Enable assigning shortcuts for cursor navigation on the Editor

[spyder-bot]

From [email protected] on 2011-08-09T12:00:10Z

Enable assigning shortcuts for cursor navigation

Currently, there is no way to make shortcuts for basic cursor navigation within the editor or console, for example:

• Use CTRL+A (in addition to Home key) to "go to beginning of line"
• Use CTRL+P (in addition to up arrow) to "go to previous line"

For users accustomed to Emacs (and Linux shells) it would be very useful to be able to navigate using these shortcuts.

I would like to contribute to this solution, but first I want to verify what the correct approach is (see comment below).

Original issue: http://code.google.com/p/spyderlib/issues/detail?id=729

[spyder-bot]

From [email protected] on 2011-08-09T10:09:18Z

I see there could be different approaches and I'm not sure what the correct one is:

• Should we add actions to spyder.MainWindow.init() and then use register_shortcut()?
• or do we add the actions to the Editor.get_plugin_actions() ?
• or should it be a lower level approach in which the keyPressEvent() method of the editor is evaluated to catch presses of the assigned shortcuts?

Ideally, we should be able to add shortcuts for most navigation and simple editing actions to make the editor behave close to Emacs and allow cursor navigation without the need of arrows and home/end keys.
Simple editing actions include "delete current line" and "delete next word".

[spyder-bot]

From ccordoba12 on 2011-08-09T11:48:34Z

Labels: -Type-Defect Type-Enhancement Cat-Editor

[spyder-bot]

From pierre.raybaut on 2011-08-31T01:16:08Z

I think the lower level approach is the right one:

• either in 'keyPressEvent'
• or in a new 'eventFilter' reimplementation, like this: https://github.com/ipython/ipython/blob/master/IPython/frontend/qt/console/console_widget.py#L240 Let me think about this.

Actually users would probably want to customize these shortcuts as well, so we must think of a way to register them to the main window, but not with the 'register_shortcut' mechanism as it exists (because there won't be any QAction or QShortcut object associated to these low-level shortcuts).

[spyder-bot]

From pierre.raybaut on 2011-08-31T01:40:18Z

Two more things:

• supporting Emacs complex keyboard shortcut sequences (Ctrl+C + Ctrl+something else) would require to implement an event state filter (a first shortcut changes event filter's state and the second shortcut triggers an action)
• "delete current line" or "delete next word" may be implemented at a higher level like the already existing shortcuts/actions "duplicate line" or "copy line"

[spyder-bot]

From pierre.raybaut on 2012-03-18T14:10:29Z

Labels: -Type-Enhancement Type-Enh