Re: [Nano-devel] [PATCH] add rebinding for Ctrl+Arrow-keys combinations

[Benno Schulenberg]

On Wed, Aug 17, 2016, at 15:22, Rishabh Dave wrote:
> We would need a change in nanorc.nanorc as ^Left is coloured by red. I
> have attached a patch for that change after committing your patch on a
> new branch. Patch allows multiple characters in bind/unbind statements
> after '^' and 'M -'. Adding asterisk after [[:alpha:]] sufficed.

That's not good.  When a user tries to rebind ^foo, it should be colored red.
Only the exact strings Left, Right, Up and Down should become green.

> Are we looking forward to make M-Arrow keys rebindable?

No.  I'm not even sure we want to make Ctrl+Arrow rebindable.
Also, Alt+Arrow currently doesn't have any meaning or function
in nano, and probably won't have, because Alt+Left/Right have
a fixed function on the Linux console.

> Both are part of the same bug.

It is a bug /report/.  It doesn't mean that it should get fixed.
It just means it needs thinking, and weighing, and then maybe
discarding it as wontfix.

> And currently in help one alphabet is skipped -
>     M-Spac(^Left)   Go back one word
>     ^Space(^Right)  Go forward one word
> 
> How should it be fixed?

Easiest fix would be to define ^Left before M-Space, so it will
get listed first.  But... there is an additional problem.  On
many keyboards the Ins, Del, Tab, and Enter keys are literally
marked as such.  Therefore it was not much of a problem to have
them shown like that in the help text also in other languages.
But with the arrow keys... we can't really continue to say:

^B    (Left)    Reculer d'un caractère
^F    (Right)   Avancer d'un caractère

Those words between parentheses should be translated.  But...
many translations will be wider than the English words.  How
much room to reserve?  Don't know.  And ^Left/^Right only make
matters worse.

> Adding a tab between first 2 columns isn't a
> good option, is it?

No.  There is no need to add a whole tab.  It would be enough
to widen the first column from six characters to eight.

Benno

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