Emacs Compatibility Tracking Issue

[morgoth]

Rather than a monolithic "implement emacs in Zed" enhancement request (which is inherently unactionable) this issue is a tracking issue for centralizing various Zed bug fixes and enhancements to better supporting emacs-like compatibility and operation in Zed.

Issues:

• cut-buffer / yank support for ctrl-k and ctrl-y #14260
• Add a mark / select mode #8580
• Visual overline syntax decoration like Emacs' "Decorate Tags" option in EDE mode  #20986
• User-defined visual text substitutions (Prettify Symbols Mode in vim/emacs/vsc) #18420
• Zed Terminal is slower to process ctrl-x than MacOS Terminal (emacs) #16214
• Editor::KillRingCut support for multiple lines? (emacs) #22490
• Immutable project search (emacs occur style) #22943

Merged PRs:

• Add emacs keymap #19605
• Implement readline/emacs/macos style ctrl-k cut and ctrl-y yank #21003
• Add emacs keybinds for previous/next/cancel in search #21921
• Improve emacs keybind with better home/end behavior #21923
• Emacs keybinding improvements (2025-01-02) #22590
• More Emacs keybinding improvements #22629
• emacs: Fix using emacs in embedded terminal #22779
• Add emacs keybindings for mark emulation #22904
• emacs: Add as Transpose Characters (editor::Transpose) #22974

Comments such as "I need emacs mode to switch to Zed!" and the like are unwelcome here.
Please vote with 👍 below on this issue and the linked issues instead.

Editor note (@notpeter): Originally this issue was for an emacs keymap, a beta of which shipped in #19605

[ozanmakes]

An offical "Emacs mode" would be really nice. There is a couple of example user configurations over here: https://github.com/zed-industries/community/discussions/1653

At the moment the lack of a "mark" command is the biggest holdup. In Emacs, pressing Ctrl+SPC will toggle selection and let you use movement commands to select text without keeping Shift pressed. Any chance this could be added to Zed?

[notpeter]

For those following this issue we've recently shipped two emacs-related improvements:

• Add emacs keymap #19605
• Implement readline/emacs/macos style ctrl-k cut and ctrl-y yank #21003

Please try out the Emacs (beta) keymap by triggering the welcome: toggle bas keymap selector:

It's very basic at this point, but give it a whirl, happy to consider PRs with improvements / refinements.

Rather than close this issue I've repurposed it as a tracking issue for additional Emacs-related enhancements and I've edited the issue description above to include links to other issues.

One other update, sadly, due to issues with international keyboards we also opted to revert terminal.option_as_meta to default to false again:

• Make terminal.option_as_meta=false in default settings #19364

If you need emacs/readline style keybinds in your terminal which use meta / alt you will want to add this to your settings.json:

  "terminal": {
    "option_as_meta": true
  }

[kzar]

It might be worth adding "ctrl-o": "editor::Newline" for the editor context?

[notpeter]

@kzar Emacs ctrl-o behavior is slightly different that editor::Newline, ctrl-o creates a newline below but does not move the cursor. I would prefer to add support for an optional parameter to the editor::NewlineBelow action so that we could bind "ctrl-o": ["editor::NewlineBelow", {"move_cursor": false}].

Similar to this:

zed/assets/keymaps/default-linux.json

Line 306 in ba7b9b3

"ctrl-/": ["editor::ToggleComments", { "advance_downwards": false }],

zed/crates/editor/src/actions.rs

Lines 79 to 85 in ba7b9b3

	#[derive(PartialEq, Clone, Deserialize, Default)]
	pub struct ToggleComments {
	#[serde(default)]
	pub advance_downwards: bool,
	#[serde(default)]
	pub ignore_indent: bool,
	}

And then add a conditional inside the newline_below to optionally move the cursor.

zed/crates/editor/src/editor.rs

Line 3139 in ba7b9b3

pub fn newline_below(&mut self, _: &NewlineBelow, cx: &mut ViewContext<Self>) {

[kzar]

Good point about not moving the cursor, but I don't think that editor::NewlineBelow is right because if you're at the start of a line C-o should move the current line down (or if you're in the middle of a line, it should move the part after your cursor down). Perhaps we could go with your approach to stop the cursor moving, but with editor:Newline?

[dmvianna]

Oh, duh.

"context": "Editor:"

    "ctrl-y": "editor::Paste",
    "alt-w": "editor::Copy",
    "ctrl-w": "editor::Cut",
    "ctrl-?": "editor::Redo",
    "ctrl-shift-n": "editor::SelectDown",
    "ctrl-shift-p": "editor::SelectUp",
    "alt-shift-f": "editor::SelectToNextWordEnd",
    "alt-shift-b": "editor::SelectToPreviousWordStart",
    "ctrl-alt-shift-f": "editor::SelectToEndOfLine",
    "ctrl-alt-shift-b": "editor::SelectToBeginningOfLine"

This below also stops the Assistant from opening at every attempt to run editor::Redo.

"bindings"

  "alt-x": "app_menu::OpenApplicationMenu",
  "ctrl-?": null

And this prevents the cursor movement commands from opening new buffers when reaching beyond the first and last lines of a buffer.

"context": "Workspace:"

  "ctrl-n": null,
  "ctrl-p": null,

[dmvianna]

Moving around the workspace panes is different from Emacs, which will just cycle through all available buffers and has no default concept of how they're positioned. Zed seems to organise them spatially, so instead of having just the default Emacs ctrl-x o (which I rebinded to alt-o as per Mastering Emacs in my own configuration), I had to use spatial bindings. I dislike it; I find Emacs's approach better, especially when I can use IBuffer to locate buffers by name using ctrl-x b.

In Emacs, I go to the pane I want the buffer to be and switch to it by name. In Zed (at least for now), I have to locate the pane by looking at the tabs, switching to the pane and then choosing the desired tab. Suboptimal.

Here's my current config:

"context": "Workspace"

  "ctrl-x o": "tab_switcher::Toggle",
  "alt-x b": ["workspace::ActivatePaneInDirection", "Left"],
  "alt-x f": ["workspace::ActivatePaneInDirection", "Right"],
  "alt-x p": ["workspace::ActivatePaneInDirection", "Up"],
  "alt-x n": ["workspace::ActivatePaneInDirection", "Down"]

[dmvianna]

pop-global-mark in Emacs takes you back to the last mark, which in Zed it is the same as xref-go-back.
"context": "Pane"

  "alt-,": "pane::GoBack",  // xref-go-back
  "ctrl-x ctrl-space": "pane::GoBack",  // pop-global-mark
  "ctrl-u ctrl-space": "pane::GoForward"  // set-mark-command with negative prefix

Typing ctrl-x ctrl-space fast enough in Zed is tricky. How can I make Zed less impatient?