discover.el
Discover more of emacs using context menus.
For in-depth information, including screenshots, please read my article on "discover.el: discover more of Emacs using context menus" here:
http://www.masteringemacs.org/articles/2013/12/21/discoverel-discover-emacs-context-menus/
Installation
Install it from MELPA. It's called discover.
Third-party module support
If you want to support discover.el you must use the function discover-add-context-menu, like so:
(discover-add-context-menu
:context-menu '(isearch
(description "Isearch, occur and highlighting")
(lisp-switches
("-cf" "Case should fold search" case-fold-search t nil))
(lisp-arguments
("=l" "context lines to show (occur)"
"list-matching-lines-default-context-lines"
(lambda (dummy) (interactive) (read-number "Number of context lines to show: "))))
(actions
("Isearch"
("_" "isearch forward symbol" isearch-forward-symbol)
("w" "isearch forward word" isearch-forward-word))
("Occur"
("o" "occur" occur))
("More"
("h" "highlighters ..." makey-key-mode-popup-isearch-highlight))))
:bind "M-s")
This will create a keybinding M-s against discover-mode, making it generally available.
Under the hood a command is dynamically created to set the key when discover-mode-hook is called.
To create a context menu that is only available to a specific mode is very easy, and is essentially an extension of the example above. This time I will use dired to demonstrate this:
(discover-add-context-menu :context-menu '(dired ...) :bind "?" :mode 'dired-mode :mode-hook 'dired-mode-hook )
As you can see, there is not much else to it. This will bind another dynamic command, but this time it will be against the hook specified in the property :mode-hook. You must ensure you pick the correct mode hook; usually it is named after the major mode.
The string you give in :bind will be passed directly to kbd -- so no need to escape anything!
You may want to check if discover is present before you call discover-add-context-menu. The easiest way is to check for its presence, like so:
(when (featurep 'discover)
(discover-add-context-menu
... ))
Useful Helper Commands
You can get the name of the command that reveals a given context menu by calling discover-get-context-menu-command-name. If you just want to funcall the returned symbol, the function discover-show-context-menu will do this for you.
Long-term Goals
- Replace makey.el with the rewritten version proposed by the Magit team.