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Personalizing Emacs Doc Navigation

by kickingvegas on 12/13/23, 2:16 AM with 9 comments

  • by globular-toast on 12/14/23, 11:07 AM

    One thing I've tried to do in my Emacs config is make things uniform across various modes and features. For example, I like C-c C-c to mean "do the obvious thing I do all the time" which is usually something like "run make" or "eval code at point". I like to use M-. and M-, to follow a link then "pop" back (like xref by default). I haven't bothered trying to do this for help stuff but will definitely be copying this config and changing things to fit my own preferences. This is really useful to have all the various modes collected together in one place!

  • by pmontra on 12/14/23, 12:53 PM

    Reading this I realized that the only emacs internal documentation I read in so many years are the help files of C-h w (where is a function, I'll type its name next), C-h k (what a keybinding does, I'll press it) and maybe the description of the current modes (is it C-h m ?)

    Everything else is a query to a web search engine. That has the advantage of people explaining things and finding solutions instead of only a reference.

  • by nemoniac on 12/14/23, 11:16 AM

    While I don't share the author's preferences for keybindings, I am sympathetic to the idea of navigating different doc formats in the same way.

    view-text-file-as-info-manual is handy for this. It can transform and open a variety of doc formats in an info buffer. It could readily be adapted to output other formats.

    https://emacsnotes.wordpress.com/2023/09/11/view-info-texi-o...

  • by eviks on 12/14/23, 11:08 AM

    Given so few keybinds and already embracing modality, it's very inefficient to have to resort to modifiers when there are so many single keys left

    > Forward and backward history navigation using web browser-style M-[, M-] keybindings

    It's much better to rebind those in the browser to have a consistent and convenient experience everywhere rather than downgrading your text editing experience to match those bad defaults

    > default bound to l and r which I struggle to this day to remember

    your left/right muscle memory can help you there, if you locate them together and use the same fingers you use for left/right cursor movements, for example, if you're used to H/L then this would be U/P, one row above using the same fingers (in general, all these alphabetical mnemonics are not very useful, especially for heavily used keys)

  • by kickingvegas on 12/14/23, 8:34 AM

    Hello! See that my post has gotten interest on HN. Happy to answer any questions about it here!