Re: [Nano-devel] [PATCH 1/2] bindings: rename 'prevhistory' to 'older' and 'nexthistory' to 'newer'

[Benno Schulenberg]

Op 09-10-18 om 10:05 schreef Brand Huntsman:
> On Mon,  8 Oct 2018 20:03:56 +0200 Benno Schulenberg <address@hidden>
> wrote:
>> Rename not only the bindable functions, but more importantly reword the tags
>> that are shown for ^P and ^N in the help lines: "Older" / "Newer".
> 
> Why?
> 
> The current names have more meaning than the new names.

I disagree.  The names "prevword" and "prevblock" make sense: the function
jumps to the preceding word or block.  ("prevline" and "prevpage" work too
but are undocumented.)  But "prevhistory"?  Does it jump to the previous
*history*?  Which history?  What is meant, of course, is that it jumps to
the previous item in the history list of the current prompt.  But then,
"previteminhistory" is too long.  "preventry"/"nextentry" could still be
an option.  But I am sick of this "Previous/Next" all over nano.  And this
is a place where other words make sense.  For me, "Older"/"Newer" perfectly
capture in a single word what is meant.  (In the Dutch translation I use
the equivalent of "Earlier"/"Later" -- this works in Dutch because they
are clearly adjectives; in English it's far less good because they look
more like adverbs.)  (And these "tags" or "labels" are just a hint, a
reminder of what the keystroke does.  If the user needs an explanation,
^G should be pressed.)

> The ^P and ^N might not map to previous and next in other languages but they
> do in english, and changing to older/newer breaks that mapping.

I never thought of ^P matching Prev and ^N Next -- I thought that it's
just because elsewhere in nano ^P is equivalent to <Up> and ^N is equivalent
to <Down>, and most people know that to go back in history one presses <Up>.

> If you want to shorten/cleanup the names in help, "Previous" and "Next" would
> be good choices.

Those are already used to mean "Previous occurrence" and "Next occurrence".

Benno

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