Echo Area

I realized today that most of the time (over 90%) of the time I save a file I feel I have finished typing something. Typing this out makes it sound very obvious, actually. One other thing I noticed is that I still forget to return to normal-state after I���m done editing. Emacs being hackable and not being content with twisting my brain to suit my editor but rather twisting my editor to suit me, I thought I might automate it a little.

My first idea was to have evil automatically revert to normal-state whenever I save and also whenever I switch buffers. I haven���t found a hook that runs when switching buffers, so I���ll need to brush up on my advising skills and have it run just before switching, perhaps even when execute-extended-command or smex run, so any explicit minibuffer action returns to normal state.

For now it���s just the save file, and only for buffers that aren���t in the emacs-state as default list:

(defun modes-starting-in (state)
  "Get a list of modes whose default state is STATE."
  (symbol-value (evil-state-property state :modes)))

(defun maybe-switch-to-normal-state ()
  "Switch the current buffer to normal state.

Only do this when the mode is not in emacs state by
default."
  (unless (memql major-mode (modes-starting-in ’emacs))
    (evil-normal-state)))

(with-eval-after-load ’evil
  (add-hook ’after-save-hook
            #’maybe-switch-to-normal-state))

I personally only use either normal-state or emacs-state as default states when a mode loads, if you want to check more you���ll have to add some more calls to memq and change emacs to, for example insert or visual or whichever you need.