[Geany] tuning Geany key combos

[Enrico Tröger]

On Tue, 26 Jun 2007 00:41:07 -0400, "John Gabriele" <jmg3000 at gmail.com>
wrote:

Hi all,

> [...]
> So, given all that, to even more finely tune Geany's editing
> environment, here's my suggestions:
> 
> 
> A. Get rid of using Shift to make a key combo do the opposite
>    (item 2 above). This includes:
> 
>    * 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.

>    * Ctrl-U, Shift-Ctrl-U --> Use Ctrl-U to toggle. Then use
>      Shift-Ctrl-U to toggle first-letter capitalization. Yes. :)
What about this string "aBcD" -> toggle to lower or upper case?

>    * 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.
Who needs indentation by one space? I want to keep the Tab/Shift-Tab
behaviour because I think it is very commonly.
But because of talking about indentation: I plan to add a feature to
auto indent current line by pressing a key. This means, the current
line will be indented according to the previous line independent of the
current indentation(maybe too less or too much indentation). My
suggestion: Alt+I to be similar to Ctrl+I / Ctrl+Shift+I


> B. Fix an oddball case:
> 
>    * Shift-Alt-D for insert date. This one's not too bad, but
>      falls outside of the uniformity of having Shift-Alt-key be a
>      fancy version of Alt-key. Maybe use Alt-I (for "insert")?
Hmm, not sure whether it is better to change the binding for uniformity
which maybe breaks users habits. On the other hand, Insert Custom Date
is maybe not an every day used binding.

> C. The mortal sin: Incremental search. Geany's Achilles' heel.
>    One of an editors' most-useful features, it should be be
>    effortless to do forward and backward incremental searches.
>    As implemented, if I want to incrementally search forward, I
>    need to hit F7, tap F3 to get to the one I want, then F2 to
>    get back to the editor. So, I've basically got to spend the
>    entire search looking at my hands instead of the text. It's
>    even worse to search backward incrementally -- not sure I can
>    even do this. Here's my proposed solution. Buckle seatbelts,
>    and please observe the no-smoking signs:
> 
>    1. Steal Ctrl-T. Use it for forward incremental search (think
>       of it as "to" or "incremen*t*al"). Same as today's F7.
>       Move "transpose lines" to Shift-Ctrl-L.
>    2. Shift-Ctrl-T gets you find next (like F3).
>    3. Use Alt-T to start a reverse incremental search (Use Alt-O
>       to get the Tools menu).
>    4. Shift-Alt-T gets you find previous. Nice consistency
>       here, I think.
>    5. Hitting Ctrl-LeftArrow or Ctrl-RightArrow should snap you
>       out of the incremental search and back to the main editor
>       window (instead of today's F2). After an incremental
>       search, you often either want to go to the beginning or
>       end of the word you found anyway.
> 
>    When you're in an incremental search, regardless of
>    direction, you should be able to tap either Shift-Ctrl-T to
>    find next, or Shift-Alt-T to find previous.
Basically good idea, anyway I prefer to keep F3 and Shift+F3 for
searching forwards and backwards just because of its common usage
(remember Geany != Emacs ;-)). And IMO the F-keys are not that far away
from the main keys (or my fingers are just a bit longer ;-)).
But we can surely improve the current behaviour of incremental search.

> Finally, some new key combos to possibly add that would probably
> be pretty useful, and don't stomp too much on anything else:
> 
> 1. Select line.      Use Alt-L
> 2. Select paragraph. Use Alt-P (switch Project menu to Alt-R)
Above two sound nice. Could be implemented.

> 3. Select word.      Use Alt-W
Already present. Look for the binding "Select current word".


In general, Alt+letter key bindings are not very good for GUI apps.
Because Alt+letter opens a file menu item where letter is used as a
mnemonic(the underlined letter in the file menu item). And remember,
the file menu items are translatable. I.e. you can't know which Alt
+letter keybinding is used in any translation for any file menu item
(I only speak of the first level menu items, File, Edit, View, ...).
An example: Alt+T opens the Tools file menu item in Geany without any
translation. To open this menu in Geany with a German translation you
need Alt+W (German translation is "Werkzeuge").


> Incidentally, can someone please point me to the docs on
> creating my own ~/.geany/keybindings.conf? I looked in the
No docs so far. Just open the preferences dialog, keybindings tab and
change what you like to. After that, the file
~/.geany/keybindings.conf is created with your changed settings.

Regards,
Enrico

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