Re: basic navigation

[Platon Pronko <platon7pronko@gmail.com>]

On 2023-07-05 07:55, Samuel Wales wrote:
> ***** basic navigation and killing
> i am wondering if there are packages that can do this kind
> of thing better.
> 
> this applies to any editing.  here is an example.  suppose i
> am on an org-mode heading, with point at ^.
> 
> never mind the actual text.  my goal is to transform it to
> this.
> 
>     *** ^gather and do physical
> 
> so i do the first thing that comes to mind: c-backspace
> which runs backward-kill-word in my emacs 27.1.
> 
> there are of course many other things i can do, instead,
> such as go to bol, use delete-char, etc., but i want to
> illustrate basic word killing with this example.  what
> occurs is this, successively.
> 
>     *** --- /various to do/ and to ^gather and do physical
>     *** --- /various to do/ and ^gather and do physical
>     *** --- /various to do/ ^gather and do physical
>     *** --- /various to ^gather and do physical
> 
> i don't particularly mind the command's ignorance of org
> syntax here.
> 
>     *** --- /various ^gather and do physical
>     *** --- /^gather and do physical
> 
> and then once more to get rid of the --- syntax, which is a
> bit of an emacs editing disaster.  what i wanted was to have
> it produce what i set out to do.  maybe naive, but i wonder
> if there might be different killing/nav paradigms.
> 
> i've been vexed by this since the 1980s with only sporadic
> attempts to see if i can improve on it.  time to rely on
> others for some ideas and possible existing packages.
> please be gentle with me.  am cognitively impaired.
> 

In this particular situation I'd do it like this: C-space, C-a, 4x C-f, C-w (set mark, move to beginning of the line, move 4 characters forward, delete selection).
Or alternatively C-space, C-a, M-4 C-f, C-w (same thing but automate repetitive C-f).

Actually, you can use (setq org-special-ctrl-a/e t), then you can drop 4x C-f because C-a will take you to beginning of the heading automatically.

If you need to do this particular thing often you can make a macro out of it, or a small interactive function.

By the way, there's also C-0 C-k (kill to the beginning of the line), but that will also remove the heading asterisks, which is probably not intended.

-- 
Best regards,
Platon Pronko
PGP 2A62D77A7A2CB94E