This isn't that awful of an idea. Right now, I use the party channel for this,
since you can use it even when not in a party, but it gets annoying on the
rare occasions where I am
I do: command CAST cast $*;party say CAST: $*
I can catch that with my client and display it in a status area, so I can
easily see what I am doing and if the skill/spell has gone off yet through all
the spam. You can't do this with an /echo, since the command is not sent by
your client

Ok, its not _that_ important, but then a lot of junk isn't that gets done.
--M