[Geany] Changing default Keybindings

[John Gabriele]

On Dec 11, 2007 5:59 AM, Ivano <ivano.primi at bioquant.uni-heidelberg.de> wrote:
> Hi everybody,
>
> My name is Ivano Primi, I am (still know) an Emacs user
> but I tried Geany and I was tempted to change my default editor.
> I did not do it, just for one reason: I would like to use with Geany
> the original Emacs keybindings (or at least the most important ones),
> but unfortunately with Geany 0.12 I am still not able to redefine
> the keybindings for Copy, Cut and Paste (or at least I did not find
> the right preference window :) ).

Hi Ivano,

Geany and Emacs have two incompatible (from what I can tell) schemes
for dealing with keybindings. Geany uses the Alt-foo keys dealing with
the GUI (usually menus and menu items). With Geany, the Alt keys
change depending upon which language you're using (your locale, I
suppose).

Emacs, OTOH, uses Alt keys often as augmented versions of the
corresponding Ctrl keys, and also has key prefixes. C-x to prefix
commands for dealing with files, windows, and buffers. C-h for the
help commands, C-c for the ones associated with the major mode, M-x
for typing in your own command names, and so on.

Currently, Geany does not allow the use of prefix keys like that.
Maybe it could via a plug-in. Dunno. Though, presumably, only the Ctrl
key ones would be able to be used. I'm not sure if you'd be able to
get exclusive use of, say, the M-x and M-g prefixes.

Anyhow, as has been mentioned multiple times on this list, there's not
a whole lot of interest on the part of the core developers to make
Geany emulate Emacs. Though... since there's now a nifty Lua plug-in
available, it might be interesting to hear what their opinion is on
using that plug-in to handle prefix key bindings, along with some
other missing Emacs-isms. Not sure what's possible via plug-ins at
this point -- haven't looked into it. For example, if the plug-in
could disable all Alt key bindings for the GUI (?!), they could then
be used for the usual Emacs bindings...

---John