Re: Tab as completion shortcut

[Christian Rose <menthos menthos com>]

thristian@atdot.org wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 17, 2000 at 04:16:21PM +0200, Christian Rose wrote:
> > Petri Heinilä wrote:
> > > I think same kind mechanism should apply for keyboard input (or other
> > > input
> > > devices as well). There would be profiles like "emacs", "vi" or
> > > "windows".
> 
> I use Vim exclusively. I find myself going through the vi motions even
> in Netscape and sometimes in Windows. But I do *not* want anything in
> GNOME to have a "vi" mode. For one, if a newbie gets himself into vi
> mode accidentally ("Oooh.. I can make all my text widgets be `six'..
> I wonder what that does?") they will go through *hell*. Secondly, the
> amount of abstraction that the API would have to undergo to generalise
> between a fundamentally modeful and a fundamentally modeless interface
> just *scares* me.

I agree. The work that had to be done is indeed scary :)


> Also, with few exceptions, Linux desktops *are* developing a
> consistent unified keymap - the emacs keymap. Basic, simple functions
> like "beginning of line", "end of line", "delete to end", "clear line"
> work consistently and naturally across bash, Netscape, and GTK+
> widgets - and even in Vim, a little.

Well I wouldn't say that everything is inherited from emacs. Lots of
apps use common bindings from Windows too, and I believe those too come
from GTK+ defaults.
For example, take
Ctrl + x	cut
Ctrl + v	paste
Ctrl + c	copy

Those are indeed inherited from Windows, and they seem to be apparent in
most GTK+ text widgets. So GTK+ implements most common shortcuts from
both environments, and certainly others too.

However, there are situations when emacs defaults and Windows defaults
overlap. Take Ctrl + a for example. In emacs it positions the cursor on
the beginning of the line, in Windows it selects All text.

In GTK+ widgets, it seems to have the emacs effect. I think that's
rather inconvenient, as I think that the Windows default would serve new
users better. It's the standard on another GUI, is known by a lot more
people than just emacs users, and most keyboards (even tiny laptop ones)
already have "Home". There's also the issue that some emacs shortcuts
aren't well suited to non-US keyboards, although that isn't an issue in
this particular example.

That's my opinion though, I don't know if others agree. 

As a side note, I tested these issues in gnomeicu and gnotepad+. The
gnotepad+ implementation of "select All text" was indeed somewhat
surprising. The menu lists Ctrl + a as the shortcut for selecting all
text, however when you try hitting Ctrl + a the cursor instead jumps to
the beginning of the line...

Even if this is an application error, it's not only the novice user that
probably will be confused by this behavior, it seems that the developer
also expected another default and was confused by the gtk+ widget
behavior... maybe a sign that the GTK+ default in this case is
unexpected for a lot of users?


> Also note that GTK+ already has a very cool way of specifying
> keybindings for menu-items: hover the mouse over the menu-item you
> want, and press the keycombo you want. Backspace removes any
> keybinding. I don't know if there's a key for "restore default".

I didn't know this - is it documented somewhere?
Yes, I tried it and it is indeed very nice - but I agree, it should be
easy to reset the default ones, they should be made global and
remembered across sessions and apps.


> for the sort of functions we might want). This function list is
> supposedly to let people access functions that they don't have bound,
> (so you can double-click, say, on the "Move cursor to beginning of
> line" command, and the dialog closes and the cursor is moved to the
> beginning of the line), but also lets people edit keybindings for all
> these things.

Shouldn't that list be a global configuration dialog, so that I don't
have to edit it in each app? I.e. a common resource that apps can launch
when users want to edit keybindings, and not a dialog that has to be
reimplemented in all apps.


> One other thing.. I don't know if this is already the case, but if
> someone changes a "system wide" menu keybinding (like, say,
> Preferences or Exit), that should be reflected in all apps..

That should certainly have to be the case.


Christian



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Christian Rose
http://www.menthos.com                    	    menthos@menthos.com
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