lynx-dev Re: ^Ve considered harmful

[Kim DeVaughn]

I'll be responding more fully to this thread a bit later (busy with
"real work" right now), but quickly ...

On Mon, Feb 15, 1999, Philip Webb (address@hidden) said:
|
| my vote is to retain  ^v , which is consistent meaning
| `treat the following character as a command, not as input',

Personally, I'd *like* to use ESC, since ^V often means "literally
quote the next char", but that would probably cause problems with
various "special" keys (function, arrow, etc) that often use ESC
at the beginning of a CSI (control sequence introducer).

Since ^V (in this context) is *somewhat* similar in meaning, it is
probably the best choice ... especially since literal quoting of the
following char (that is not a part of the current character set) will
likely foul the TEXTAREA's display, and/or subsequent operations on/in
it (eg, "submit", cursoring around, etc), and so is not allowed anyway.


| but change  e , which (as KW points out) prevents editing the doc's HTML:
| a quick look at the Key Page shows  a d E r s z  all lack meanings
| which could ever be wanted in this situation (in a textarea):
| pick one to mean `rouse my editor to add to this textarea'.

I think you're misunderstanding something.  The char following the quote/
escape char (^V) must be a key mapped to a lynxactioncode,  In the above
list you mentioned:

 a == ADD_BOOKMARK
 d == DOWNLOAD
 E == ELGOTO
 r == DEL_BOOKMARK
 s == INDEX_SEARCH
 z == INTERRUPT

by default.


I like the idea of finding a special key that would invoke the editor in
a *single* keystroke, and in fact that's what I wanted to do in the first
place.

Unfortunately, *finding* an "acceptable" binding is not an easy thing to
do, given widely varying personal preferences (no, I WILL NOT give up ^E
moving to the EOL, etc :-) ), but I *will* review the current sets of
LYE_bindings again.

The real solution, IMO, is probably to allow the user to remap the hard-
coded LYE_bindings externally, just as they can now do with LYK_bindings
via the KEYMAP lynx.cfg statement.  *That* is something I'd like to see
irrespective of the current discussion about ^V, editors, and such.

I dunno if the recent work by DK and KW will aid in doing something like
that or not, as I haven't had time to look at their work, but since they
have been looking into the keybinding code in-depth anyway ... :-) ...

More later ...

/kim

PS:  WRT the Subject: of this thread ... Dijkstra was wrong.