Sophomore.el

novice.el is one of the most-maligned [citation needed] packages in the Emacs ecosystem, consistently causing new and slightly-more-experienced users puzzlement when they attempt to run a command and get the default “You have invoked the disabled command …” message, with its confirmation dialogue and confusing options. Sometimes, the command has been “fat-fingered,” like typing C-x C-n instead of C-x n, or we’re trying to invoke the command with M-x, which I think means we know what we’re doing.

sophomore attempts to add a better UI around disabled commands that’s better-suited to more experienced users. Of course, my attempt might come off as only a little better than novice, or even, dare I say, “sophomoric” in nature.

This package trades in the knowledge that a command’s disabled property need not be a binary choice between “yes” or “no”, “t” or “nil”: indeed, there are a number of ways in which a command might be considered “disabled,” with different safeguards against using it. For intermediate and more advanced users, a common issue is “fat-fingering” commands like set-fill-column when find-file was meant, or accidentally killing Emacs when typing C-x too quickly. In addition, in my own usage I don’t want to disable a command per se, but disallow too-easy invocation (which isn’t possible with the built-in novice.el except by unbinding or rebinding a number of keys).

Installation

Until this package is on MELPA or Non-GNU ELPA, you can install it from this Git repository. I use straight.el:

(straight-use-package '(sophomore :host github :repo "duckwork/sophomore.el"))

Usage

By default, sophomore doesn’t do anything. There are a number of entry points into its functionality, however:

Override the default disabled-command-function with a rich dispatcher

(sophomore-mode +1)

Instead of a simple disabled/enabled dichotomy for commands, it can be useful to have more options. For example, I myself frequently “fat-finger” C-x C-c, which can close Emacs. However, by adding (confirm . sophomore-disabled-confirm) to sophomore-dispatch-alist, and running (put 'save-buffers-kill-terminal 'disabled confirm) (or the sophomore function (sophomore-disable-with 'confirm #'save-buffers-kill-terminal)), I can get a yes-or-no prompt when I fat-finger something before running it.

sophomore-dispatch searches through sophomore-dispatch-alist for the symbol in a command’s disabled property, running the function associated with it. If there isn’t one, sophomore-dispatch-fallback-function is called instead, which defaults to sophomore-disabled-M-x. That function allows calling a function from M-x (execute-extended-command), but not from a key binding—so you can still run the command, but not accidentally.

Enable all commands (set disabled property to nil)

(sophomore-enable-all)

Map through every command, and if its disabled property is non-nil, set it to nil. This is a convenience function that you can really do yourself, and in fact was pulled directly from EmacsWiki.

Enable some commands and disable others easily

sophomore also ships with a few functions to make enabling and disabling commands in bulk easier:

sophomore-disable

Disable all commands given as parameters by setting their disabled property to t.

sophomore-enable

Enable all commands given as parameters by setting their disabled property to nil.

sophomore-disable-with

Given a symbol and a list of commands, set each command’s disabled property to the symbol.

My configuration

As an example, here’s my personal sophomore configuration:

(straight-use-package '(sophomore :host github :repo "duckwork/sophomore.el"))
(sophomore-mode +1)
(sophomore-disable 'confirm #'save-buffers-kill-terminal)

Contributing

sophomore is licensed under the Good Choices License:

Everyone is permitted to do whatever with this software, without limitation. This software comes without any warranty whatsoever, but with two pieces of advice:

• Be kind to yourself.
• Make good choices.

To contribute, you can open an issue or pull request on this repo.

Changelog

v0.2.1

Attempt to improve the README.

v0.2

Add sophomore-mode for easier use; change the default sophomore-dispatch-alist; change some function names.

v0.1

Initial release