Beginend

Summary

You might want to read the introductory blog post.

Redefine M-< and M-> (or any key bound to beginning-of-buffer or end-of-buffer) for some modes so that point moves to meaningful locations. The real beginning and end of buffers (i.e., point-min and point-max) are still accessible by pressing the same key again.

In particular, these modes are supported:

Mode	M-<	M->
LaTeX-mode	\begin{document}	\end{document}
bs-mode	first buffer	last buffer
compilation-mode	first compilation error	last compilation error
deft-mode	first match	last match
dired-mode	first file	last file
elfeed-search-mode	first feed	last feed
elfeed-show-mode	first body line	end of buffer
epa-key-list-mode	first key	last key
ibuffer-mode	first buffer	last buffer
laTeX-mode	\begin{document}	\end{document}
magit-status-mode	first section	last section
magit-revision-mode	first file	end of buffer
message-mode	first body line	last line before signature
notmuch-search-mode	first thread	last thread
nroam-mode	after the title	before backlinks
occur-mode	first match	last match
org-agenda-mode	first agenda item	last agenda item
org-mode	first heading	end of buffer
outline-mode	first heading	end of buffer
prodigy-mode	first service	last service
prog-mode	after initial comments	before final comments
recentf-dialog-mode	first most recent file	last most recent file
rg-mode	first match	last match
vc-dir-mode	first interesting file	last interesting file

Finally, beginend does what you expect when your buffer is narrowed.

Installing

Use melpa.

You can activate beginend for all modes it supports by customizing the variable beginend-global-mode (M-x customize-variable RET beginend-global-mode RET) or by adding this line to your configuration file:

(beginend-global-mode)

You can also decide to only activate beginend for some of its supported major modes (e.g., through beginend-dired-mode).

init.el example configuration

Vanilla Emacs init.el:

(require 'beginend)
(beginend-global-mode)

Configuration with the popular use-package macro:

(use-package beginend 
  :ensure t
  :demand t
  :config  
  (beginend-global-mode))

Cleaning up the modeline

By default, beginend adds the be lighter to the modeline.

You can use diminish.el or delight.el to turn this off for every minor mode beginend defines by looping over the beginend-modes variable. Note that you will also need to “turn off the lights” for beginend-global-mode, which is not part of this list.

If you usually diminish all minor modes, I recommend using minions.el.

In the following snippets, you can replace delight with diminish for similar results.

Adapting the vanilla Emacs init.el:

(require 'beginend)
(dolist (mode (cons 'beginend-global-mode (mapcar #'cdr beginend-modes)))
        (diminish mode))
(beginend-global-mode)

Adapting the use-package macro configuration:

(use-package beginend 
  :ensure t
  :demand t
  :config  
  (dolist (mode (cons 'beginend-global-mode (mapcar #'cdr beginend-modes)))
          (diminish mode))
  (beginend-global-mode))

Using

At this point, newly opened supported buffers will get improved versions of M-< and M-> (or any key bound to beginning-of-buffer or end-of-buffer).

The following shows some screencasts. In each screencast, the cursor is moved to the meaningful beginning and end and to the real beginning and end.

Dired mode

Magit status mode

Message mode

Programming mode

Occur mode

Contributing

Yes, please do! See CONTRIBUTING for guidelines.

Adding new modes is a matter of a few lines of code. For example, these five lines (already included) define the behavior of beginend in org-agenda-mode:

(beginend-define-mode org-agenda-mode
  (progn
    (org-agenda-next-item 1))
  (progn
    (org-agenda-previous-item 1)))

The first progn is responsible for moving point to the meaningful beginning of buffer. Before being executed, point is at the real beginning of the buffer (i.e., point-min). The expression (org-agenda-next-item 1) thus moves to the first agenda item. Similarly, the second progn is responsible for moving point to the meaningful end of buffer starting from real end (i.e., point-max).

License

See COPYING. Copyright (c) 2017-2023 Damien Cassou and Matus Goljer.