Prot on Bookmarks

Protesilaos Stavrou has a new video out on the Emacs bookmarks system. If you don’t use bookmarks, you should give them a try. They’re really handy for files you use often but don’t want to keep loaded all the time. Where they really shine for me is hard-to-find nodes in the info system. For example, I always have a hard time finding the Emacs syntax class information so I set a bookmark to pop me right into the info page.

If you use bookmark+ you can even use bookmarks to call a function or load a page in your browser. I have a bookmark to load Irreal, which is useful when writing and posting to the site. I’ve been using bookmark+ for a long time so I’m no longer sure what functionality is also in the default bookmark package.

If you want to integrate bookmarks into your workflow, I can’t recommend stealing abo-abo’s workflow enough. He uses a hydra and his headlong package to make opening a bookmark every efficient. Here’s the hydra entry I use for opening bookmarks

("m" headlong-bookmark-jump "bmk")

I’ll let you read the details at the above link but the TL;DR is that you can specify a bookmark with a single key in most cases. Thus, to open the aforementioned syntax node, I simply type Hyper+w m s and the page opens. The Hyper+w invokes a hydra that I use for window and buffer related operations. The m says to jump to a bookmark and the s specifies the syntax class info node.

The video is 24 minutes, 20 seconds long so plan accordingly. As always with Prot’s videos, it’s worth spending a few minutes on.

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