Re: dselect and customizable key bindings

[sen_ml@eccosys.com]

At around Sun, 1 Aug 1999 16:21:26 +0300,
 Panu Hällfors <panupa@iki.fi> may have mentioned:

> On Sun, Aug 01, 1999 at 09:37:37PM +0900, sen_ml@eccosys.com wrote:
> > this point has probably been raised before, but if a user has a vi or
> > emacs like background, i'm sure they would appreciate having
> > keybindings that are much more similar to that
> 
> The only action both a text editor and dselect have is scrolling a
> window. And since dselect already has two windows to scroll one
> just can't always use the same keys. There must always be at least
> two keys that tell a window to scoll up and another two to tell
> it to scroll down.
> Or am I missing something?

under the current scheme i think so.

warning: entering highly hypothetical discussion, proceed at your own
risk, don't take anything seriously :-)

<beginning of hypothetical discussion>

if one were to modify dselect to require changing focus between the
two windows we would have a different story.  of course, since people
who are used to the current scheme would probably not like this, this
would need to be taken into account (for vi and emacs like
keybindings, require a change of focus [or do something like C-M-v
like in emacs], and for the existing set of keybindings don't change
anything).

> > > Just imagine a newbie calling his guru accross the street and the
> > > guru coming to fix the newbie's installation - with different key
> > > bindings than in the guru's own dselect!
> > 
> > uh, well, i think a sensible implementation would allow one to use the
> > default keybindings
> 
> Of course. And then we could implement customizable look&feel and
> even an option to print all the letters upside down! 

hold on a second, i'm only interested in the possibility of
customization of keybindings, because all (every single one of them)
the people i convince to use debian (or at least try it) say they wish
the keybindings were either vi or emacs like, or that the keybindings
made more sense (whatever that means).

i was only thinking about this as one (possibly/hopefully small)
modification that might bring a sizable benefit.  to be honest i don't
really want to get into having dselect be modified heavily, i want
another program entirely.

(i usually only use dselect when installing a new system and updating.
once i have a new system set up, i mostly use apt-get from the command
line.)

> Now, of course the "heart" or Debian must be fully configurable
> but don't we want the first steps (installation) to be as simple
> as possible? 

absolutely -- and as i mentioned above, in my experience the
keybindings have not contributed to this for the people i have
convinced to try debian.  only one of them was a newbie to unix-like
systems, and imho, if you are going to be using a unix-like system,
you ought to be familiar w/ the basic keybindings of vi and/or emacs
(since they often get used in many other utilities).

> So to conclude:
> If the keybindings are to be customizable, at least be sure to
> hide the configuration very well!

it would also seem a possiblity to let the user choose from sets of
pre-rolled keybindings (w/ the advanced, perhaps hidden option of
specifying one's own set) -- i would suggest vi and emacs sets be
available in addition to the current set.  dselect lets the user
choose an access method, so it doesn't seem unreasonable to have
another item for keybindings.

<end of hypothetical discussion>  

move along, there's nothing to see here :-)

thanks for the feedback.