Re: Reconfiguring key bindings

[Pavel Roskin <proski gnu org>]

Hi, Peter!

> I support you, Pavel, on not allowing too flexible key binding.
> But maybe for such a cool feature, like TAB completion, personal
> exception coud be granted? 8^)

I'm not against flexible key bindings.  I'm just stating that it's not
available because the goal of "Learn Keys" is to make certain
"problematic" keys work, not to _redefine_ bindings between keys an
action.  There is a very limited potential to abuse "Learn Keys" to
redefine some keys.

Changes in the code required to support flexible key bindings will be very
significant.  All widgets and dialogs will deal with processed "actions"
rather than with raw keycodes.  Even more work will be needed to be done
if we want the keybar and the menu hotkeys to be shown correctly.

That's why such radical changes are not planned for the near future - they
can seriously destabilize the codebase.  When the 4.6.x branch stabilizes,
it will be possible to for a development branch and add flexible key
bindings.  If we can find a simple non-intrusive approach to changing the
Tab behavior, then it could be done earlier.

It's possible to configure mc so that "+", "-" and "*" are used for group
operations only when the command line is empty.  Similar approach could be
used for Tab.  If the command line is empty, Tab would move between
panels.  If there is some text on the command line, then Tab would be used
for completion and some other key (e.g. Alt-Tab) would move between
panels.

How does that sound?  Any better ideas?  I don't think I would use it
because I mostly use command history to access old commands and I use Tab
a lot while typing commands to navigate directory history of the opposite
panel.

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin