leap-spooky.nvim 👻

Spooky is a Leap extension that allows for remote operations on Vim’s native text objects: that is, it exposes atomic bundles of (virtual or actual) leaping motions and text object selections.

showcase

AFAIK, the basic idea first appeared in vim-seek, one of vim-sneak‘s predecessors. (The feature is coincidentally called “leaping motions” there, no kidding.)

It’s not just number of keystrokes that matter here, but the potentially more intuitive workflow achieved through these higher abstractions, that are nevertheless obvious extensions of Vim’s grammar. As usual, the aim is to sharpen the saw; there are no big list of new commands to learn, except for an affix that can be added to all existing text objects. carb<leap> (“change around remote block [marked by leap motion]”) in no time will be just as natural as targets.vim’s canb (“change around next block”).

Usage

The “spooky” text objects automatically invoke Leap; after e.g. yarw, start typing the 2-character search pattern, and select the target as you would usually do. The difference is that instead of jumping there, the word will be yanked.

What are some fun things you can do with this?

  • Comment/delete/indent paragraphs without leaving your position (darp<leap>).
  • Fix a typo, even in another window, with a short, atomic command sequence (ciRw<leap><correction>).
  • Operate on distant lines: crr<leap>.
  • Clone text objects with a few keystrokes by turning on auto-paste after yanking (yarp<leap>).
  • Use count: e.g. y3arw<leap> yanks 3 words from the anchor point.

Status

WIP – everything is experimental at the moment.

Requirements

Setup

Spooky exposes only one convenience function. You can call it without arguments, if the defaults are okay:

require('leap-spooky').setup {
  affixes = {
    -- These will generate mappings for all native text objects, like:
    -- ir{obj}, ar{obj}, iR{obj}, aR{obj}, etc.
    -- Special "remote" line objects will also be added, by repeating the
    -- affixes. E.g. `yrr<leap>` will yank a line in the current window.
    window       = 'r',
    cross_window = 'R',
  },
  -- If this option is set to true, the yanked text will automatically be pasted
  -- at the cursor position if the unnamed register is in use.
  yank_paste = false,
  -- Call-specific overrides for the Leap motion itself.
  -- E.g.: opts = { equivalence_classes = {} }
  opts = nil,
}

Planned features

  • It would be awesome to restrict the search area to the given text objects. E.g. cr] would only give matches inside square brackets. This could often add a huge speed boost and reduce the visual noise a lot. We could even highlight the active areas.

  • Label the text objects themselves (at least blocks, paragraphs, etc.), so that you can immediately choose one, instead of having to specify the anchor point with a default 2-char Leap motion.

  • API for “spookifying” custom (non-native) text objects.

GitHub

View Github