expand-region.el VS evil-collection

I don't use Meow, so this may be wildly off the mark (no pun) here. But I use and really like expand-region for selection and marking. With modal editing, I imagine it would be extremely fast and intuitive.

I think the following packages would fit your wishlist, as it is very similar to mine. As mentioned in the replies, there is (https://github.com/magnars/expand-region.el) and (https://github.com/mickeynp/combobulate). I regularly use (https://github.com/Fuco1/smartparens).

Paredit, Speed-of-thought lisp, Helm, perhaps Lispy but I am not using it myself. I found expand-region to work really well when writing and modifying elisp. lisp-extra-font-lock if you want some more blink (and font-lock-studio). Helpful is very good to have instead of built-in help, it displays the source code by default as well as symbol properties. It is a very informative learning experience to see how built-in stuff is implemented. I am quite lazy to press extra in built-in help to see the source code, but with Helpful, you get it auto in the same window, whicih is great for learning. Seeing symbol properties is sometimes a time saver so you don't have to M-: and type an Elisp function to see the symbol properties when debugging. Learn Edebug, it is very useful built-in application for Emacs Lisp development.

Exactly. Consider you have point in a table definition. You can programmatically find which org element you are in, at least for org-mode. Or in a defun for elisp-mode, a sentence or paragraf in plain text and so on. You could just press a shortcut, and based on major-mode you could find boundaries of the element and put it in hidden-list. It would be really fast to work that way. I don't know if it already exists in some package. Or you could go for somewhat easier version, and just check if a region is active, and if it is, hide region, and if not, hide current line, or based on mode, hide element at point. That way we can easily expand/contract region with er/expand-region and press a key to temporary hide/unhide it. It is not difficult to write a function to do that based on text properties. Thing-at-point might be useful here too.

https://github.com/magnars/expand-region.el is your friend. I use the built-in equivalent of it in IntelliJ all the time. it's a bit like a vi text objects in the simplest possible way.

Thanks, I will give paredit a shot.

I'm a regular emacs user, but I normally use expand-region[1] and cut/paste to edit lisp code. Expand-region usually knows what I want to move around after just one or two calls, only requires one key binding, and has visual feedback. And it works great in every language I have used.

https://github.com/magnars/expand-region.el

One thing that I always missed is the ability to select a whole function in C#, but I thought I just didn't know the right package or it was something trivial to do ad-hoc. Surprisingly, up to these days I still couldn't find anything. I bumped into the expand-region package at some point, which is awesome, but still something was missing. After going through the Emacs Lisp Intro tutorial, I learned a bit how to search things in a buffer, and I was also editing csharp files every day, so I decided to try to implement the functions myself. Fast forward some weeks, here I am, with a smile on my face :)

The package for growing the selection is the excellent expand-region by Magnar Sveen

If you want to try out some third-party packages in the beginning, I think the most "bang-for-your-buck" you'll get is with Avy. Also, expand-region. And specifically for writing: olivetti-mode, flyspell, dictionary, and Nicolas Rougier's Nano and Elegant Emacs setups.

You will probably like expand-region.el. It is fantastic for selecting inside brackets, quotes, etc.

It looks like that package has an issue tracker here, if you wanted to raise one: https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil-collection/issues

Honestly, I've yet to find a plugin that I use that isn't covered by https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil-collection. I love emacs, but I can't stand the chords.

Evil and Evil Collection is the nuclear option.

I still have phases where I experiment with modal editing, but I haven't messed with Evil-mode in a long time. I prefer Meow, in part because it doesn't invest everything on a single command layout. And the sample Dvorak layout meshes really well with Emacs bindings for special modes (like Dired and Ibuffer). So you don't have to install and configure something like Evil-collection just to use the same bindings everywhere.

The problem I have with evil in Emacs is that it is another layer on top of vinalla Emacs. Not many packages are designed with evil key bindings in mind. You need packages like https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil-collection and and https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil-magit and https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil-ediff to make Emacs feel more "evil". Distros like Doom and Spacemacs integrate these packages for you, but then you're even farther away from the default Emacs experience. I also find online help worse for evil bindings. To figure stuff out you often have to resort to looking at vim or neovim documentation. "Vanilla" Emacs is famously "self documenting" but last I checked evil couldn't provide useful help, within Emacs, in the same way.

Evil does interfere with bindings in some modes, but https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil-collection fixes a lot of these issues, both for built-in modes and a lot of popular third-party ones.

Oh, and stick this in your use-package for general: ;; We want SPC as a leader key, probably. So do this. It just affects what ;; keybinds are overridden by the `override' keymap functionality that ;; `general' provides. ;; ;; https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil-collection#making-spc-work-similarly-to-spacemacs ;; ;; NOTE: `evil-collection' binds over SPC in many packages. To use SPC as a ;; leader key with `general', first set these override states: (setq general-override-states '(insert emacs hybrid normal visual motion operator replace))

You might want to look into the evil-collection package.

Evil mode is incredible, but it has real disadvantages in the Emacs context. It is another layer above Emacs, which makes Emacs different from its default self. E.g. most packages don't come with evil-mode key bindings. The popular Emacs packages are handled by https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil-collection but, there is always going to be a layer of translation between how upstream describes its key bindings and how Evil binds them.