ace-link

GNU Emacs package for selecting a link to jump to

What and why

Currently, to jump to a link in an Info-mode or help-mode or woman-mode or org-mode or eww-mode or compilation-mode or goto-address-mode buffer, you can tab through the links to select the one you want. This is an O(N) operation, where the N is the amount of links. This package turns this into an O(1) operation, or at least O(log(N)) if you manage to squeeze thousands of links in one screen. It does so by assigning a letter to each link using avy.

Install

Either clone from here or install from MELPA (recommended).

Setup

Put this in your ~/.emacs:

(ace-link-setup-default)

This will bind o to:

• ace-link-info in Info-mode
• ace-link-help in help-mode
• ace-link-woman in woman-mode
• ace-link-eww in eww-mode
• ace-link-compilation in compilation-mode
• ace-link-custom in custom-mode-map

This shortcut is usually unbound and is very close to l which is the default shortcut to go back.

To bind ace-link-org, you can use something like this:

(define-key org-mode-map (kbd "M-o") 'ace-link-org)

To bind ace-link-gnus, you can use something like this:

(define-key gnus-summary-mode-map (kbd "M-o") 'ace-link-gnus)
(define-key gnus-article-mode-map (kbd "M-o") 'ace-link-gnus)

If you use ert, ace-link-help also works on ert results:

(require 'ert)
(define-key ert-results-mode-map "o" 'ace-link-help)

To bind 'ace-link-addr' in all modes (useful when using goto-address-mode or goto-address-prog-mode):

(global-set-key (kbd "M-o") 'ace-link-addr)

Usage

Just press o when you're in Info-mode or help-mode or woman-mode or eww-mode or compilation-mode.

Here's a screencast of browsing Info using ace-link-info: