GNU ELPA - tex-item

This package provides commands for navigating and editing in terms of \item blocks in a TeX document.

Download this repository, install using M-x package-install-file (or package-vc-install, straight, elpaca, …), and add something like the following to your init file, adjusting the binds according to preference (and replacing LaTeX-mode with latex-mode or tex-mode or plain-tex-mode, whichever is appropriate, if you don't use AUCTeX):

(use-package tex-item
  :after latex
  :config
  (defvar-keymap tex-item-map
    :repeat t
    "n" #'tex-item-forward
    "p" #'tex-item-backward
    "SPC" #'tex-item-mark
    "k" #'tex-item-kill
    "<backspace>" #'tex-item-backward-kill
    "t" #'tex-item-transpose
    "<down>" #'tex-item-move-down
    "<up>" #'tex-item-move-up)
  (define-key LaTeX-mode-map (kbd "M-g M-i") tex-item-map))

This configuration makes use of repeat-mode (see the Emacs manual or this blog post) to make it easier to apply such commands repeatedly. The precise use-package declaration that I use may be found in the LaTeX part of my config (elpaca branch).

The \item block associated to a given position is the one that contains that position and for which the position is not contained in any subordinate begin/end itemize-like block. For example, consider the TeX code:

\begin{enumerate}
\item Alpha
\item Beta:
  \begin{enumerate}
  \item One
  \item Two
  \end{enumerate}
\end{enumerate}

Here, the top-level \item blocks are:

\item Alpha

\item Beta:
  \begin{enumerate}
  \item One
  \item Two
  \end{enumerate}

If the point on the line containing "Beta", then the associated \item block is the one displayed above. If the point is instead on the line containing "One", then we instead associate the block consisting of the following line:

\item One

The commands provided by this package operate in an intuitive way on such blocks. For example, if we apply tex-item-move-up (M-g M-i <up>) with point on "Beta", then we obtain the following rearrangement:

\begin{enumerate}
\item Beta:
  \begin{enumerate}
  \item One
  \item Two
  \end{enumerate}
\item Alpha
\end{enumerate}

By default, this package pays attention to the macros \item, \bibitem and \task, as well as the list environments itemize, enumerate and description. You can use other macros or environments by adding them to the customization variables tex-item-items and tex-item-envs.