Re: Fw: nano key bindings

[Benno Schulenberg]

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

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