Re: getting nicely justified comments in an easy way

Benno Schulenberg <[email protected]> Sun, 31 Mar 2019 13:44:56 +0200

Newsgroups	gmane.editors.nano.general
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

Hello Seb,

Op 30-03-19 om 23:23 schreef Seb:
> Thanks for the patch. I did
>     cd src && patch chars.c 00*.patch
> then recompiled and reinstalled nano, but it doesn't work.

Ah.  I forgot to say that it needs --autoindent in order to work.

> I see on Savannah that ^W^Y and ^W^V are no longer supported. ^Home and ^End are
> more logical, but they take the hands away from the center of the keyboard. Esc-/
> and Esc-\ do work, but so far I used the Esc key for switches: long lines,
> autoindent, softwrapping now. It doesn't feel right to use it to navigate the
> file. ^+Shift+Y/V would have made more sense.

Control+Shift+letter always gives the same code as Control+letter --
under ncurses those keystrokes are indistinguishable.

> I wonder if the upsides to the code
> of eliminating ^W^Y really outweighs breaking compatibility with the entrenched
> habits of millions of users. There is no --oldskool option. And it's marked on
> Savannah as "Won't fix". I have been using ^W^Y for 24 years. Switching to
> nano-4.0 would be a pain for weeks, for no obvious upside.

Hmmm...  Okay, I will bring back ^W^Y and ^W^V, as "blind keys":
they will not be listed in the help lines nor in the help text,
but they will work.  See attached patch.

But... millions of users?  :)  Of nano itself, maybe.  But of the
^W^Y and ^W^V keystrokes, I doubt it.  I quickly learned to use
M-\ and M-/ (for most users the Alt key works), and I would use
Ctrl+Home and Ctrl+End if I didn't have to hold the Fn key to get
Home and End.

> ^U no longer undoes ^J, I have to use M-U.

Yes, the change of meaning of ^U right after a justification was
an anomaly.  I don't want to keep it for the sake of long-time
users because it might surprise and frustrate newer users.

> Surely there will be other surprises.
> 
> If I did that to my users, a tenth of them would walk away feeling disrespected.
> 
> Clean code and aesthetics are fine,

Clean code and esthetics were not a consideration in removing
^Y and ^V from the WhereIs menu, but the simple fact that those
keystrokes don't make sense there: they are not about searching
but about jumping: so they should be (and are) in the GotoLine
menu.

Benno

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0001-input-recognize-the-W-Y-and-W-V-legacy-keystrokes-ag.patch (text/x-patch, 1.3 KB)

From 4e6c0ae7586bd69b349268b38b37bed7ec3acd51 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Benno Schulenberg <[email protected]>
Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2019 13:23:25 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] input: recognize the ^W^Y and ^W^V legacy keystrokes again

The keystrokes are recognized and acted upon, but they are not visible
in the menus nor in the help text, and they cannot be rebound.  They
are just there to not frustrate the muscle memory of long-time users.
---
 src/global.c | 4 ++++
 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+)

diff --git a/src/global.c b/src/global.c
index 3dd07882..25a6b5f9 100644
--- a/src/global.c
+++ b/src/global.c
@@ -1306,9 +1306,13 @@ void shortcut_init(void)
 #ifdef ENABLE_JUSTIFY
 	add_to_sclist(MGOTOLINE, "^W", 0, do_para_begin_void, 0);
 	add_to_sclist(MGOTOLINE, "^O", 0, do_para_end_void, 0);
+//	add_to_sclist(MWHEREIS, "^W", 0, do_para_begin_void, 0);
+//	add_to_sclist(MWHEREIS, "^O", 0, do_para_end_void, 0);
 #endif
 	add_to_sclist(MGOTOLINE, "^Y", 0, to_first_line, 0);
 	add_to_sclist(MGOTOLINE, "^V", 0, to_last_line, 0);
+	add_to_sclist(MWHEREIS, "^Y", 0, to_first_line, 0);
+	add_to_sclist(MWHEREIS, "^V", 0, to_last_line, 0);
 #ifdef ENABLE_BROWSER
 	add_to_sclist(MWHEREISFILE, "^Y", 0, to_first_file, 0);
 	add_to_sclist(MWHEREISFILE, "^V", 0, to_last_file, 0);
-- 
2.20.1

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