Resolving keybinding conflicts with Evil-mode: Troubleshooting Image-Dired bindings

Question

I am trying to move/rename 100+ images inside of a directory, so I am using Image-Dired to view the images as thumbnails and as I move/rename them.

I want to move multiple images at a time, so I am "marking" the thumbnailed images with image-dired-mark-thumb-original-file, which marks the associated file in the dired buffer. After this, I can move all of the marked files as usual using dired.

Since I am using Evil-mode, the default keybindings do not work in the image-dired thumbnail buffer, so I am planning to map some basic keybindings, such as l and h to move forward/backward one image, and m and u to mark/unmark the image files in the dired buffer.

I tried the following, but the keybindings are still being shadowed by evil-mode:

(defun image-dired-keybindings()
  (message "making keybindings!")
  (local-unset-key (kbd "l"))
  (local-unset-key (kbd "h"))
  (local-unset-key (kbd "m"))
  (local-unset-key (kbd "u"))
  (local-set-key (kbd "m") 
                 'image-dired-mark-thumb-original-file)
  (local-set-key (kbd "u") 
                 'image-dired-unmark-thumb-original-file)
  (local-set-key (kbd "l") 
                 'image-dired-forward-image)
  (local-set-key (kbd "h") 
                 'image-dired-backward-image)
  (message "making keybindings finished"))


(add-hook 'image-dired-thumbnail-mode-hook
          'image-dired-keybindings)

Any suggestions? My *Messages* buffer is logging the debug messages, and here is some detail on the modes in my image dired thumbnail buffer:

Enabled minor modes: Auto-Composition Auto-Compression Auto-Encryption
Blink-Cursor Column-Number Desktop-Save Electric-Indent Erc-Autojoin
Erc-Button Erc-Fill Erc-Irccontrols Erc-List Erc-Match Erc-Menu
Erc-Move-To-Prompt Erc-Netsplit Erc-Networks Erc-Noncommands
Erc-Pcomplete Erc-Readonly Erc-Ring Erc-Stamp Erc-Track Evil
Evil-Local File-Name-Shadow Font-Lock Global-Auto-Complete
Global-Font-Lock Global-Hl-Line Global-Undo-Tree Global-Visual-Line
Imagex-Global-Sticky Imagex-Sticky Line-Number Menu-Bar Mouse-Wheel
Read-Only Show-Paren Size-Indication Tooltip Transient-Mark Undo-Tree
Yas Yas-Global

(Information about these minor modes follows the major mode info.)

image-dired-thumbnail mode defined in `image-dired.el':
Browse and manipulate thumbnail images using dired.
Use `image-dired-dired' and `image-dired-setup-dired-keybindings' to get a
nice setup to start with.

This mode runs the hook `image-dired-thumbnail-mode-hook', as the final step
during initialization.

key             binding
---             -------

C-b             image-dired-backward-image
  (that binding is currently shadowed by another mode)
C-d             image-dired-delete-char
  (that binding is currently shadowed by another mode)
C-f             image-dired-forward-image
  (that binding is currently shadowed by another mode)
RET             image-dired-display-thumbnail-original-image
  (that binding is currently shadowed by another mode)
C-n             image-dired-next-line
  (that binding is currently shadowed by another mode)
C-p             image-dired-previous-line
  (that binding is currently shadowed by another mode)
SPC             image-dired-display-next-thumbnail-original
  (that binding is currently shadowed by another mode)
.               image-dired-track-original-file
  (that binding is currently shadowed by another mode)
D               image-dired-thumbnail-set-image-description
  (that binding is currently shadowed by another mode)
L               image-dired-rotate-original-left
  (that binding is currently shadowed by another mode)
R               image-dired-rotate-original-right
  (that binding is currently shadowed by another mode)
c               image-dired-comment-thumbnail
  (that binding is currently shadowed by another mode)
d               image-dired-flag-thumb-original-file
  (that binding is currently shadowed by another mode)
g               Prefix Command
h               image-dired-backward-image
  (that binding is currently shadowed by another mode)
l               image-dired-forward-image
  (that binding is currently shadowed by another mode)
m               image-dired-mark-thumb-original-file
  (that binding is currently shadowed by another mode)
q               image-dired-kill-buffer-and-window
  (that binding is currently shadowed by another mode)
r               image-dired-rotate-thumbnail-right
  (that binding is currently shadowed by another mode)
t               Prefix Command
  (that binding is currently shadowed by another mode)
u               image-dired-unmark-thumb-original-file
  (that binding is currently shadowed by another mode)
DEL             image-dired-display-previous-thumbnail-original
  (that binding is currently shadowed by another mode)
<C-mouse-1>     image-dired-mouse-toggle-mark
<C-return>      image-dired-thumbnail-display-external
<delete>        image-dired-flag-thumb-original-file
<down>          image-dired-next-line
  (that binding is currently shadowed by another mode)
<left>          image-dired-backward-image
  (that binding is currently shadowed by another mode)
<mouse-1>       image-dired-mouse-select-thumbnail
<mouse-2>       image-dired-mouse-display-image
  (that binding is currently shadowed by another mode)
<right>         image-dired-forward-image
  (that binding is currently shadowed by another mode)
<tab>           image-dired-jump-original-dired-buffer
  (that binding is currently shadowed by another mode)
<up>            image-dired-previous-line
  (that binding is currently shadowed by another mode)

g f             image-dired-line-up
  (that binding is currently shadowed by another mode)
g g             image-dired-line-up-dynamic
  (that binding is currently shadowed by another mode)
g i             image-dired-line-up-interactive
  (that binding is currently shadowed by another mode)

...TRUNCATED FOR BREVITY....

And inside the image-dired-thumbnail buffer, running C-h k for the command l shows that l is still bound to the evil-mode keybinding evil-forward-char:

l runs the command evil-forward-char, which is an interactive compiled
Lisp function in `evil-commands.el'.

It is bound to <right>, SPC, l.

(evil-forward-char &optional COUNT CROSSLINES NOERROR)

Move cursor to the right by COUNT characters.
Movement is restricted to the current line unless CROSSLINES is non-nil.
If NOERROR is non-nil, don't signal an error upon reaching the end
of the line or the buffer; just return nil.

How to I resolve this conflict to easily mark and traverse images in my images-dired-thumbnail buffer?

---

Update

Following @Drew's suggestion below, I tried resolving this using the image-dired-thumbnail-mode-map, as shown below:

(add-hook 'image-dired-thumbnail-mode-hook
      (lambda ()
            (define-key image-dired-thumbnail-mode-map "l" 'image-dired-forward-image)
            (define-key image-dired-thumbnail-mode-map "h" 'image-dired-backward-image)
            (define-key image-dired-thumbnail-mode-map "u" 'image-dired-unmark-thumb-original-file)
            (define-key image-dired-thumbnail-mode-map "m" 'image-dired-mark-thumb-original-file)
            )
          )

I also tried substituting "l" with (kbd "l"), but no success. I am still getting the same issue, where my mode help menu lists the key bindings as currently shadowed by another mode. C-h m shows the same conflicts:

h               image-dired-backward-image
  (that binding is currently shadowed by another mode)
l               image-dired-forward-image
  (that binding is currently shadowed by another mode)

Any suggestions?

Also, I double-checked my version of image-dired using list-packages, and it was listed as 0.4.11. I believe the source is here

Answer 1

Apparently there was some kind of evil-mode conflict. The following line fixed everything:

(evil-set-initial-state 'image-dired-thumbnail-mode 'emacs)

I hope this helps someone :-)