On 06/26/2007 07:03:48 PM, John Gabriele wrote:
On 6/26/07, Enrico Tröger enrico.troeger@uvena.de wrote:
On Tue, 26 Jun 2007 11:43:27 -0400, "John Gabriele" jmg3000@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/26/07, Enrico Tröger enrico.troeger@uvena.de wrote:
On Tue, 26 Jun 2007 00:41:07 -0400, "John Gabriele" jmg3000@gmail.com wrote:
I'd go with the more common operation -- go all lowercase first. Besides, you're already holding down the Ctrl key and you want uppercase, you just tap 'U' again.
Is it really a problem to have two key bindings for that? AFAIK I always seen two bindings resp. two actions for lowering or uppering the case in other apps.
No. The only problem is that using the Shift key to do the opposite of the un-Shifted command feels backwards, and IMO is more difficult for users to remember. Whenever I need to use Shift to do an opposite operation, my brain has to stop short and go, "oh, right. yes, I know Shift usually enhances the command in some way, but for this special case it makes it do the opposite".
Well there is Shift-F3 for search backwards too. Personally I find it easier to remember with shift for things like that, and it frees up more keys for other keybindings. But for indenting maybe ctrl-0 and ctrl-9 are better. I think that's because it's easier to associate with left and right.
[...]
Anyhow, not a big deal at all. The current way just seems inconsistent to me. What's more important, IMO, is the Ctrl-G Shift-Ctrl-G issue, where we wrote:
- Ctrl-G, Shift-Ctrl-G --> Use Ctrl-G to toggle.
No. Then you can't double comment a line. Ok, uses should be not that much but e.g. when commenting a block of code including some commented lines this would uncomment these particular lines which is mostly unintended. Maybe we could change Ctrl+B to Alt+G but it would be just a change of the default binding.
I like the way SciTE does it - by using '//~' so no comments are lost when toggling commenting (it uses ctrl-Q, but that's normally quit for GTK-apps):
//~ line //~ //commented line
This one is probably a fairly heavily-used feature, and using Shift to make Ctrl-G do the opposite doesn't feel right. On the bright side, since Ctrl-G isn't really mnemonic for commenting (well, I don't think it is in english anyway), it seems like you could pretty easily find a 2nd key for uncommenting. Do many users use Ctrl-B? If not, then maybe:
- Ctrl-G to comment
- Ctrl-B to uncomment (go *b*ack :) )
I use the toggle comment the most (but I reassigned it to ctrl-').
Another possibility is using non-alphanumeric keys for this. Say,
- Ctrl-# (Shift-Ctrl-3) to comment
- Ctrl-@ (Shift-Ctrl-2) to uncomment
since the keys are right next to eachother, and a number of languages use '#' as the commenting character. This could also be nice because it frees up Ctrl-G, in case you needed that nice juicy key-combo for something else. :)
The problem with non-alphanumeric keys by default is that different keyboard layouts require shift differently, and sometimes other modifier keys instead.
- Tab, Shift-Tab --> use Ctrl-9 & Ctrl-0 to indent/de-indent by one space, and Ctrl-) & Ctrl-( to indent/de-indent by one tab width.
I like this, but maybe it should be the other way around - on most layouts ctrl-number is easier for common tab width indenting, and holding shift for the less common case makes sense (for me anyway).
Who needs indentation by one space?
When you select some text (say, you're cleaning up some poorly-indented code), and you need to shift it around but aren't exactly sure what column you need it at. You "tap right a few
times,
left, ah -- got it".
Hmm, usually I do this by removing all indentation(Ctrl+Shift+I several times) and then re-indent the code as I like. Not necessarily faster but safer especially when the code was indented with spaces and you want to indent by tabs(my preference as you know ;-)).
I do it like this too (as I prefer tabs).
[snip] Ok, but is it too hard to just use the space key in combination with the cursor keys for navigation? Yes this needs more work, more keystrokes but IMO it is a quite seldom use case.
I use the feature every so often. When you need it, it's very nice.
When I need to do this I use the rectangular selection to delete or copy & paste, which is quicker than manually. Or even a regex replace, but I tend to use it not for indenting.
Not using spaces, I don't know how often this is needed, but other editors have it and it could be useful.
Regards, Nick