outli

Simple and stylish comment-based outlines for Emacs.

outli is a simple Emacs outliner for code, documents, and more which provides heirarchical hide/show, styles your headings, and emulates org-mode navigation and structure editing. It is based on the built-in outline-minor-mode and is simple by design, providing just a few key additional features beyond what outline already offers:

• Configurable heading syntax based on the concept of a stem (fixed first characters) and repeat-char (the number of which determines a heading's depth). Example level-two headers include classics such as ;;;; and # **, but anything's possible.
• Header style options including color-matched overline and blended background color for the initial heading info.
• Tab and Shift-Tab work just like you'd expect from org-mode to toggle headings or document visibility.
• Speed keys mirroring org-mode for easy navigation, visibility, and structure editing at headlines. Hit ? for the list of available keys. Additions include h to hide sublevels below the current level, and 1-5 to specify such a level directly.
• Exposes headings to imenu. A fast imenu browser like consult-imenu is recommended.

Configuration

Not yet in a package database; simply clone and point use-package at the correct path (or use straight, etc.).

(use-package outli
  :load-path "~/code/emacs/outli"
  :after lispy ; only if you use lispy; it also sets speed keys on headers!
  :bind (:map outli-mode-map ; convenience key to get back to containing heading
	      ("C-c C-p" . (lambda () (interactive) (outline-back-to-heading))))
  :hook ((prog-mode text-mode) . outli-mode)) ; or whichever modes you prefer

You should probably not enable outli in org-mode (which by default is prevented), or with other packages which operate on headings, like outshine.

Customization

Headline style

The main variable to customize is outli-heading-config, where you can set the stem and repeat char, and influence the styling, including whether to style the stem and repeat chars the same, whether to include the overline, or whether to omit styling altogether. The custom variable outli-blend controls whether a blended background is used to start the headline. After configuring outli-heading-config, you should restart outli-mode in any open buffers using it.

Configured defaults are:

• emacs-lisp-mode: stem ;;, repeat-char ;
• tex-mode: %%, %
• org-mode: disabled
• others: comment-start + a space, *

Speed keys

Customize outli-speed-commands to alter or disable speed keys, which work at the beginning of heading lines only.

FAQ

• How does this relate to outline-minor-mode?

  outli is mostly a convenient wrapper around functionality that is already built-in to outline, adding a few things like narrow-to-subtree and insert-heading-respect-content (ala org). And of course the speed-key bindings, automatic comments-as-header patterns, and styling.

• How does this relate to outshine?

  Mostly just conceptually. Outshine also provides (different) speed keys, for example. And a lot more, much of which isn't as relevant to modern emacs. Since it builds more direclty on the built-in capabilities of outline-minor-mode, outli is a much smaller and simpler package.

• What is the syntax of outli-heading-config?

  It's an alist, each entry of which looks like:

  (MAJOR-MODE STEM REPEAT-CHAR STYLE NO-BAR) to configure a mode. or

  (MAJOR-MODE . nil) to explicity prevent outli from running in this mode.

  I recommend using the customize interface to configure outli: M-x customize-group outli. But it may help to know:

  • MAJOR-MODE: A symbol for a major mode, or parent mode from which the current mode inherits, like 'text-mode (note: omit the single apostrophe in the customize interface: it knows it's a symbol).
  • STEM: A string like "# ": the fixed "stem" of the headline pattern (omit quotes in customize interface). Can also be an elisp expression which evaluates to a string.
  • REPEAT-CHAR: A character like ?*: the repeating character which specifies the level of a headline (again: no ? needed in customize, just type the character). Can also be an elisp expression which evaluates to a character.
  • STYLE: A style flag: nil for default styling, 'none for no styling, and t for uniform styling between stem and repeat char. Can be omitted (defaults to nil).
  • NO-BAR: A flag for the overline bar: if non-nil, omit the overline. Can be omitted (defaults to nil).

Tips

• You can use arbitrary expressions for the stem and repeat chars; they'll get evaluated at run-time.
• It's useful to target high-level modes like prog-mode or text-mode from which many modes inherit (see mode-minder to get a list of your major mode heirarchy).
• Try out the h key at headline start: it folds everything up to be no deeper than the current header's level.
• To prevent outli from being enabled in a given mode (or family of derived modes), just include (MODE . nil) in outli-heading-config. By default, org-mode is excluded in this way.

Related Packages

• outline-minor-mode: The built-in minor mode for outlining documents on which outli builds.
• orgmode: The do-everything outliner mode.
• outshine: A featureful outline-mode enhancement from which outli took its inspiration. Has many legacy features.
• outorg: Required by outshine, this mode enables editing comment blocks in temporary org-mode buffers (the inverse of code-blocks in org).
• See more related packages for org-like behavior outside of org.