kakoune-phantom-selection

kakoune plugin to work on multiple selection one by one. Just a thin wrapper around marks to solve a common use-case.

Setup

Add phantom-selection.kak to your autoload dir: ~/.config/kak/autoload/, or source it manually.

Usage

With multiple selections, call phantom-selection-iterate-next or phantom-selection-iterate-prev. The main selection will remain, and the others will be put in a "dormant" state (but still visible). You can then cycle back and forwards by calling these commands again.
You can build the phantom selections using normal kakoune primitives or by calling phantom-selection-add-selection to add the current ones. This is useful when the selections you want do not share obvious similarities.
Finally, calling phantom-selection-select-all will restore all the dormant selection, and phantom-selection-clear will remove them instead.

I personally use the following mappings, since I don't find select onto too useful. You can use user mode instead of normal.

map global normal f     ": phantom-selection-add-selection<ret>"
map global normal F     ": phantom-selection-select-all; phantom-selection-clear<ret>"
map global normal <a-f> ": phantom-selection-iterate-next<ret>"
map global normal <a-F> ": phantom-selection-iterate-prev<ret>"

# this would be nice, but currrently doesn't work
# see https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/issues/1916
#map global insert <a-f> "<a-;>: phantom-selection-iterate-next<ret>"
#map global insert <a-F> "<a-;>: phantom-selection-iterate-prev<ret>"
# so instead, have an approximate version that uses 'i'
map global insert <a-f> "<esc>: phantom-selection-iterate-next<ret>i"
map global insert <a-F> "<esc>: phantom-selection-iterate-prev<ret>i"

Customization

The script can be modified by changing the value of the face PhantomSelection (default black,green+F), you probably want to keep the face 'final' by setting the +F attribute.

Tests

The test.kak_ file contains tests for the plugin. To execute these tests, simply run kak -n -e 'source test.kak_ ; quit': if the kakoune instance stays open, the tests have somehow failed and the current state can be inspected.

License

Unlicense