Record history of changes within Emacs

Question

How can I record myself working in Emacs to replay later to show others? There was a site a while ago that displayed an author writing up an article, and displayed everything they typed, corrected, rewrote, etc. I think such a think would be interesting for small programs, too.

I already have one possibly horrific idea; use Git and hook into the after-change hooks globally in Emacs, record every single buffer into a file in some repo as a single commit. Want to make a "browser"? Just use the Git repo as a database. But... that might be insulting to decency to use Git in such a way, I do not know.

Answer 1

There is a function in emacs that will record everything that you type

open-dribble-file is an interactive built-in function in `C source code'.

(open-dribble-file FILE)

Start writing all keyboard characters to a dribble file called FILE. If FILE is nil, close any open dribble file.

This won't do replay, but it might be the basis for a replay function.

Answer 2

You probably saw a recording commonly known as a screencast. There's another question on SuperUser which discusses good options for desktop recording.

Also, take a look at the Emacs Screencasts page on the emacs wiki. It list some sites with emacs screencasts -- you can look at those sites and most have information about what tool(s) they used to create the recordings. At the bottom of that same wiki page, there are some links to emacs packages which can create screencasts.

Answer 3

Doesn't backup save your unsaved buffers every so often? Could you increase the frequency of creating backup files and then save a bunch of different buffer states that way?

Still not really an elegant approach...