Re: [dev] my suckless.org compatible ideas: vim like mapping for any tools, C scripts, vi clone

On 5/15/10, anonymous <aim0shei_AT_lavabit.com> wrote:
> On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 08:02:57PM +0000, Bjartur Thorlacius wrote:
>> > 1. good tools should have a way to define easily keyboard shortcuts.
>> True. It's quite irritating that some tools use the arrow keys for
>> scrolling,
>> others use hjkl (which doesn't make sense on all keyboards) and one
>> has to configure each seperately to use the keybindings you like.
>> > 1.1. Preferably good tools should have at least one predefined set of
>> > shortcuts that is compatible with vimi
>> I don't think imitiating vim is a good idea. When in a windowing system
>> at least it would be nice if apps grabbed all keys they wanted
>> (e.g. text boxes could grab all printing characters) but all other keys
>> would
>> bubble up (as I think they already do in X) but if they reach the root
>> window
>> they could be rethrown in the original window, but as some other
>> user-defined
>> keys. For example if one presses <j> when focused on an image
>> inside web page, it would bubble through e.g. xloadimage, surf, tabbed,
>> root
>> and then root would look it up and see that <j> should be rethrown as
>> <down> which would bubble through xloadimage to surf which would scroll
>> down. But I doubt it's possible in X (or does XEmbed allow for this?).
>
> Mostly agree, but chaning X is nearly impossible. Currently it is
> possible to use modifiers for this. Alt (and A-C, A-S-C, A-S) for
> window manager, Ctrl (and S-C) for special actions in programs,
> everything else (with Shift or not) for typing. If we don't have
> plugins, embedded windows and other things like that, there are only
> two classes:
>
> 1. Window manager
> 2. Windows.
   3. User shortcuts

> So it is easy to determine who should react to keypress:
>
> 1. If Alt is pressed then it is for window manager.
> 2. If Ctrl is pressed then it is for focused window.
> 3. In other case it is for focused widget (letters types text, return
> presses buttons etc.).
And if super is pressed; some keypress handler.
> Super and other modifiers are for for user, he can use it as Compose
> key, for switching layout etc.
Is it possible to have some program seperate from the WM that receives
all keystrokes starting with super (and maybe Alt to)?
Or is wmiirc+wmiiloop already a program that does exactly that
(independantly from WMII)?

> What I don't like in current suckless programs is hjkl keybindings.
> They are designed only for one layout. I think it is better to use
> some kind of mnemonics like ^f for forward, ^b for backward, ^n for
> next, ^p for previous etc. Something like this is used in Lynx, Dillo
> (f for forward), most GNU programs (readline, emacs for example),
> ratpoison, screen, tmux and many others. These keybindings are
> independent from layout so you can use Dvorak layout or any other
> layout that sucks less than current default created for typewriters
> (which AFAIK was created to slow down typists, but I am not really
> sure if it is not a myth; anyway it was not carefully designed to make
> typing faster).
I'm OK with hjkl as long as it's configurable. AFAIK one can't xmodmap
hjkl to e.g. asdf or jklæ (as that would ck lash with typing of hjkl).
Wouldn't it suffice to xmodmap ^h ^j ^k ^l to the arrow keys?
And maybe ^n and ^p to pageUp and pageDown. Then when I toggle
Ctrl-mode hjkl (or whatever keys I xmodmapped to arrows) will do what's
expected. I think this is possible both under X and in the Linux VTs.
If I knew how to do this, I could use a modular interface to Nano!

--
kv,
  - Bjartur