[FR] Make stickyness of REPL modes selectable and make esc exit a REPL mode

[BeastyBlacksmith]

As discussed in https://discourse.julialang.org/t/allow-escape-key-to-leave-shell-or-pkg-mode/23802 and also relates to (#19202)
It would be good to be able to choose between persistent and single execution REPL mode in a consistent manner.

My proposal is to have single mode character ( ?, ;, ] ) be single execution mode and meta + mode character be persistent mode.

Furthermore the possibility to get back to julia REPL with cursor mid-line with e.g. esc would also take account of inattention of users.

[stevengj]

👎 on making single-execution the default, but 👍 on making esc go back to default mode.

[BeastyBlacksmith]

Could be the other way around, too. Or every mode but help mode is persistent by default, but you can toggle the other.
Wouldn't special case more than one mode, though.
Do we need a poll for this?

[KristofferC]

Having extra keybinds for entering sticky vs non-stricky seems like over complicating things. Having the default be sticky and allowing esc to exit to default while keeping the current text in the prompt seems good enough.

Do we need a poll for this?

There is no need for polls.

[GunnarFarneback]

Note that esc does things already, although it's probably rarely really needed. Personally I wouldn't use esc to leave a mode anyway since the ergonomics of that key is worse than ctrl+A followed by backspace.

[JeffBezanson]

Agreed; if you don't like sticky repl modes (and I'm not a fan of them, but it's not a big deal) adding esc doesn't really change things much.

[stevengj]

@GunnarFarneback, it's ctrl-a followed by backspace followed by ctrl-e to get back to your previous editing position. Not to mention that for users not raised on bash or emacs the ctrl-a and ctrl-e shortcuts are not particularly intuitive or discoverable, whereas using esc to "escape" is perhaps easier to guess.

[juliohm]

Could you please clarify what was agreed? Currently in Julia v1.2 the only mode that is persistent is package mode, correct? There are plans to make the other modes (help and shell modes) sticky as well? Maybe a feature for Julia v1.3?

[PetrKryslUCSD]

I have an objection to making the modes sticky and having a keystroke for jumping out of the stickiness.
The problem is the keystroke does not show up in the history. Therefore it is difficult to mix the modes.
https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-do-people-think-about-the-package-mode-being-persistent/45527/7

[PetrKryslUCSD]

I think a better solution would be to have a command for jumping is out of the stickiness. Even better not to haveany sticky modes at all .

[KristofferC]

The problem is the keystroke does not show up in the history. Therefore it is difficult to mix the modes.

The REPL mode does show up in history:

# time: 2019-09-22 09:40:32 CEST
# mode: pkg
	add Revise
# time: 2019-09-22 09:40:52 CEST
# mode: julia
	using Revise

[PetrKryslUCSD]

True, and I do use this information. The problem with printing the history of commands is that there is no way I can think of to indicate how to jump out of the sticky package mode.

Let us say I do:

]activate .
instantiate
[backspace]
include("make.jl")

Printing

]activate .
]instantiate
include("make.jl")

will have missed the end of the sticky mode, and the include will fail.

[KristofferC]

What is your goal? Being able to paste a REPL session including swapping between terminal modes?