File: embark.el.html

This package provides a sort of right-click contextual menu for Emacs, accessed through the embark-act command (which you should bind to a convenient key), offering you relevant actions to use on a target determined by the context:

- In the minibuffer, the target is the current best completion
 candidate.
- In the *Completions* buffer the target is the completion at point.
- In a regular buffer, the target is the region if active, or else the
 file, symbol or url at point.

The type of actions offered depend on the type of the target:

- For files you get offered actions like deleting, copying,
 renaming, visiting in another window, running a shell command on the
 file, etc.
- For buffers the actions include switching to or killing the buffer.
- For package names the actions include installing, removing or
 visiting the homepage.

Everything is easily configurable: determining the current target, classifying it, and deciding with actions are offered for each type in the classification. The above introduction just mentions part of the default configuration.

Configuring which actions are offered for a type is particularly easy and requires no programming: the embark-keymap-alist variable associates target types with variable containing keymaps, and those keymaps containing binds for the actions. For example, in the default configuration the type file is associated with the symbol embark-file-map. That symbol names a keymap with single-letter key bindings for common Emacs file commands, for instance c is bound to copy-file. This means that if while you are in the minibuffer after running a command that prompts for a file, such as find-file or rename-file, you can copy a file by running embark-act and then pressing c.

These action keymaps are very convenient but not strictly necessary when using embark-act: you can use any command that reads from the minibuffer as an action and the target of the action will be inserted at the first minibuffer prompt. After running embark-act all of your key bindings and even execute-extended-command can be used to run a command. The action keymaps are normal Emacs keymaps and you should feel free to bind in them whatever commands you find useful as actions.

The actions in embark-general-map are available no matter what type of completion you are in the middle of. By default this includes bindings to save the current candidate in the kill ring and to insert the current candidate in the previously selected buffer (the buffer that was current when you executed a command that opened up the minibuffer).

You can read about the Embark GitHub project wiki: https://github.com/oantolin/embark/wiki/Default-Actions

Besides acting individually on targets, Embark lets you work collectively on a set of target candidates. For example, while you are in the minibuffer the candidates are simply the possible completions of your input. Embark provides three commands to work on candidate sets:

- The embark-act-all command runs the same action on each of the
  current candidates. It is just like using embark-act on each
  candidate in turn.

- The embark-collect command produces a buffer listing all
  candidates, for you to peruse and run actions on at your leisure.
  The candidates are displayed as a list showing additional
  annotations.

- The embark-export command tries to open a buffer in an
  appropriate major mode for the set of candidates. If the
  candidates are files export produces a Dired buffer; if they are
  buffers, you get an Ibuffer buffer; and if they are packages you
  get a buffer in package menu mode.

These are always available as "actions" (although they do not act on just the current target but on all candidates) for embark-act and are bound to A, S (for "snapshot") and E, respectively, in embark-general-map. This means that you do not have to bind your own key bindings for these (although you can, of course), just a key binding for embark-act.

Defined variables (87)

Defined functions (208)

Defined faces (11)