Re: [gtk-list] Re: vi bindings for text widgets

[John Looney <John Looney hos horizon ie>]

Steve Hosgood wrote:
> STOP STOP STOP!!
> We were doing very well up to now with an interesting debate on the pros and
> cons of configurability. But it's just about to degenenerate into an
> editor-war, which I'm sure none of us want.
> 
> Who cares if you can or can't do "d5w" in NEdit? You can't do a "mouse
> driven rectangular text-delete" in Vi! But that's not the point:

 Well, ctrl-V and mouse away ;)
 
> In order to implement such Vi-style keysequences in GTK, you'd have to bloat
> the code to implement vi's "modal" mentality in (say) GTK text widget.
> Normally, if you're in the text widget and type "d5w" the characters "d", "5"
> and "w" would appear on screen. You cetainly wouldn't get 5 words deleted
> (which is what a Vi user might expect).

 Seriously though - I would love to be able to use Vim as the netscape mail
editor. Other people would be over the moon if they could use Xemacs as the
front end to it. I'm sure other people would have other favourites. It's
one thing to offer people keybindings to start-of-line and delete-word -
but Vi's modal state is something quite difficult to implement, and I'm not
sure it has it's place in the "lowest common denominator" editor widget
that has it's place in GUIs.

 How hard would it be to give the option of wrapping a *program* of choice
into the editor widget ? As in, have the text widget optionally wrap in the
front end to vim or nedit ? Is it impossible ? Would it just require the
author to add a "GTKWidget" target to the curses/motif/athena/GTK target
they currently support ?

John

-- 
 "I am Grey. I stand between the candle and the star.
    We are Grey. We stand between the darkness and the light."

John "Kate" Looney, Horizon Open Systems. Sun Microsystems distributor and 
Support centre. Hotline: [+353 1 8055700] Web http://www.hos.horizon.ie/