Rebinding <a-Z>aZ to Z

[losnappas]

Okay, so this rebind doesn't seem to be something as straight forward as making a simple sequence of commands via dance.run, as far as I can tell, because <a-Z> opens the menu.

What I'm hoping to achieve is make Z work in a way where it always adds to the register. I'm personally not using any of the advanced combination things that come up with <a-Z>, other than a (append).

So, for example, in kakoune I have these keybinds

map global normal <a-z> 'Z'
define-command -hidden -docstring 'Add selection or refresh selections' add-sel %{
	try %{
		execute-keys -save-regs '' '<a-Z>a<esc><a-Z>a'
	} catch %{
		execute-keys -save-regs '' 'Z'
	}
}
map global normal Z ': add-sel<ret>'

And what that does is make <a-z> reset the register, and Z always appends the current selection to the register. WIth this, I can easily go around pressing Z in important points, and finally just hit z to recover those.

[71]

That issue made me realize a few parts of Dance are still not exposed (e.g. #214, #215). I'll try to work on that. With that said, using some knowledge of the internals, I came up with the following.

---

map global normal <a-z> 'Z'

is

// Assign the new key binding:
{
  "key": "alt+z",
  "command": "dance.selections.save",
  "when": "editorTextFocus && dance.mode == 'normal'"
},
// Remove the previous key binding; I believe this is optional as the new
// key binding takes precedence:
{
  "key": "alt+z",
  "command": "-dance.selections.restore.withCurrent",
  "when": "editorTextFocus && dance.mode == 'normal'"
},

---

define-command -hidden -docstring 'Add selection or refresh selections' add-sel %{
	try %{
		execute-keys -save-regs '' '<a-Z>a<esc><a-Z>a'
	} catch %{
		execute-keys -save-regs '' 'Z'
	}
}
map global normal Z ': add-sel<ret>'

is

{
  "key": "shift+z",
  "command": "dance.run",
  "args": {
    "input": [
      "const registerApi = await run(`return register`),",
      "      registerName = register.name !== 'null' ? register.name : '^'",
      "      registerSelections = await registerApi.selection(registerName);",

      "if (registerSelections.length > 0)",
      "  Selections.set([...Selections.current(), ...registerSelections]);",

      "await command('.selections.save', { register: registerName });",
    ],
  },
  "when": "editorTextFocus && dance.mode == 'normal'"
},
// Again, this is probably optional:
{
  "key": "shift+z",
  "command": "-dance.selections.save",
  "when": "editorTextFocus && dance.mode == 'normal'"
},

Note that as #214 states, we can't access the register API, so I'm using a hack. It's also much less clear than I'd like it to be, but AFAIK it works.

[71]

Wiith f6fa713, you should be able to write

{
  // ...
  "command": "dance.run",
  "args": {
    "commands": [
      [".selections.restore.withCurrent", { "action": "a", "reverse": true }],
    ],
  },
  "when": "editorTextFocus && dance.mode == 'normal'"
},

to emulate <a-Z>a.

[losnappas]

Neat 📸 !

Here's what I ended up with

{
  "key": "alt+shift+z",
  "command": "dance.selections.save",
  "when": "editorTextFocus && dance.mode == 'normal'"
},
{
  "key": "shift+z",
  "command": "dance.run",
  "args": {
    "input": [
      "const registerApi = await run(`return register`),",
      "      registerName = register.name !== 'null' ? register.name : '^'",
      "      registerSelections = await registerApi.selection(registerName);",

      "if (!registerSelections?.length) return await command('.selections.save', { register: registerName });",
      "Selections.set([...Selections.current(), ...registerSelections]);",
      "await command('.selections.save', { register: registerName });",
      "await command('dance.selections.clear.secondary')"
    ]
  },
  "when": "editorTextFocus && dance.mode == 'normal'"
}

The last line: await command('dance.selections.clear.secondary') makes things work the same as in Kakoune, <a-Z> doesn't activate the selections, it just adds to them (cf. <a-z>).

I'll give the new version a try in the near future.