Support text editing shorcuts

[kenden]

It would be nice if the full range of text editing shorcuts worked:

On Macs:

Movement
Cmd-UpArrow: Go to start of the file
Cmd-LeftArrow: Go to start of the line
Cmd-RightArrow: Go to end of the line
Cmd-DownArrow: Go to end of the file

Alt-LeftArrow: Go to start of previous word
Alt-RightArrow: Go to start of next word

Selection
Shift-Cmd-UpArrow: Select from current position to start of the file
Shift-Cmd-LeftArrow: Select from current position to start of the line
Shift-Cmd-RightArrow: Select from current position to end of the line
Shift-Cmd-DownArrow: Select from current position to end of the file

Shift-Alt-LeftArrow: Select from current position to start of previous word
Shift-Alt-RightArrow: Select from current position to start of next word

Deletion
Cmd-Backspace: Delete until the start of the line
Cmd-Delete: Delete until the end of the line

Alt-Backspace: delete until end of previous word
Alt-Delete: delete until end of next word

Jump to previous/next word: #12
Select to previous/next word: #13

[zyedidia]

I think most of these will be possible to implement, although they will only work on a subset of terminals which support these kinds of keybindings. I believe all relatively modern terminals support this stuff though. Unfortunately tcell does not support these keybindings out of the box, but I might be able add them anyway.

Of course, I will need to use Ctrl instead of Cmd for all these keybindings. See #19.

[Red5d]

Sortof related to this, the Home and End keys don't seem to work yet.

[slnt]

Tagging onto this, also appreciated would be some Sublime/Atom like commands such as:

Ctrl-l: select line under cursor
Ctrl-d: select word under cursor, subsequent inputs of this will select the next occurrence of the current selection.

Another small nit I have is when selecting text with the mouse, it would be nice if it highlighted as you go rather than when you release the mouse.

Great work, love having this!

[zyedidia]

It should highlight as you go, unless your terminal doesn't support mouse tracking. What terminal are you using?

Also, I'm currently using Ctrl-d for half page down. Does Sublime/Atom have a keybinding for this that I could use instead?

[slnt]

OS X Terminal.app, but I'm inside of a tmux. Hmmm, works find outside of tmux.

Looks like sublime support keyboard scrolling functionality but don't have key bindings set by default.
Perhaps alt-uparrow and alt-downarrow? Personally that feels a bit more intuitive than ctrl-u and ctrl-d, but just my 2c.

[pscollins]

Maybe a nice solution to this would be to read off configuration from a file, and ship it with sensible defaults? Assigning meaning to keybindings borders on holy war territory.

[slnt]

I think @pscollins has the way of it. :)

[bentranter]

@zyedidia do you think it'd be better to try to add more keypress events to tcell, or to look for an alternative solution for dealing with keybindings? I feel like most of these aren't possible until those keybindings are easily detectable. I also do really like @pscollins idea about a config file

[pscollins]

I guess the first step towards making it configurable would be defining what actions there should be: move-word-forward, move-word-back, page-up, page-down, etc.

[zyedidia]

Yeah, that's what I was planning on doing. This configuration could go in the ~/.config/micro/settings.json file. For example:

{
    "syntax": true,
    "keybindings": {
        "CtrlC": "copy",
        "CtrlV": "paste"
    }
}

[zyedidia]

A bunch of these keybindings are now supported (using Ctrl instead of Cmd). See #79.

[bendem]

Using current master (6c99eea) I'm still seeing ctrl+arrows doing nothing and alt+arrows inserting [1;3C or [1;3D.

[zyedidia]

Can you make sure you run make install from the root directory of the project to build. I think you need to update your version of tcell, and make install will do that automatically.

Make sure you use commit 957e97d which has the updated makefile.

[bendem]

I ran GOPATH=$(pwd) make clean build test to compile. Pretty sure that does it.

[bendem]

Nevermind, I was on the wrong branch, works fine.

[zyedidia]

Of the bindings on this list, all that are possible have been implemented, so I'm closing this issue as resolved.

Here are the bindings that are implemented:

Movement
Ctrl-UpArrow: Go to start of the file
Ctrl-LeftArrow: Go to start of the line
Ctrl-RightArrow: Go to end of the line
Ctrl-DownArrow: Go to end of the file

Alt-LeftArrow: Go to start of previous word
Alt-RightArrow: Go to start of next word

Selection
Shift-Ctrl-UpArrow: Select from current position to start of the file
Shift-Ctrl-LeftArrow: Select from current position to start of the line
Shift-Ctrl-RightArrow: Select from current position to end of the line
Shift-Ctrl-DownArrow: Select from current position to end of the file

Shift-Alt-LeftArrow: Select from current position to start of previous word
Shift-Alt-RightArrow: Select from current position to start of next word

Deletion
Alt-Backspace: delete until end of previous word

Unfortunately, due to the way terminals work, it is not possible to support these keybindings:

Ctrl-Backspace: Delete until the start of the line
Ctrl-Delete: Delete until the end of the line

Alt-Delete: delete until end of next word

Terminals simply don't send these as their own key events.

[LukeSkyw]

Sorry to hijack that closed thread, but for all the people who came here for some sane defaults:

$ cat >> ~/.config/micro/bindings
{
  "CtrlLeft": "WordLeft",
  "CtrlRight": "WordRight"
}
^D

[bendem]

@LukeSkyw I understand your feeling, but you're implying that the default keybindings are not sane while they totally make sense from a mac perspective. 😉

I guess providing keybindings for linux and windows couldn't hurt. That would go in a new issue though.

[mixmastamyk]

The file above should be bindings.json, and to fix the shifted as well:

$ cat >> ~/.config/micro/bindings.json
{
    "AltLeft":        "StartOfLine",
    "AltRight":       "EndOfLine",
    "CtrlLeft":       "WordLeft",
    "CtrlRight":      "WordRight",

    "AltShiftLeft":   "SelectToStartOfLine",
    "AltShiftRight":  "SelectToEndOfLine",
    "CtrlShiftLeft":  "SelectWordLeft",
    "CtrlShiftRight": "SelectWordRight",

    "ShiftLeft":      "SelectLeft",
    "ShiftRight":     "SelectRight",

    "AltUp":         "CursorStart",
    "AltDown":       "CursorEnd",
    "AltShiftUp":    "SelectToStart",
    "AltShiftDown":  "SelectToEnd",
}

[robinmonjo]

Hello, I was having the same (original) issue on Mac OS with Terminal app. The CtrlShiftRight, CtrlShiftLeft, AltShiftRight, AltShiftLeft ... wasn't working (it was supposed to select text), here is how I fixed it:

Based on the mapping here, in preferences > profiles > keyboard you must map the missing key / action pair with what's on the code, by replacing \x1b by \033: