Supporting readline bindings in edit mode

[a3nm]

Hi,

Interesting project! :)

It would be nice if readline bindings such as Ctrl-H (backspace), Ctrl-W (delete word), Ctrl-U (kill line), Ctrl-B and Ctrl-F (cursor movement) were supported when editing entries. Ideally the best would be to use readline proper (to have all bindings, including the ones from ~/.inputrc). I'm not sure if that's possible, but if it's not it would be nice to reimplement at least the most common ones.

Thanks!

[drbig]

Note that the actions and bindings you've mentioned can be added to the existing relatively easy. Feel free to give it a try yourself :)

If I were to overhaul the item editing code and use a separate library the library should provide:

• Word-wrapping
• Work with wide-char languages (e.g. Japanese)
• Integrate with ncursesw in some reasonable manner

I don't know what API libreadline exposes, so maybe it fits, maybe it doesn't. The second point from the above list would be most important though.

[drbig]

@a3nm 'Ctrl-H' should work in snb. If it doesn't please tell what your terminal emulator is and what's the $TERM variable set to.

I also skimmed some readline docs and I wonder what 'the most common' bindings would be. I might add the Ctrl-B and Ctrl-F, as cursor movement code is already there.

[a3nm]

On Thu, Dec 18, 2014 at 05:44:41AM -0800, Piotr Staszewski wrote:

@a3nm 'Ctrl-H' should work in snb. If it doesn't please tell what your terminal emulator is and what's the $TERM variable set to.

It doesn't work for me with the latest revision. I'm using urxvt and my $TERM is "rxvt-unicode".

I also skimmed some readline docs and I wonder what 'the most common' bindings would be. I might add the Ctrl-B and Ctrl-F, as cursor movement code is already there.

The ones I use most commonly use are the ones I mentioned in the previous post, also maybe Alt-B and Alt-F (backward and forward for a word). This is only personal preference though.

It looks like integrating readline to a curses program is non-trivial... :/ but there has to be a better way than having to reimplement all bindings yourself... I hope. :/

Antoine Amarilli

[drbig]

Ctrl-H, Ctrl-B and Ctrl-F should work now in edit mode.

If they don't that's probably due to the terminal emulator and $TERM combination, and the fact that using raw bytes for checking the key might not be the best idea...

[a3nm]

On Thu, Dec 18, 2014 at 07:23:50AM -0800, Piotr Staszewski wrote:

Ctrl-H, Ctrl-B and Ctrl-F should work now in edit mode.

If they don't that's probably due to the terminal emulator and $TERM combination, and the fact that using raw bytes for checking the key might not be the best idea...

Yes, I confirm it works, now. Cool! :)

Antoine Amarilli