On 6/28/07, Jeff Pohlmeyer yetanothergeek@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).
For what it's worth, NEdit uses Ctrl+9 for single-space indent, and Ctrl+( for tab-width indent, so I would be inclined to vote for that.
But if I remember correctly, Borland's editors use Ctrl+I and Ctrl+U for indent/unindent, so I guess it's impossible to not confuse somebody :-)
Probably most important is to just pick a design and stay consistent with it. If you're going to use Shift to make an editor function with an obvious opposite do its opposite, then you should use that throughout to keep the keybindings consistent.
Reminds me of an Emacs feature that always bugged me: Emacs often uses Alt-key to mean something just more or extended than Ctrl-key (ex. Ctrl-F to go forward-by-character, Alt-F to go forward-by-word). That's fine, and you can get used to it pretty easily. But then they go and set Ctrl-V be page-down, and Alt-V page up, which feels totally wrong given you're already used to those modifier keys meaning something else.
---John