On 6/28/07, Nick Treleaven nick.treleaven@btinternet.com wrote:
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:
- 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).
Guess it depends on which philosophy you want Geany to go with:
A. Most common usage without the Shift key B. Less common requires Shift
or
A. Basic feature without Shift B. Extended with Shift
But just a moment...
After fiddling with key combos a bit, I'm starting to see things Enrico's way. Not only are the Alt keys used for activating menus, but they're also used extensively to control GUI dialog elements. If a given dialog is not modal, there could be confusion (ex. "will Alt-P find previous, or will it select paragraph?"). It's actually possibly (probably?) more consistent to only use Ctrl-key, Shift-Ctrl-key, and Shift-Alt-key to control editing functions, and leave Alt-key for dealing with the GUI elements.
I'm still not sure about using Shift to make a key do the opposite, but I see that it's not all that uncommon (ex, in Firefox, using Ctrl-G to find next, and Shift-Ctrl-G to find previous). Maybe using Shift in this way isn't a bad thing, and I just need to take more time to get used to it.
If that's the case, then maybe optimum key combos are:
* when a Ctrl-key combo has an obvious opposite, add Shift to it to get that opposite. * When it doesn't have an obvious opposite, use Shift-Ctrl-key to get some kind of extended behaviour. * Use Shift-Alt-key for other specialized functions. If these functions have an opposite, you'll just have to work to find a Shift-Alt-another_key to provide that function (or else just use a menu item to get it).
Applying this to Geany's current key bindings, F3/Shift-F3 is good. Shift-Alt-D even makes sense this way. :)
The inconsistent keys now become:
* undo, redo: Ctrl-Z, Ctrl-Y. Maybe should be Ctrl-Z, Shift-Ctrl-Z? * toggle line comment: Ctrl-B. Maybe should be Ctrl-B to comment, Shift-Ctrl-B to uncomment? (That way it would be similar to how Ctrl-G works.) * toggle marker: Ctrl-M. Maybe Ctrl-M to mark, Shift-Ctrl-M to unmark.
And this opens up those Shift-Alt-keys for ones such as:
* Shift-Alt-W to select current word * Shift-Alt-L to select current line * Shift-Alt-P to select current paragraph
without anything being inconsistent. :)
Getting back to indent then, it looks like Ctrl-I to indent and Shift-Ctrl-I to de-indent is good. And maybe Shift-Alt-I could be for inserting that elusive raw tab character. :)
---John