Meow with reduced editing/navigation commands and keypad in normal mode

[MartinDrees]

I would like to discuss a setup where the meow navigation and editing part of normal mode is kept rather minimal. For example, is it really worth it to use four homerow keys for arrow key navigation, if excessive usage should maybe be avoided anyway and we also have access to emacs bindings?

The idea is to keep modal editing minimal (just core selection/movement/editing commands), and use the rest of the keyspace for fast access to useful functionality — vanilla emacs command via keypad in normal mode, plus some non-vanilla ones that profit a lot from fast access.

Here’s what that could look like:

;; Meow core modal editing
;; [add number expands]
(define-key meow-normal-state-keymap (kbd "i") 'meow-insert)
(define-key meow-normal-state-keymap (kbd "a") 'meow-append)
(define-key meow-normal-state-keymap (kbd "o") 'meow-open-below)
(define-key meow-normal-state-keymap (kbd "O") 'meow-open-above)

(define-key meow-normal-state-keymap (kbd "l") 'meow-line)
(define-key meow-normal-state-keymap (kbd "r") 'meow-inner-of-thing)
(define-key meow-normal-state-keymap (kbd "R") 'meow-bounds-of-thing)

(define-key meow-normal-state-keymap (kbd "t") 'meow-till)
(define-key meow-normal-state-keymap (kbd "f") 'meow-find)

(define-key meow-normal-state-keymap (kbd "w") 'meow-save) ;; Prefer keys also used in vanilla emacs
(define-key meow-normal-state-keymap (kbd "y") 'meow-yank)
(define-key meow-normal-state-keymap (kbd "k") 'meow-kill)
(define-key meow-normal-state-keymap (kbd "d") 'meow-change)

(define-key meow-normal-state-keymap (kbd "u") 'undo-only)
(define-key meow-normal-state-keymap (kbd "U") 'undo-redo)
(define-key meow-normal-state-keymap (kbd "<escape>") 'keyboard-quit)
;; Keypad in normal mode
(define-key meow-normal-state-keymap (kbd "x") 'meow-keypad-start)
(define-key meow-normal-state-keymap (kbd "c") 'meow-keypad-start)
(define-key meow-normal-state-keymap (kbd "m") 'meow-keypad-start)
(define-key meow-normal-state-keymap (kbd "g") 'meow-keypad-start)

Of course, the Meow keypad still works in leader key mode.
Additional commands could for example be:

(define-key meow-normal-state-keymap (kbd "v") 'er/expand-region) ;; One key that can select many different things
(define-key meow-normal-state-keymap (kbd "j") 'avy-goto-line) ;; Avy gets much better if you can call it with a single key
(define-key meow-normal-state-keymap (kbd "s") 'avy-goto-char-2)
(define-key meow-normal-state-keymap (kbd ".") 'embark-act) ;; Embark fits very well in the selection -> action paradigm
(define-key meow-normal-state-keymap (kbd "e") 'casual-editkit-main-tmenu) ;; Transient menus are very nice with quick access

There are many further keys available to map to something one uses very often.

What do you think about this approach? Anyone else doing something like this? And are there other commands you’ve found really worth putting directly on a prime key in normal mode?

[DogLooksGood]

Well, personally I don't think it's necessary to use 4 home row keys for navigation.

I also think we should additionally provide some commands for sexp, sentence, paragraph, etc. They can cover the use cases where we need find, till, block, etc.

[MartinDrees]

What about using the emacs keybindings for that since we have good access to those? For example C-M- bindings are very accessible.

[DogLooksGood]

Of course you can use emacs keybindings. But the idea of meow's command set is to cover almost every use cases in text manipulation & navigation.

[MartinDrees]

In the past weeks, I developed this idea initial idea further and assembled a full configuration with the reduced modal editing idea for emacs using meow. You can find the configuration here: https://github.com/MartinDrees/helmacs Of course, this is not how meow was originally intended and it also only uses a subset of the features, but in my opinion, some kind of minimalism is very helpful to get started.