Less is more

Meow aims to let users write less configuration, but get better integration. To Remember fewer commands, but can do more things.

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Meow is on Melpa.

(require 'meow)

(meow-global-mode 1)

(defun meow-setup ()
  ...
  DEFINE COMMAND LAYOUT, SEE BELOW
  ...)

(with-eval-after-load "meow"
  ;; meow-setup is your custom function, see below
  (meow-setup)
  ;; If you want relative line number in NORMAL state(for display-line-numbers-mode)
  (meow-setup-line-number)
  ;; If you need setup indicator, see `meow-indicator' for customizing by hand.
  (meow-setup-indicator))

Here are the recommended definitions for meow-setup.

(defun meow-setup ()
  ...
  DEFINE COMMAND LAYOUT, SEE BELOW
  ...)

(use-package meow
  :demand t
  :init
  (meow-global-mode 1)
  :config
  ;; meow-setup is your custom function, see below
  (meow-setup)
  ;; If you want relative line number in NORMAL state(for display-line-numbers-mode)
  (meow-setup-line-number)
  ;; If you need setup indicator, see `meow-indicator' for customizing by hand.
  (meow-setup-indicator))

Here are the recommended definitions for meow-setup.

Meow is a complete modal editing, and this section will explain its highlights and why it's here.

Meow has 4 modes.

• NORMAL: The default mode for text editing, commands bound to single keys. Note there are no default keybinding in Meow for NORMAL mode.
• INSERT: The mode for text insertion, press ESC to get back to NORMAL mode.
• MOTION: The default mode for all kinds of special modes, only SPC is bound to Leader, and the original command on SPC is bound to SPC SPC.
• KEYPAD: A temporary mode to simulate input with modifiers(ctrl, meta) with single-key sequences.

Meow provides a set of complete modal editing commands, but users have to build their own keymap. Following are some recommended schemas, that you can use directly or as your start point.

Keybindings for each keyboard layout

Use M-x meow-cheatsheet. This command will generate a cheatsheet according to your current keybindings.

The keyboard layout in cheatsheet is specified by the variable meow-cheatsheet-layout, you will find this variable set in meow-setup examples. You can re-run meow-cheatsheet to refresh after you make changes.

The idea is borrowed from Kakoune.

The navigation commands, except single character movement, will also activate the selection. For example, Moving forward a word will mark from previous position to current position. So you got two meaningful positions with single command. When selection is activated, use i to insert at beginning, or a to insert at end.

Emacs does not use modal editing by default, but each special mode(like dired) will provide nice single key commands. I recommend to use these keybindings instead of maintaining your own.

For these special modes, Meow has a MOTION mode, in this mode, SPC is selected as LEADER, and the original command on SPC is bound to LEADER SPC which is SPC SPC. If you want to use j or k for move up and down, you should consider binding the original commands on j and k to SPC j and SPC k.

Meow has a nice mechanism for this demand. See meow-motion-overwrite-define-key.

The idea is borrowed from god-mode.

Pressing SPC x(Default behavior) in NORMAL and MOTION mode will enter KEYPAD mode, and this input will be converted to C-x. The following single keys, will be translate to the one with Ctrl modifier. Once Meow found a valid command for your input, execute and exit KEYPAD mode. You can also enter KEYPAD mode with SPC c, SPC h, SPC m or SPC g(Also default behaviours).

If you want some input other than C- in KEYPAD, you need a prefix:

• SPC means no modifier. This SPC can be omitted when there's no ambiguity.
• m means with Meta.
• g means with Ctrl+Meta.

Some examples:

Of course, you can use which-key with Meow without additional setup. It will work for Leader keymap and vanilla keybindings. However since KEYPAD has its own input merchanism, it can't use which-key. So Meow ships a built-in functionality for KEYPAD only. Again, you can still use which-key for the rest keybindings.

meow-insert switch to INSERT mode at the beginning of selection or current position.

meow-append switch to INSERT mode at the end of selection or current position.

meow-open-above open newline above and switch to INSERT mode.

meow-open-below open newline below and switch to INSERT mode.

When you have a selection, the following is available:

meow-reverse Reverse the direction of selection, like exchange-point-and-mark.

meow-pop-selection Back to the previous selection.

meow-pop-all-selection Back to the position before you performed selection.

meow-expand-(0-9) Some commands provide hint for further location, you can use these commands to jump to the corresponding positions.

