On 06/28/2007 08:40:16 PM, John Gabriele wrote:
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
Well, personally because we're limited by keys if we want to have universal keybindings I don't mind having both of the above. But it is harder to hold shift as well so I'd tend to go with the first one.
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
Well I'm not sure about you're example, but the answer IMO is it depends what's focussed. We've made some of the keybindings only active when the editor window has focus, but there may be more that need this check.
- 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).
This seems OK in general, but personally I don't mind exceptions to the rule, so long as there's a reason for it. E.g. for indenting (see my other mail).
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?
Well, I prefer it. I don't like holding shift for things that get pressed a lot, and I use undo/redo quite a lot. I realise some people might say the same for find previous, but I think there are more alternatives in that situation - e.g. find all/find usage. Undo/redo is important to be able to do easily because it can be stressful finding the right point without losing code.
- 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.
No, I think toggling is fine in that case. Also if we do end up using the '//~' trick from scite, toggling works there as well.
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
Seems OK ;-)
Regards, Nick