hideshow-org.el provides an org-mode like interface to the hideshow.el file.

org-mode provides an elegant means of interacting with outlines that one can toggle with the TAB key and Shift TAB. hideshow-org.el is my attempt to bring the org-mode like hiding and showing to code.

$ git clone git://github.com/secelis/hideshow-org.git

(add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/hideshow-org-directory")
(require 'hideshow-org)

I set this as my global key.

(global-set-key "\C-ch" 'hs-org/minor-mode)

Here are the keys in the minor mode.

TAB       -- execute normal TAB command, if point doesn't move, try to
             toggle the visibility of the block.
<S-tab>   -- execute normal <S-tab command, if point doesn't move, try to
             toggle the visibility of all the blocks.

The hardest part was trying to figure out when TAB should behave normally: for code that usually means some variant of *-ident-line (and is incidentally one of the reason I love emacs); for outlines in org-mode that means toggling the visibility. So the solution I came up with is this. If TAB doesn't change the point, then we try to hide or show the block. And we do a similar thing for Shift TAB. Hopefully, this will be sufficient such that hs-org/minor-mode does not get in the way of anyone's normal programming habits.

Many thanks to the developers of hideshow.el. Thanks to yasnippets.el for showing me how one could piggyback on an already bound key.