VDQ on Firefox : Unix keyboard how?

[Derick Centeno]

Hi Beartooth:
I understand that you want consistency in application design as well as
perhaps some reliability regarding which commands do what and when. 
However, what I have to say will not make you happy.  

Since it's inception Unix has been evolving and developed by a cabal of
programmers whose status is equivalent to the Magi of old. The
development of the earliest Unix programs such as pine, ed, sed, even
the various shells, initially were developed by solitary labs, companies
or individuals working alone for their own usage in-house.  The networks
which existed then could barely send or receive one character correctly
let alone a whole sentence.  Programs such as these and others in use
today were the result of staggered independent development and no one
was even conceiving the concept of standard interface design nor was it
then possible to do so.  It is in this kind of free-wheeling chaos where
you have the simultaneous development of emacs/xemacs, and vi/vim, again
over time.  

You can intuit the kind of thinking that was going on by the use and
structure of the command keys and the capacity of the application. The
command for Save As within emacs/xemacs for instance is Ctrl-x Ctrl-w
which is executed sequentially.  IF one still has use of one's fingers
the command sequences to use other functions become even more complex.
I'll spare you the details, however consider the fact that even with
using some outrageous command keystrokes somebody figured out how to
expand the capacity of emacs/xemacs so that it can run within itself
simultaneously a text based web browser, games such as the Towers of
Hanoi, consultants for Depression such as a virtual psychologist called
Psychoanalyst, as well as a vi emulator, and that is not even ALL it can
do!

A lot of powerful unix/linux programs are like this.  Gimp, gnuplot and
many others have horrendous interface key commands and incredibly dense
"help" files which continually baffles whoever consults them (try
reading a vi or even vim "help" file regarding nearly any command,try
even guessing how to access it!) compared to "modern" Mac or even
Windows "standards", but they remain in active and even in expanded
development.  Successful utilization of vi/vim or emacs/xemacs is so
challenging it has become a rite of passage proving one's professional
standing as a Unix programmer.  I fully expect in time for someone to
include a Star-Trek like transporter interface system into xemacs and it
will become the model of how to design other presence specific
interfaces determined according to personnel function.

The current state of affairs regarding Linux is very much similar to the
state of affairs regarding the weather.  Most of the time work can get
done, crops grow and rivers flow.  But sometimes one has to deal with
earthquakes, meteors, tsunami, and so on.

In short, Linux is very much an organized chaotic free for all
environment where some applications seem to follow one set of rules like
pine, but then there are programs like hylafax, and many others which
follow very much their own rules and sometimes not even that.  As you
can tell from a brief review of any Linux distribution -- nearly all
require daily dedicated and detailed attention and management system and
some of them don't even have something to use as convenient as yum!  

If you are seeking tried and true consistency in interface design and
application reliability you cannot do better than use the Macintosh OS.
That particular interface is intentionally designed to surround your
experience as a user.  Using Unix from there is a wonderful experience
from what I've been told.  Although pine, vi and others remain what they
as you are "within" the Mac OS one can always escape to the sanity of a
Mac application which does something similar.  Remember that a better
interface than the Mac was possible a few years back, but Xerox -- then
it's owner -- was only interested in making a better printer or as they
would say, "document processor". 

The next best choice is the OS everyone loves to hate and crack like a
nut....which is Windows.  

On Thu, 2004-12-16 at 15:58, Beartooth wrote: 
> On Thu, 16 Dec 2004 14:21:41 -0500, Derick Centeno wrote:
> 
> > Within Firefox go to Help menu and select Keyboard Shortcuts, you will
> > see that Ctrl-k is reserved for "Remove End of Line".  However, it can
> > be changed.
> 
> HOW?? If that's supposed to be "Remove *to* End of Line," it's what I want
> and do *not* have. And in the Help it says what it does, and infuriates
> me: Web Search -- NOT delete to end of line.
> 
> One at least of us is confused. And the Help only made it worse.
> 
> I want to be able to delete everything from the cursor position to the end
> of the line, with a keystroke, and *without* reaching for the miserable
> mouse except just to put the cursor in one place, and let it stay there.
> That position, btw, is usually right after "www." -- but also often
> elsewhere.
> 
> In Opera all I have to do is tell it under Tools > Preferences
> > Mouse and Keyboard to use "Opera Standard for UNIX." 
> 
> Then Ctrl-K does exactly that -- just as it also does in pico and
> therefore in pine.
> 
> I thought maybe Ctrl-X, "cut," might be it; but the help says Ctrl-X in
> Ffx is also Ctrl-X in opera -- which I don't use and don't want to, since
> in pine that's Send, and in pico it's Save.
> 
> > There is an easier way to do what I believe you want to do which is
> > clear the URL (Universal Resource Locater) field: Highlight whatever is
> > there and press the delete key.  OR Highlight whatever is there and
> > proceed to type whereever it is you wish to go on the web.
> 
> No. I don't want to delete the whole URL, but only back from a precise
> point to the end, without pounding on the backspace, and please, please,
> *without* highlighting. And I don't type URLs. I paste them.
> 
> Opera makes it so easy! Even my arthritic fingers and trifocal eyeballs
> can do it. Jumping to the googlefield is something I almost never want to
> do; I open a fresh tab instead, and google from scratch in that; then I
> can close the tab when I'm done.
> 
> Am I making sense yet??