On e-scripts

This is a totally non-technical introduction to eev and e-scripts.
See also my presentation at the EmacsConf2019, whose title was:
"How to record executable notes with eev - and how to play them back".

Here are the main parts of the Eev Manifesto (from 1999!), taken from the section "3. Sharing":

Everybody is fluent in only a small fraction of all Unix commands. If you could "listen" to how the Unix gurus "speak" to their machines you would learn which "words" are related to solving a particular task, and learn how they fit in "sentences". By checking the "dictionary entries" for them (i.e., manpages, info pages, READMEs, source code, etc) you could learn the real meaning of them. But then you'd be learning Unix by immersion, from real use, instead of having to rely only on "textbooks", "dictionaries" and sometimes "Rosetta stones", "graffitis on toilet walls" and "old newspapers".

The fact is that you can make a record of how you "speak" Unix, and more, you can become a lot more productive if you do so. Many tasks consist on short fixed sequences of commands: connecting to your ISP via modem, unpacking a source package and recompiling it, printing a text file in two-column mode, and so on. The trick is that with some functions defined in eev.el you can write these sequences of commands in a plain text file, then mark a block of this file with your editor (which must be Emacs for this to work), then tell a shell to execute only the commands in that block; in this way you can easily execute only portions of what would otherwise have to be a monolythic script; this is great for when you're not sure if everything works, or if you just want to do some steps. Also, it would be easy to change bits of the "script" before execution, as you'll be doing things from inside an editor.

(...)

I have placed essentially all my "scripts" written in this way (I call them "e-scripts") in a public place. They contain almost everything I know about Unix.

# The "public place" is: # http://angg.twu.net/e/

Here are the main parts of the section "5. Tools for writing e-scripts":

We saw how to follow links and how to execute eepitch blocks, so an e-script block is "executable". But in what sense it is a "log"?

1. In the old days log books were always made of paper, and there was nothing automatic in taking notes with them. We would have to decide what to write and how to write it, and we would have to alternate between the "task" and "taking notes". After many years of practice some people would learn how to take notes without distracting themselves much from the task at hand, and they would learn how to make their notes at the same time concise and readable enough.

2. Nowadays, with computers, there are some ways to write logs automatically - for example, most shells record the commands given to them - but the output is of low quality.

3. Eev takes an intermediate stance between "notes by hand" and "automatic notes". It is possible to do "task"+"notes" with just a few more keystrokes than for doing just "task", but that requires learning some tricks, and having some practice.

The next sections discuss those tricks.