Re: Fw: nano key bindings

[Victor Khong - Horsefly Realty]

Appreciate the depth of thought to the discussion. One thought is to do the least harm as possible to a user. Since ^W closes a browser window and wipes out their work, a solution should contemplate something that produces a least harmful outcome even if it does something a user does not expect in the learning phase of a new key binding being introduced.

Since CUA (Common User Access) has trained users to expect ^F to find a search string, rebinding ^F to default to search is reasonable and does not harm a user even if they expect it to advance the cursor by one character. Even though Unix/Linux users are used to / as a search function, ^F is probably more accessible to a wider range of users and is more consistent with the behaviour of many text editors which use CUA. These incremental changes without alienating established nano users could help widen its appeal and keep its niche among text editors.

I would support either ^F or ^/ for search/whereis.

Victor Khong

On Thu, Jan 12, 2023 at 7:08 AM Chris Allegretta <chrisa@asty.org> wrote:

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