Re: [Evolution] (bug!) Emacs keys again...

[Roland Orre <orre bacon su se>]

On Thu, 7 Jul 2005, Kaushal Kumar wrote:
> Roland Orre wrote:
> > The gnome/gtk settings doesn't change. It is still set to Emacs
> > and it only it is only evolution, which is affected. Other
> > applications work.

> evolution uses gtkhtml for editing, which in turn provides the emacs
> keybindings for it. So, other Gnome apps are not affected. btw, in which
> other apps are you able to use the emacs keybindings.

Well, in most of the places where you input text, like in html forms,
in the web browser navigation bar, this is extremely handy,
I would feel quite handicapped if I the emacs keys wouldn't work here.

There is even an editor I found, gedit, which works, but this editor is
not using /usr/share/gtkhtml-3.6/keybindingsrc.emacs
and I haven't found where the bindings are specified.
To get it work though, I had to edit
/usr/share/gedit-2/ui/gedit-ui.xml
to remove accel keys for Control-P,Control-A etc.
Obviously this is a gtk editor, but it is not the same as gtkhtml,
so, one can ask why there are two editors in gtk?

I was told though, that mozilla and firefox don't use gtk, only
emulate it's behaviour. In that case they do it quite well though,
and they do it right. First it reacts immediately if I change
gconftool-2 -s /desktop/gnome/interface/gtk_key_theme -t string
Default and back to
gconftool-2 -s /desktop/gnome/interface/gtk_key_theme -t string Emacs
This gedit also does, but... the editor in evolution, when I occasionaly
have got it to use the emacs mode, then I can switch it to its "Default"
mode, but it does then not react on switching back, so obviously the
gtkhml editor has flaws.

I don't know what is used in thunderbird though, most emacs keys are
working, but the accel keys in the menu like ^P are not overridden,
and I have not found a file where this behaviour is specified.

Anyway, the whole keybinding issue within gnome/gtk applications is
a little awkward, as well as e.g. to switch window manager. (you
have to kill the running one, then start the one to use and then
save the settings..)

There should be a simple way to define for all applications what
keybindings to use, the interface
gconftool-2 -s /desktop/gnome/interface/gtk_key_theme -t string Emacs
is quite non intuitive I think.

There should also be a standard way of defining your preferenced
menu keys (accel), not like now that I have to hunt for these
settings in different applications, and if I'm lucky I can find them.
In a similar way as you can define e.g. your mouse keys and mouse
keys modifiers.

I feel a serious influence of bad habits coming from the windows
environment. The default windows keys are very bad and it should
be easy to set the keys to a standard preference, and from there
you should be ablet to add some personal extensions.

> > Yes, I know. I haven't bothered much about it, I intended to do someth
> > about the general key settings later. It was only when the most basic
> > keys ^A,^F,^B,^P,^N,^E,^K,^Y stopped working in evolution after my
> > upgrade to 2.2.1.1 it became serious.
> So, these keybindings were working in evolution before the upgrade? If
> so, I am not sure how. I do not find the associated acclerators for ^A,
> ^F, ^B, etc., in the *-emacs.xml file.

Ehh, I guess you mean the opposite... The reason for them to work in
evolution was that these keys were not defined as accel keys. Otherwise
the accel keys had been stolen from the editor, which I anyway,
consider a buggy behaviour. The application should always have preference.

        Best regards
        Roland Orre