RE: Friendlier dired experience [CODE INCLUDED]

[Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com>]

> >> You'd still have the downside that the general bookmarks include all the
> >> other non-directory bookmarks, so maybe it's not a good idea anyway.
> >> [ I'm not using bookmarks very much, so my intuition here is poor.  ]
> > Why would that be a downside?
> 
> That you can have name conflicts between the diredc and other bookmarks,
> and that when selecting a diredc bookmark you'd have to see all those
> other bookmarks which might make it more timeconsuming to find the
> bookmark you're after.
> 
> For the first problem, I don't have a good solution.
> For the second, I think this actually hints at a need for the generic
> bookmark-selection functionality to offer a way to first select a *type*
> of bookmark and only then pick a name among the remaining candidates.

This already exists, with Bookmark+.

1. There are jump commands based on types.  For Dired
bookmarks there are these (also C-x j 4 versions, for
other-window):

 C-x j d    Jump to a Dired bookmark.
 C-x j . d  Jump to a Dired bookmark for the `default-directory'.

And for an arbitrary type (what you suggested) there is
 C-x j :    (`bmkp-jump-to-type').  From the doc:

 Jump to a bookmark of a given type.  You are prompted for the type.
 Otherwise, this is the same as `bookmark-jump' - see that, in
 particular, for info about using a prefix argument.

 When prompted for the type, you can use completion against the known
 bookmark types (see `bmkp-types-alist').

 Completion is lax, so you can also enter the name of a bookmark
 `handler' or `file-handler' function, without completion.  Bookmarks
 with that entry value are then the jump candidates.

[All bookmark jump commands are on prefix key `C-x j'.  And
`.' means "this" in bookmark keys.  E.g., `C-x j . f' jumps
to a file bookmark for the current (this) dir, `C-x j t .'
is a prefix key for "this" bookmarks with various tag sets
(e.g. jump to a file in this directory that has some, or all,
of a set of tags you specify, or those matching a regexp).]

2. In the bookmark-list display (`C-x r l'), you can show
only bookmarks of a given type, e.g. only Dired bookmarks.
And you can mark by type or sort by type.  (And you can do
lots of things to/with the marked bookmarks, from search
to nuts. ;-))