previously.hx

A picker for everything that has passed through a register, for the Helix editor, written in Steel Scheme.

Yanks, typed commands and / searches all land in registers, and Helix gives you no way to look back at them. This shows you the lot in one fuzzy-filtered list with a preview pane, and puts whichever one you choose back at the front of its register.

Install

Requires a plugin-enabled Helix build. With forge, Steel’s package manager:

forge pkg install --git https://github.com/waddie/previously.hx

Then in ~/.config/helix/init.scm:

(require "previously.hx/previously.scm")

Capture starts at load, and :previously opens the picker.

Use

Run :previously. The list holds every yank captured since Helix started, then your : history, then your / history. Type to filter across all three. The preview pane holds the whole value, which is how a yank full of whitespace becomes readable.

Rows are y, : or / for where the value came from, then the register character, then the first line of the value, then (N) when a yank spans several cursors.

Typed text filters the value. A column takes its own filter under the %name syntax Helix’s own pickers use, so %s narrows by source, %r by register and %v by value. A literal percent is \%.

Enter stages. Alt-Enter acts immediately.

A command entry opens the prompt showing the chosen line as its suggestion: Enter runs it, Up puts it in the line so you can edit it first. That falls out of Helix’s own prompt, which suggests and runs the newest : entry when the line is empty, so pulling one to the front is all this has to do.

Configure

Optional, after the require:

(previously-configure!
  (hash 'watch (list #\" #\a #\b) ; registers to capture yanks from
        'cap 50 ; entries kept per register
        'commands? #true ; include the : history
        'searches?