perspective-el VS emacs-which-key

I opened a ticket https://github.com/nex3/perspective-el/issues/198 but can’t promise to get around to it soon.

I have tried to get this behaviour for a while. The closest I have gotten is using perspective.el, but it ended up being a bit clunky when I tried it like 4 years ago and now I just used bookmark+ which can save/load desktop files as bookmarks.

perspective for named workspaces.

persp-mode?

To scratch a personal itch, I created a little package that integrates perspective-el into the built-in tab-bar.

But I'm rethinking about my approach, as tab-bar-mode would give me nice visual help (#3), and it seems difficult to recover a perspective using perspective, and persp-mode may be a better fit in that sense (#4). The Treemacs integration isn't working for me either, and I get the same list of file trees for all perspectives -- I'm pretty sure I'm doing something stupid, but this was handled nicely with Doom Emacs's workspace support (#5). But perspective seems to work best for segregated buffer list (#1).

I think perspective.el is about what I’m looking for. If you had a list of org-ids, theses could be brought up in indirect buffers, and then those buffers added to the perspective group.

As for why this broke: this change went into Perspective a few weeks after Emacs 28 shipped. You either updated your packages recently after not updating for a while, or you switched to Emacs 28 (or later). Full discussion surrounding this change: https://github.com/nex3/perspective-el/issues/180

It sounds a bit like you want „perspective.el“ (1). It allows you to define „virtual workspaces“ of buffers with individual window layouts. On each virtual desktop the standard buffer list is replaced with a shorter showing only buffers belonging to the current context. I use it every day to keep „code“ buffers separate from my „test“ buffers.

(1) https://github.com/nex3/perspective-el

I think which-key already solves exactly that: https://github.com/justbur/emacs-which-key

As for the "complicated keybindings general" -- I assume because remembering things like C-x C-s is hard because of the shifted keystrokes? I get that, and there is in fact a solution for less used keybindings which I love, called 'which-key' https://github.com/justbur/emacs-which-key

I would recommend installing the which-key package, which is a fantastic discoverability aid. If you ever want an example config to get some inspiration, I have one here: Emacs Bedrock

Make sure you have which-key installed and turned on. When using a keybinding that has a prefix (like C-x or C-c), it displays all the keybindings that start with that prefix.

which-key for the shortcut menus

there are some packages to help with the keybings, which-key shows a list of keybind and its command and (guru-mode)[https://github.com/bbatsov/guru-mode] enforces to use the "best" keybind, for exemple, it forces you to use C-n to move the cursor, blocking you to use the down key, and if you press the down key, it show a text in minibuffer to the best keybind.

Thanks for confirming, I think it's an issue in which-key itself: https://github.com/justbur/emacs-which-key/pull/166

If you haven't already, definitely check out the package which-key.

> even though I'm a terminal user ... I really like the discoverability of GUIs, and that's where a good GUI is unbeatable by CLI.

CLI has poor discoverability? Sure; but even on the terminal, discoverability can still be good:

A couple of nice examples of discoverability in keyboard-focused programs:

- emacs' which-key[0]; there's a vim port[1] too. This shows you (some) of the available keybindings for the next input, and a short label. So you don't have to remember what `SPC h p ...` or all the options under `SPC f...`.. but it still helps to recall that `SPC h` is for 'help' related commands, `SPC f` for file related commands.

- emacs' magit[2][3]. Magit is so good at discoverability, that I'd rate it as the best tool for using git with. I've learned more about git from using it.

[0] https://github.com/justbur/emacs-which-key

[1] https://github.com/liuchengxu/vim-which-key

[2] https://magit.vc/

[3] https://emacsair.me/2017/09/01/magit-walk-through/

Am I right in thinking this is quite similar to which-key?