What if the label was on the second character of the pair? (plus leap vs. sneak discussion)

[tuurep]

Hi I'm new on this plugin, but what always struck me as odd on intuition was how the label is sort of on the "third" character,

I do understand the idea of it, i.e. you type the two characters you see, and sequentially the third one you see.

But let's say I wanted it to be on the second one, where I conceptualize that the label goes on the pair rather than after it. Would this cause any technical problem?

Related and further goals I'm thinking about: I want to make the labeled pairs similar (but not exactly) to how vim-sneak does it for reasons of better legibility of the label (vaguely speaking, I can clarify more if this is interesting).

[tuurep]

Actually I achieved the setup visually by hacking on vim-sneak that I was looking for:

Blank on the first on the pair, label on the second

https://github.com/tuurep/vim-sneak/tree/label-at-the-end-of-match

I thought this was what I wanted, but it ended up being worse, not better than the default of vim-sneak 😄

What I mean exactly is how some characters hug the edge of a cell like this:

The q label in the screenshot, very nasty to read. Of course other characters will have the same problem on the left side, however.

This further made me appreciate better how leap.nvim's label is placed.

[ggandor]

Hi! If you just want to shift the label to the left, you can do that:

leap.nvim/README.md

Lines 487 to 505 in 7068a05

	<details>
	<summary>Always show labels at the beginning of the match</summary>
	Warning: `on_beacons` is an experimental escape hatch, and this workaround
	depends on implementation details.
	```lua
	-- `on_beacons` hooks into `beacons.light_up_beacons`, the function
	-- responsible for displaying stuff.
	require('leap').opts.on_beacons = function (targets, _, _)
	for _, t in ipairs(targets) do
	-- Overwrite the `offset` value in all beacons.
	-- target.beacon looks like: { <offset>, <extmark_opts> }
	if t.label and t.beacon then t.beacon[1] = 0 end
	end
	end
	```
	</details>

If you want to show the label over the second char instead of the first, then the loop body should be:

if t.label and t.beacon then
  t.beacon[1] = target.chars and #target.chars[1] or 0
end

Related issue: #220

Technically you can add a blank too with on_beacons, that would be more complex, but that would cause technical problems for the preview, since some labels might overlap. Also it would add too much unnecessary visual noise.

[ggandor]

You can set opts.preview=false , labels would work and look exactly like in Sneak then, but Leap still has a few orthogonal improvements, like handling (pre-)EOL matches (I really miss s{char}<space> in Sneak), multi-window search, or keeping the labels active while "traversing" (more ergonomic/fault-tolerant and also calmer visually). Also "smart" labeling - consistent, 100% deterministic automatic jump has its merits, but not allowing to use an extended label set (with ~2.5x times more labels) even as opt-in is a bit heavy-handed approach IMO (related: justinmk/vim-sneak#304).

[tuurep]

Hmm, definitely gotta try that out.

One more thing I really enjoy about vim-sneak is the g:sneak#s_next option ("clever sneak") and how even in label mode it just works seamlessly:

1. s<c1><c2><label>
2. ssss continue jumping through the next matches
3. SSSS (go back-and-forth)

There were similar options in leap but I got slightly overwhelmed especially since sneak just worked without me adding anything 😄

Also, I've got weird tastes in match highlighting, where I like that the cursor "consumes" the pair, i.e. looks like it's 2 chars wide:

I fear achieving this is hard in leap?

This makes sense when you see that my search highlighting is the same way:

[tuurep]

One more:

Being able to jump into a pair of characters even outside the current view, especially nice to search for flags like -x in manpages

Not entirely sure if this worked in leap, I have to try

Edit: yeah, this might be a real limitation in leap

[ggandor]

"clever sneak"

:help leap-clever-repeat

I fear achieving this is hard in leap?

Yeah, that would be far from trivial I guess, with the current API.

Being able to jump into a pair of characters even outside the current view

It would not be hard to support offscreen jumps, but I think that is exactly what / is for... ;) (Performance-wise it could be really problematic though.) We can already jump horizontally offscreen, but that was added mainly for 1-character mode to achieve feature parity with native fFtT, and to not break linewise macros.

[tuurep]

Yeah, on offscreen jumps, I really enjoy this benefit of a sneak-like plugin:

(src: sneak's Readme)

Thanks for the chat, it has been really interesting to think about.