Following is the basic movement, the later one of each group will activate the char type selection, and the previous will expand the char type selection and will cancel selection with other types.

meow-left / meow-left-expand Move left by char.

meow-right / meow-right-expand Move right by char.

meow-prev / meow-prev-expand previous line.

meow-next / meow-next-expand next line.

meow-head / meow-head-expand Move towards the head of line by char.

meow-tail / meow-tail-expand Move towards the tail of line by char.

Following commands combines navigation and selection.

meow-visit Search regexp and mark it with selection of type visit. Use negative-argument for backward searching. The search history will be recorded, and use meow-pop-search to pop the recent one.

meow-search Search for the next occurence, the searching direction is based on the direction of selection. (use meow-reverse to reverse the direction)

meow-mark-word Select current word with selection type expand word, and record it into search history. (So you can use meow-search after this)

meow-mark-symbol Select current symbol with selection type expand word(same type with meow-mark-word), and record it into search history. (So you can use meow-search after this)

meow-line Select current line, repeat to expand. Use meow-reverse or negative-argument to select backward.

meow-goto-line Goto line and recenter screen, then select that line. Use a numeric prefix for line number to goto or you will be asked.

meow-block / meow-expand-block Select the next block(pair of parens), when repeat, the former will select the parent block, the later will expand to the next block. Use negative-argument to select backward.

meow-join Select the area that will be deleted if delete-indentation, use negative-argument to search forward.

meow-find / meow-find-expand Accept an input of a char, select(or expand) to the next char of the occurence, backward search with negative-argument.

meow-till / meow-till-expand Accept an input of a char, select(or expand) to the previous char of the occurence, backward search with negative-argument.

Following commands are working with things. You can custom variable meow-char-thing-table to given a key to each thing.

This table describe the default behaviour.

meow-inner-of-thing Select the inner of thing.

meow-bounds-of-thing Select the whole thing.

meow-beginning-of-thing Select to the beginning of thing.

meow-end-of-thing Select to the end of thing.

meow-kill Kill current selection, does what C-k does when there's no selection. Note C-k may have different behaviours depending on the context. For example, when paredit is enabled, C-k will be bound to paredit-kill.

meow-delete Delete current selection(don't change kill-ring) or do what C-d does when there's no selection.

meow-change Delete current selection and switch to INSERT mode.

meow-save Copy current selection into kill-ring, but not system clipboard. Use kill-ring-save or meow-clipboard-save for system clipboard.

meow-yank Paste before current position, or after current position with negative-argument. This command will not use system clipboard, use yank or meow-clipboard-yank for system clipboard.

meow-replace Replace current region with copy.

meow-replace-save Exchange current region with copy.

meow-grab is a command to work with Emacs built-in secondary selection(aka the x-selection in Linux). meow-grab will convert current region to secondary selection, it's also possible to use a single point. Once the secondary selection(or point) is activated, you can use meow-pop-grab to convert secondary selection to region which allows you go back to the grab position.

By default, meow-pop-grab is the fallback command for meow-pop when there's no selection available. This behavior can be customized by modifying meow-selection-command-fallback.

meow-swap-grab swap secondary selection with current region.

meow-sync-grab sync secondary selection with current region.

Kmacros in Meow.

meow-quit Delete current window or go back to previous buffer if there's only one window.

meow-keyboard-quit Just keyboard-quit。

meow-cancel-selection Cancel the selection.

meow-undo Like undo, but cancel selection first. We add this command because undo will undo modification inside the region if region is activated.

meow-undo-in-selection Undo modifications in region.

See Helper Functions and Custom Variables

EXWM is a X tiling window manager. To use Meow with EXWM, you probably want a global leader key and global KEYPAD entry.

(setq exwm-input-global-keys
          `(...
            ([?\s-x] . meow-keypad-start)
            ([?\s-m] . meow-keypad-start)
            ([?\s-g] . meow-keypad-start)
            ([?\s-c] . meow-keypad-start)
            ([?\s-\ ] . ,meow-leader-keymap) ;; This is super+SPC
            ...))

License under GPL v3.