessor to ‘helm’, and I’m pretty sure it had it.
Version control tells me that I hooked up
ido-modewithM-xback in 2009. (And also advisedcompleting-readto useido– yay for fuzzy tag finding!) And those had been based on snippets that I found on EmacsWiki.Yes that sounds right by my memory. I remember
anything.elas coming beforehelmalso. Plus there was always “slumming it” withhippie-expandwhich worked in the minibuffer as well! Does that sound right to you?Ah, yes, that’s right. Since the minibuffer is just a buffer, hippie-expand would have worked.
Apropos of nothing, the Firefox Address bar can be like a command palette.
%to search for and switch to a tab (including tabs that are open on synced devices!)?to force-search (rather than typing in a domain)There’s more on this SUMO article for address bar short cuts