Subject: Re: bug#52417: Mark ring navigation could be two-way

From: André A. Gomes <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2021 20:11:50 +0000

Daniel Martín via "Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of
text editors" <[email-masked]> writes:

> ndame via "Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text
> editors" <[email-masked]> writes:
>
>> Other tools has similar features like the mark ring and they
>> provide two-way navigation, so you can go back to some previous
>> position to check something, and then you can go forward in the
>> ring to get back to a more recent position or the latest position
>> if you want.
>>
>> Emacs could have this too by providing a command which allows
>> moving forward in the mark ring.
>
> +1.  I agree that this is a useful feature that would improve the text
> editing capabilities of Emacs.  In Vim, you can use C-i and C-o to
> navigate forwards and backwards, respectively.
>
> A similar thing happens with the kill-ring.  M-y moves the last-yank
> pointer in one direction, but there could be a command to move it in the
> opposite direction.  Even if the mark and kill ring cycle, it is
> inconvenient to browse them in one direction only, because as modern
> computers have more memory available, the rings can store more things.
>
> This is probably one of the reasons why there are a lot of external
> packages that let you browse the contents of the mark-ring and kill-ring
> in the minibuffer or a separate buffer.

Regarding M-y, you can use negative prefixes to move in the opposite
direction.

Regarding the mark ring, I don't think it's possible.  If indeed it's
not, I think it's a good idea to add such functionality.

-- 
André A. Gomes
"Free Thought, Free World"