Should edit text fields support emacs bindings on Linux?
CelticMinstrel opened this issue · comments
For example, Ctrl+A to move to the beginning of a line, and Ctrl+E to move to the end of a line.
The full table of actions that would need to be covered is documented in a comment here:
cboe/src/dialogxml/widgets/field.cpp
Lines 307 to 325 in 702fcec
Currently the Windows set is used on Linux. If emacs bindings were used, they'd probably replace that set at least in part (since Ctrl+A has a different meaning in the Windows set).
Interesting idea. I haven't used Emacs in 3ish years and I lost the muscle memory for the Emacs hotkeys and I probably wouldn't use them in BoE. I don't know how standard their support is across Linux applications and whether Linux users expect them to work everywhere. I just checked and my terminal emulator supports them, which does indicate they might be a staple of the Linux experience.
But on the other hand, Firefox treats Ctrl+A as Select All (same as windows) and I see myself using that more than I use the Home feature.
We could evaluate the need for this similarly to the need for localization--a question of who's going to pick up BoE these days and use the editor enough to care what the hotkeys do. On the other hand if we did want to do it, it would be much more trivial than localizing the whole code base.
Emacs keybindings would be somwhat surprising and unusual, even in a linux version, so I do not think they are necessary as long as the windows ones work. I cannot think of a single GUI application that supports them out of the box.