Jump to a Word

Introduction

Jump to a Word is a plugin for Geany that lets the user instantly move their cursor to a visible word, character, substring, or line. It also provides features for more precise text selection and transformation. The development of this plugin was influenced by the GNU Emacs package avy and specifically this demonstration of it.

Overview

The plugin allows the user to:

• Use shortcuts to jump to a word, character, or line
• Use a search term to jump to a word or substring
• Edit all occurances of a selected word, character, or substring
• Perform an action or selection after jumping to a word, character, substring, or line

These actions can be triggered from the menu, the command panel, or a keybinding.

Jumping to a word using a shortcut

Places a shortcut on every word on the screen and moves the cursor to that word when pressed.

Jumping to a character using a shortcut

Places a shortcut on every character on the screen that matches the provided query.

Jumping to a line using a shortcut

Places a shortcut on every line on the screen.

Jumping to a word using a search term

Highlights every word on the screen that matches the provided search term. The words can be cycled through using the left and right arrow keys.

Jumping to a substring using a search term

Highlights every substring on the screen that matches the provided search term.

Editing all occurances of a selected word, character, or substring

You can replace the selected text by using the "Replace selected text" function during a character shortcut jump, a word search, or a substring search. All occurances of a selected character, the word under the cursor, or a selected substring will be instantly tagged if you are not in shortcut or search mode.

Performing an action after jumping to a word, character, substring, or line

You can either select the text or select to the position of the text after jumping to a word, character, or substring. You may also select the text contained in the range between two positions. The action that occurs can be changed in the plugin preferences.

Jumping or searching within a selection

If a range of text is selected, the text within that selection will be used for jumping or searching. This can be disabled in the plugin preferences.

Jumping to the previous cursor position

You can move the cursor back to its previous position after a jump.

Building

Make sure you have Geany installed:

apt-get install libgtk-3-dev autoconf automake autopoint gettext
cd jump-to-a-word && make

Then move jump-to-a-word.so to your plugin path.