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Re: [Nano-devel] wishlist


From: Benno Schulenberg
Subject: Re: [Nano-devel] wishlist
Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2006 00:30:49 +0200
User-agent: KMail/1.9.1

David Lawrence Ramsey wrote:
> Benno Schulenberg wrote:
>  > The reasoning for this arrangement:
>  >
>  > * The exit key should come first, the other file operation are
>  >   grouped along with it.
>  > * Search and Replace.
>  > * Cut and Paste.
>  > * Then mark/select, as it affects both of the previous
>  > operations. * Movement back and forth.
>  > * Movement to start and end.
>  > * Switching buffers.
>  > * Insertion and deletion (quite late, because most people will
>  > simply use Delete and Backspace, and the M-V is somewhat
>  > advanced). * Special movement.
>  > * Advanced things with paragraphs and words.
>  > * Displaying stuff.
>
> This sounds good for the most part, but I have two questions:
>
> 1. The help key is first in all the other lists (and the help
> toggle is the first in your reorganized toggle list below), so
> why is it last here?

In my opinion the help key should always be the last key in the 
list: when the user is looking at the help text, she has already 
found the help key: no need to tell her what she's just done.

The help toggle is mentioned first because it would keep the two 
help-related things together, and also because as you said it 
affects the display the most: it is somehow the most important of 
the toggles.

> 2. The way the shortcut lists are set up, the onscreen shortcuts
> on the bottom two lines will be in the same order as the help
> shown in the online help text.  This means that we'll lose Pico
> compatibility unless the first 12 shortcuts (the ones that use
> F1-F12) remain the same. (This could be changed if there were two
> lists, one for the online help text and one for the onscreen
> shortcuts, but that would be far too much of a hack.)  Given
> this, how would you organize the shortcuts if the first 12
> shortcuts don't move?

Something like this:

 F1     ^G     Display this help text
 F2     ^X     Close the current buffer / Exit from nano
 F3     ^O     Write the current buffer to disk
 F4     ^J     Justify the current paragraph

 F5     ^R     Insert another file into the current one
 F6     ^W     Search for a string or a regular expression
 F7     ^Y     Move to the previous screen
 F8     ^V     Move to the next screen

 F9     ^K     Cut the current line and store it in the cutbuffer
 F10    ^U     Uncut from the cutbuffer into the current line
 F11    ^C     Display the position of the cursor
 F12    ^T     Invoke the spell checker (if available)


        M-W    Repeat last search
 ^\     M-R    Replace a string or a regular expression
 ^^     M-A    Mark/select text starting at the cursor position
        M-T    Cut from the cursor to the end of the buffer

        ^F     Move forward one character
        ^B     Move back one character
      ^Space   Move forward one word
      M-Space  Move back one word
        ^P     Move to the previous line
        ^N     Move to the next line
        ^Y     Move to the previous screen
        ^V     Move to the next screen

        ^A     Move to the start of the current line
        ^E     Move to the end of the current line
 M-9    M-(    Move to the start  of the current paragraph
 M-0    M-)    Move to the end of the current paragraph
 M-|    M-\    Move to the start of the text
 M-?    M-/    Move to the end of the text

        M-]    Move to the matching bracket
 ^_     M-G    Move to a given line and column number
 M-_    M--    Scroll up one line without scrolling the cursor
 M-=    M-+    Scroll down one line without scrolling the cursor

 M-,    M-<    Switch to the previous buffer
 M-.    M->    Switch to the next buffer

        M-V    Insert the next character verbatim
        ^I     Insert a tab character at the cursor position
        ^M     Insert a carriage return at the cursor position
        ^D     Delete the character under the cursor
        ^H     Delete the character to the left of the cursor

        M-J    Justify the entire file
        M-D    Count the number of words, lines, and characters
        ^L     Refresh (redraw) the current screen

And then, after a double blank line, the toggles as they are now.

A few other things:

* Please consider not mentioning F13 to F16 -- this would save a 
whole column, moving the explanations much closer to the keys.
* Consider not truncating the first column, but instead overlapping 
the second over the first -- this will allow moving the columns a 
little closer together, and it will allow the Dutch translation of 
M-Space (M-Spatie) to not lose the final e.

>  > You'll notice the addition of ^W^Y and ^W^V; in my opinion
>  > these basic movement key combinations must be mentioned in the
>  > main help text: one can't expect the user to go looking for
>  > them under ^W.
>
> True.  Unfortunately, adding references to a different shortcut
> list will make things even uglier than they already are, but I've
> worked around that by adding meta sequences for them in the main
> list, as I already did with e.g. the paragraph movement
> functions.  Meta-\ is equivalent to ^W^Y, and Meta-/ is
> equivalent to ^W^V,

Ah, thanks.  You know, when first starting to use nano, I searched 
and searched the main help text to find the key combination for 
what I know as Ctrl+Home and Ctrl+End (in for example KWrite).  It 
took a while before I found them under Alt+G, because it wasn't 
immediately obvious that "First line" meant 'First line of file', 
not 'First line of screen'.

Regards,

Benno




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