oh-my-zsh/plugins/zsh-navigation-tools/README.md

Zsh Navigation Tools

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/psprint/zsh-navigation-tools/master/doc/img/n-history2.png

Set of tools like n-history – multi-word history searcher, n-cd – directory bookmark manager, n-kill – htop like kill utility, and more. Based on n-list, a tool generating selectable curses-based list of elements that has access to current Zsh session, i.e. has broad capabilities to work together with it. Feature highlights include incremental multi-word searching, ANSI coloring, unique mode, horizontal scroll, non-selectable elements, grepping and various integrations with Zsh.

History Widget

To have n-history as multi-word incremental searcher bound to Ctrl-R copy znt-* files into the */site-functions dir (unless you use Oh My Zsh) and add:

autoload znt-history-widget
zle -N znt-history-widget
bindkey "^R" znt-history-widget

to .zshrc. This is done automatically when using Oh My Zsh. Two other widgets exist, znt-cd-widget and znt-kill-widget, they can be too assigned to key combinations (no need for autoload when using Oh My Zsh):

zle -N znt-cd-widget
bindkey "^A" znt-cd-widget
zle -N znt-kill-widget
bindkey "^Y" znt-kill-widget

Oh My Zsh stores history into ~/.zsh_history. When you switch to OMZ you could want to copy your previous data (from e.g. ~/.zhistory) into the new location.

News

• 30-04-2016

  • New feature: color themes. Use Ctrl-T and Ctrl-G to browse predefined themes. They are listed in ~/.config/znt/n-list.conf. Use the file to permanently set a color scheme. Also, I sent a patch to Zsh developers and starting from Zsh > 5.2 (not yet released) supported will be 256 colors. The file ~/.config/znt/n-list.conf already has set of 256-color themes prepared :)

• 29-04-2016

  • New feature: private history – n-history tracks selected history entries, exposes them via new view (activated with F1)

• 28-04-2016

  • New features:
    1. New n-history view (activated with F1): Most Frequent History Words
    2. Predefined search keywords – use F2 to quickly search for chosen keywords (video: https://youtu.be/DN9QqssAYB8)
    3. Configuration option for doing instant selection in search mode

Introduction

The tools are:

• n-aliases - browses aliases, relegates editing to vared
• n-cd - browses dirstack and bookmarked directories, allows to enter selected directory
• n-functions - browses functions, relegates editing to zed or vared
• n-history - browses history, allows to edit and run commands from it
• n-kill - browses processes list, allows to send signal to selected process
• n-env - browses environment, relegates editing to vared
• n-options - browses options, allows to toggle their state
• n-panelize - loads output of given command into the list for browsing

All tools support horizontal scroll with <,>, {,}, h,l or left and right cursors. Other keys are:

• [,] - jump directory bookmarks in n-cd and typical signals in n-kill
• Ctrl-d, Ctrl-u - half page up or down
• Ctrl-p, Ctrl-n - previous and next (also done with vim's j,k)
• Ctrl-l - redraw of whole display
• g, G - beginning and end of the list
• Ctrl-o, o - enter uniq mode (no duplicate lines)
• / - start incremental search
• Enter - finish incremental search, retaining filter
• Esc - exit incremental search, clearing filter
• Ctrl-w (in incremental search) - delete whole word
• Ctrl-k (in incremental search) - delete whole line

Configuration

ZNT has configuration files located in ~/.config/znt. The files are:

n-aliases.conf
n-cd.conf
n-env.conf
n-functions.conf
n-history.conf
n-kill.conf
n-list.conf
n-options.conf
n-panelize.conf

n-list.conf contains main configuration variables:

# Should the list (text, borders) be drawn in bold
local bold=0

# Main color pair (foreground/background)
local colorpair="white/black"

# Should draw the border?
local border=1

# Combinations of colors to try out with Ctrl-T and Ctrl-G
# The last number is the bold option, 0 or 1
local -a themes
themes=( "white/black/1" "green/black/0" "green/black/1" "white/blue/0" "white/blue/1"
         "magenta/black/0" "magenta/black/1" )

Read remaining configuration files to see what's in them. Nevertheless, configuration can be also set from zshrc. There are 5 standard zshrc configuration variables:

znt_history_active_text - underline or reverse - how should be active element highlighted
znt_history_nlist_coloring_pattern - pattern that can be used to colorize elements
znt_history_nlist_coloring_color - color with which to colorize
znt_history_nlist_coloring_match_multiple - should multiple matches be colorized (0 or 1)
znt_history_keywords (array) - search keywords activated with `Ctrl-X`

Above variables will work for n-history tool. For other tools, change _history_ to e.g. _cd_, for the n-cd tool. The same works for all 8 tools.

Common configuration of the tools uses variables with _list_ in them:

znt_list_bold - should draw text in bold (0 or 1)
znt_list_colorpair - main pair of colors to be used, e.g "green/black"
znt_list_border - should draw borders around windows (0 or 1)
znt_list_themes (array) - list of themes to try out with Ctrl-T, e.g. ( "white/black/1" "green/black/0" )
znt_list_instant_select - should pressing enter in search mode leave tool (0 or 1)

Programming

The function n-list is used as follows:

n-list {element1} [element2] ... [elementN]

This is all that is needed to be done to have the features like ANSI coloring, incremental multi-word search, unique mode, horizontal scroll, non-selectable elements (grepping is done outside n-list, see the tools for how it can be done). To set up non-selectable entries add their indices into array NLIST_NONSELECTABLE_ELEMENTS:

typeset -a NLIST_NONSELECTABLE_ELEMENTS
NLIST_NONSELECTABLE_ELEMENTS=( 1 )

Result is stored as reply[REPLY] ( isn't needed before REPLY because of arithmetic context inside []). The returned array might be different from input arguments as n-list can process them via incremental search or uniq mode. $REPLY is the index in that possibly processed array. If $REPLY equals -1 it means that no selection have been made (user quitted via q key).

To set up entries that can be jumped to with [,] keys add their indices to NLIST_HOP_INDEXES array:

typeset -a NLIST_HOP_INDEXES
NLIST_HOP_INDEXES=( 1 10 )

n-list can automatically colorize entries according to a Zsh pattern. Following example will colorize all numbers with blue:

local NLIST_COLORING_PATTERN="[0-9]##"
local NLIST_COLORING_COLOR=$'\x1b[00;34m'
local NLIST_COLORING_END_COLOR=$'\x1b[0m'
local NLIST_COLORING_MATCH_MULTIPLE=1
n-list "This is a number 123" "This line too has a number: 456"

Blue is the default color, it doesn't have to be set. See zshexpn man page for more information on Zsh patterns. Briefly, comparing to regular expressions, (#s) is ^, (#e) is $, # is *, ## is +. Alternative will work when in parenthesis, i.e. (a|b). BTW by using this method you can colorize output of the tools, via their config files (check out e.g. n-cd.conf, it uses this).

Performance

ZNT are fastest with Zsh before 5.0.6 and starting from 5.2

vim:filetype=conf