clynbech

I found that 'shell' mode occasionally got confused, for instance on what the current directory is. I have changed to 'eshell' as my primary shell emulator, one that implements a number of the basic commands directly in elisp. It works quite well, except when running an interactive command which is does not handle well and there are some issues with piping as well.

It does not need to be either/or. I have configured the terminal mode of ansi-term to allow the cursor keys to move around in the buffer as usual exactly because I often like to back up a bit to look at some output and keeping remembering that the normal buffer movement keys was not available became annoying.

I disagree. People often tend to forget that Emacs has a very long history and what may appear to a newcomer today to be bad design more often than not, has a logical (even if historical) reason.

It is of course a classic design dilemma when porting something across dozens of different systems and supporting something across many decades, whether to try to adapt to the whims of a new target or to stick with a common core. Emacs will never be the Microsoft Notepad of the common computer user and we, the long time Emacs users, tend to see the stability of the interface as an advantage.