Re: Fw: nano key bindings

[Chris Allegretta]

Thanks for your consideration Benno. I put the Twitter account to use one last 
time and put up a poll, and will see if anything useful comes out of it.

To be clarify my position, I would be perfectly happy with ^F. Just worried 
that some random person in a computer lab that doesnt use arrow keys is 
silently relying on it, however unlikely that might be. I just see the trend of 
more and more folks needing to use nano in a web page, and the number of times 
I wasted just in the last year accidentally closing the entire window is 
frustrating. But I will gladly take using ^F over no change. 

------- Original Message -------
On Thursday, January 12th, 2023 at 6:05 AM, Benno Schulenberg 
<bensberg@telfort.nl> wrote:


> 
> 
> 
> Op 11-01-2023 om 21:06 schreef Chris Allegretta:
> 
> > It sounds like we have to reassign something in order to serve as many users
> > as possible in the modern era of 'nano-in-browser'.
> 
> 
> I have not arrived in that era yet. But I do sometimes type ^W in Firefox
> when I want to search for something. :/
> 
> But as Peter says, it is impossible to find default keybindings that will
> please everyone, so... is it not enough that users can rebind functions to
> different keys via their ~/.nanorc file?
> 
> > The logical candidates to me seem to be:
> > 
> > - ^F (move forward one space) - but we may have some users who don't have
> > arrow keys
> 
> 
> Personally I never use ^F (nor ^B, ^N, ^P, ^E, or ^A) to move the cursor,
> so ^F for Search would be fine with me, especially since that is what ^F
> does in most other programs. But the older nano users that are used to
> the above cursor-moving keystrokes will be majorly annoyed if the default
> function of ^F changes.
> 
> > - ^/ (goto line number) - we already have ^_ and M-G for this, but some may
> > be used to it
> 
> 
> Under water, ^/ and ^_ are identical -- the two cannot be separated.
> So, reassigning ^/ to Search would reassign ^_ too, and would thus
> leave only M-G for Goto Line. The latter might not be so bad, as
> that is what I type anyway when I want to jump to a line, because it
> is memorable, and works also on a console (where ^/ does a backspace).
> 
> > - M-F (invoke formatter) - new(er) but is not the most logical keystroke
> > anyway for search IMO
> 
> 
> As you say, M-F is not the most logical keystroke for Search.
> 
> > Since the most inconsistent key of the above is '^/', as ^\ is for replace
> > and / is synonymous for searching, I'm actually going to change my 
> > suggestion
> > to that instead.
> 
> 
> Using ^/ for Search by default would look nice in the help lines:
> 
> ^G Help ^O Write Out ^/ Where Is ^K Cut ...
> ^X Exit ^R Read File ^\ Replace ^U Paste ...
> 
> But as implied above, ^/ is not rebindable on a Linux console and
> always does a backspace, so there this would be shown instead:
> 
> ^G Help ^O Write Out ^- Where Is ^K Cut ...
> ^X Exit ^R Read File ^\ Replace ^U Paste ...
> 
> The user would have to type ^- to do a Search (or use the old ^W).
> 
> In summary: I vote against changing the default key binding for any
> function. But if it /had/ to change, then I would vote for ^F.
> 
> It seems Dennis and Peter vote for ^F too, and Chris and Victor
> for ^/. What preference do others have?
> 
> Benno