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

1. Replace makey.el with the rewritten version proposed by the Magit team.