Re: Suggestion: Ace-window in Emacs core for switching windows?

[Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net>]

Jeremy Bryant <jb@jeremybryant.net> writes:

> Stefan Kangas <stefankangas@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net> writes:
>>
>>> Given that we already have windmove, would the addition of ace-window
>>> really change that much?
>>
>> The same argument could be used for many packages that we have in core.
>> Who needs Gnus when you have rmail, and so on.  The packages do
>> basically the same thing, but in very different ways.

That is fair IMO, because the ways /are/ very different.  I just wanted
to clarify, if the method employed by ace-window is different enough to
be interesting as an alternative to windmove. 

>> I don't use ace-window myself, but note that it is the 28th most popular
>> package on MELPA with 1,773,799 downloads, only slightly behind
>> 'which-key' in popularity that we just added to core.
>>
>> See: https://melpa.org/#/?sort=downloads&asc=false

Popularity on MELPA correlates with age, especially since AFAIU they
count every upgrade as a download, so I am always hesitant to deduce too
much from data like these, especially when the popularity of a package
might be due to a missing feature in the core, that has since been added
or improved on.

>> Until we figure out how to bundle GNU ELPA packages, something that has
>> seen little progress in a long time, I think there is a case to be made
>> for adding some of the more popular packages to core.
>
> FWIW, my personal reason for using ace-window is due to helping with
> RSI.  I find that the facility to navigate windows by staying on the
> home row reduces the travel distance on the keyboard.
>
> I recognise that this may not be as essential for other users, and offer
> these remarks just for wider understanding.

My question is what your experience with windmove has been, and what
advantage ace-window has over windmove.  E.g. my main configuration for
windmove is

  (setopt windmove-default-keybindings '(nil . nil))

that binds window switching directly to the arrow keys.  I don't know of
anyone else who does this (and I know of a few colleges who got annoyed
at me for doing this), but I think it is neat.  What I am trying to say
is that there might be a windmove configuration that would serve you
just as well, but you just haven't found it yet.  In that case, we need
to document the features better, instead of going through the process of
adding more packages -- as we have seen, that can take a while.

> From ace-window.el:
> ;; By default, ace-window uses numbers for window labels so the window
> ;; labeling is intuitively ordered.  But if you prefer to type keys on
> ;; your home row for quicker access, use this setting:
> ;;
> ;;    (setq aw-keys '(?a ?s ?d ?f ?g ?h ?j ?k ?l))
>
>
> I've adapted it to Dvorak layout as:
> (setq aw-keys '(?a ?s ?d ?f ?g ?h ?j ?k ?l))

-- 
	Philip Kaludercic on peregrine