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Re: [Nano-devel] wishlist


From: David Lawrence Ramsey
Subject: Re: [Nano-devel] wishlist
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 14:05:37 -0400
User-agent: Thunderbird 1.5 (X11/20051201)

Benno Schulenberg wrote:
> Hello developers,
>
> Some things I would like to see someday in nano:

<snip>

> * Don't waste the last few characters of the bottombars when the
> screen width isn't a clean multiple of the column width.  See the
> attached patch.  (For translation of CutTillEnd and History to Dutch I
> need 11 and 12 characters -- the patch makes this fit neatly even on a
> 80-column screen.)

I've tried this patch out.  It's a good idea, but it also introduces a
problem: the related mouse support in get_mouseinput() needs to be
adjusted to compensate for the changes.  Without that, the "CutTillEnd"
shotcut gets two more characters, but clicking on those characters in
the mouse won't trigger the shortcut.  Another, worse, problem is that
get_mouseinput() relies on the assumption that all shortcuts are the
same width, which, with your patch applied, is no longer true.  If you
have any other ideas, and/or a patch, let me know.

> * Add a compile-time or run-time option to use bold where now inverse
> video is used, as inverse video is difficult to read on a Konsole with
> a light background.

Done in CVS.  You can use the -D/--boldtext command line option or the
"boldtext" rcfile option to do this.

> * Add some blank lines in the main help text, to give the eye some
> hold in the long list of keys.  As the keys and their descriptions are
> quite wide apart, it's sometimes hard to see which description belongs
> to which key.  A few blank lines will make this easier, at least for
> the first and last few lines of each chunk.  I'd like to see a blank
> line before ^_, ^P, M-D, and M-X.

I'll look into this.

> * Don't call the help texts "help menu", as they aren't menus: nothing
> can be selected in them.

I'll look into this too.  Would "help browser" be a better term?

> * After a ^W, use ^K instead of ^X as an extra key for CutTillEnd.  At
> other places in nano ^X means close and save, here it suddenly becomes
> destructive.

Unfortunately, ^K is already used to cut text at the statusbar prompt
itself.  I've looked into the unused control-key shortcuts, and the only
one using a letter (which I would prefer to use) that's unused is ^J. ^J used to be used for full-justify, but Pico changed it to ^U, and I
can't change that if I want to retain Pico compatibility.  ^X was what
the original patch for Pico used, in any case, and if it ever gets in
officially, it may still use that keystroke.  Again, if you have any
other ideas, let me know.

> * It may seem strange, but when I first used nano, saw the two help
> lines at the bottom and saw the long list of key combinations in the
> main help text, I thought there would be a way to make the two bottom
> lines show the rest of the available key combinations too.  Something
> like M-/ that flips the bottom lines to the next set of keys.

I'll look into this too.

Thanks for the feedback.





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