Question: Is there any way to get single character with public API?

[yubrot]

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VimFx version: 0.20.8
Firefox version: 51.0.1
OS: Windows 10
Keyboard language: JP106
Example URL (if any): -

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Thanks for a great extension!

I have switched from vimperator. I was using page marks (which is suggested in #695 and is called quickmarks on vimperator) heavily, so I implement this function in config.js. Although it works well, it depends vim object's internal API named _enterMode('marks', ..) to get a page-associated character.

Here is a source code: https://github.com/yubrot/d/blob/master/.config/vimfx/config.js#L125

Is there any way to get single character only with public API?

[lydell]

Hmm, I didn't think of this use case in commit c4c4173 apparently. So no, I don't think there's currently a way to do that.

However, what exactly are you trying to achieve? Could you give examples?

[yubrot]

Like marks,

• press qm followed by a letter to associate the current page (URL) with that letter.
• press go followed by a letter to open the page associated with that letter.

To achieve this, I used this internal idiom:

vim._enterMode('marks', letter => { ... });

[lydell]

Do you really add/change quickmarks so often that you need the qm command? (Instead of defining them in config.js.)

[yubrot]

In my case, Yes. Especially I use 0-9 for temporary.

[lydell]

Ok.

Even if vim._enterMode was public, vim._enterMode('marks', letter => { ... }); would still be a hack. The “real” solution would be to create a custom mode (which most likely would be very similar to Marks mode). Creating custom modes is possible using the public API, but unfortunately not entering them -.-

[lydell]

If you’d like to share a detailed use case example on how you use your quickmarks, I’d be very interested to hear.

[yubrot]

Even if vim._enterMode was public, vim._enterMode('marks', letter => { ... }); would still be a hack. The “real” solution would be to create a custom mode (which most likely would be very similar to Marks mode). Creating custom modes is possible using the public API, but unfortunately not entering them -.-

Oh, I see. Thank you for the clarification. Luckily, this internal dependence is minimum.

If you’d like to share a detailed use case example on how you use your quickmarks, I’d be very interested to hear.

Well, consider that there are several projects, each of them owns the project page in Gitlab, Redmine, local environment, etc.
Every time I focus the project, I quickmark the project specific page to the characters like g(itlab), r(edmine), etc. This is not quite often, but it is not appropriate for dotfiles.
The primary "temporary" usage is "Read It Later".

[lydell]

Thanks! I can see how quickmarks can be useful now.

I guess another way of implementing them is generating commands for qma, qmb, qmc ... and the same thing for go. It will clutter up the help dialog, but it is possible to hide commands there using CSS. This is definitely not a pretty solution, but at least it only uses public APIs ;)

Anyway, I don't expect relying on vim._enterMode will cause you any breakage for the remaining <1 year of the current APIs lifetime.

[lydell]

I think we should add a <any> key some time in the future. I'll keep that in mind.