Quick-scope mode

[Mte90]

I use https://github.com/unblevable/quick-scope this one doesn't change the letters to move to a word but use the same so it is more easy to move there.

It is possible to replicate this behaviour?

[hadronized]

It can be an interesting mode indeed. How does it behave with words starting with the same letters?

[Mte90]

If there are those cases you have to press multiple times that letter to move it where you want.
I think that is acceptable as it is more easy to understand.

[hadronized]

And it only does so for the current line, right?

[Mte90]

yes just for the current line

[hadronized]

Okay, can we review this feature request? I just saw someone on a stream using quick scope (the real one), and I’m confused. It’s just a helper feature, right? It just basically shows you the next character you can jump to, right?

[Mte90]

Yes so it is more simple to do that, as vim has too many hotkeys is just an hint to help on that.

[Kyran-C]

Quick-scope is just an f/t helper that highlights the first unique character in each word so you can jump to it without having to repeat the motion. I think the two plugins have distinct feature sets.

• Hop will put you precisely where you want to be as long as you're willing to spend a few keystrokes to get there; typically around 4 for most modes.
• Quick-scope sacrifices accuracy in exchange for only needing 2 keystrokes to get to the word (for instance if you're doing ciw it doesn't really matter where you land exactly)

The only overlap I could see would be a mode where upon pressing the equivalent of f/t it would highlight each word, but using legend keys at the start of the word rather than finding the first unique character in the line. Then you'd get the speed benefit of only 2 stroke movement, but also with the accuracy of landing at the beginning of the word.

Of course, what I'm describing basically already exists in the :HopWord mode, except it works for the whole file. The only remaining feature of quick-scope is the ability to have it highlight the current line before you even press f/t. You can just look where you wanna go and then fire off fx without having to pause to read the second character. Doing this the Hop way is impossible though, since it's replacing the letters with something else. There's no way to have that be a permanent mode unless you wanna read garbled gibberish.

I'd recommend just using the :HopWord mode. It's more precise, equally as efficient for local movements, and works across all lines rather than just the current one. It's become my default movement now for almost everything. Quick-scope can live alongside it if you really want the always-on hints for f/t, but I always found that distracting anyway so I uninstalled it.

[hadronized]

For now, I want to focus on fixing bugs and stabilizing the plugin as much as possible, so I don’t plan on working on that for now. There are a bunch of PRs I want to review and focus on (some adding new modes). I’m not ruling this out but I wanted to reach out to explain that I’m not going to work on this soon.

[hadronized]

Okay, after reading that again, I don’t think Hop is going to move into that direction. It looks like the closest thing to this would be https://github.com/ggandor/lightspeed.nvim.

[Mte90]

Seems that few days ago a similar plugin had the same features of quickscope and on reddit other people asked for that feature: https://www.reddit.com/r/neovim/comments/qk8ly8/plugin_ftftnvim_a_pure_lua_plugin_that_gives/

Just in case for others looking for an alternative.

[ggandor]

Okay, after reading that again, I don’t think Hop is going to move into that direction. It looks like the closest thing to this would be https://github.com/ggandor/lightspeed.nvim.

Well, yeah, we highlight unique characters, but only after initiating a search, and the aim is to provide feedback ("do not continue with the pattern, it's enough!"), so it's for a different purpose. I think quick-scope's method is a flawed idea that is actually counterproductive in practice. Someone asked for the same thing for Lightspeed a couple of months ago, and I described to them why that is out of the question.