[Usability] Yet another possible way to solve the Tab/Enter navigation problem

[zinie cs unibo it (Enrico Zini)]

Hello,

I'd like to throw in another idea for inputting tabs into single line
text fields.

Following the philosophy of "if you can't solve the problem, change the
problem", I was considering that maybe you don't just want to insert tabs
into a single-line text field, but also newlines (\n), or carriage returns
(\r), or a ^G to have a BEL character in some string to be echoed to the
terminal, or a ^O in your prompt to restore the right character set, and
so on.

This one problem has already been solved in the console world using ^V,
that would insert the next input chord instead of interpreting it in the
usual way.

Now, ^V has already been taken in the GUI, but I hope there's still some
free letter for a CTRL-something sequence to be adopted in all input
fields (single-line, multi-line or whatever).  By having such a
universally defined insert-special function, we could just use Tab and
Enter and whatever for navigation (except on multiline fields, of course)
and be sure we have a way to input whatever we might need in our text
fields.

This could also suggest to implement some popup panel for inputting
special chars that could show on pressing this insert-special key, with a
character map and a summary of control sequences, but this one needs to
be studied more in-depth (how do you navigate with keys the insert-special
panel if you are to insert the next keyboard chord literally?).


Bye, Enrico

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GPG key: 1024D/797EBFAB 2000-12-05 Enrico Zini (Unibo) <zinie cs unibo it>