Question

In Emacs, C-u C-SPC will “jump to the mark, and set the mark from
position popped off the local mark ring”. Is there a way to go the opposite way around the mark ring? Say you have typed C-u C-SPC several times and want to go back to a mark you have seen without going all the way around the ring.

Answer 1

It doesn’t do exactly what you’re asking for, but it might be worth looking for a package called marker-visit.el which lets you navigate the marks in the current buffer in ‘buffer position order’. From that file:

;;; Commentary:

;; This file provides a simple way to navigate among marks in a
;; buffer.  C-u C-SPC is similar, but takes you haphazardly around the
;; buffer.  Setting bookmarks is a lot of extra work if you just want
;; to jump around your buffer quickly; plus, you have to come up with
;; a name for every bookmark.

;; All the marks you've left while editing a buffer serve as bread
;; crumb trails of areas in the buffer you've edited.  It is
;; convenient to navigate back and forth among these marks in order.
;; This file provides two methods to do just that, marker-visit-prev
;; and marker-visit-next.  These two functions will take you, from
;; point, to the nearest mark in either direction.  The function
;; marker-visit-truncate-mark-ring will truncate the mark ring.

;; The marks you can visit in a buffer consist of: "the mark" plus the
;; contents of the mark-ring.

I bind [S-up] and [S-down] to marker-visit-prev and marker-visit-next respectively.

If you really want/need to navigate in the order your mark-ring has currently, then you might get somewhere by looking at the functions pop-to-mark-command and pop-mark and implementing your own versions to rotate the mark ring in the opposite direction.