Arch Linux

enduser

Member

Registered: 2012-10-04

Posts: 25

Readline across OS

I like readline.  I'd like to be able to use it (or a subset of it) in graphical programs.  Is there a way to enable this in X (specifically Xmonad)?  MacOS has some of this (C-a/C-e in textboxes), but lacks some others (C-u, C-k if I remember right).  I realize C-a is "select all" in most programs, but don't mind clicking a little to get that to happen if I override that.  Thanks!

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Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,546

Website

Re: Readline across OS

Short answer: no.

Not quite so short: this will depend on toolkits.  There is no such thing as a "textbox" in X.  GTK has textboxes, Qt has text boxes, so does wx, fltk, etc, etc.  I would not be surprised if at least some of the bigger toolkits did have ways of doing what you want, but you'd have to set it up for every toolkit you use.

Your best option is simply to pick applications that work the way you want.  I do just about everything in a terminal, so my preferred editing style (vim in my case) *can* be used in nearly every program I use.

---

"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

enduser

Member

Registered: 2012-10-04

Posts: 25

Re: Readline across OS

I do most things in a terminal... but using chromium and some other apps would be a much smoother experience if I could use the readline keybindings there.  I'll try to poke around this weekend and let you know if I find anything interesting.

jakobcreutzfeldt

Member

Registered: 2011-05-12

Posts: 1,042

Re: Readline across OS

FYI the default Readline bindings are the same as the Emacs keybindings. GNOME has (had?) Emacs keybindings available, unless it's been removed in one of the recent feature purges.

As for browsers, you will enjoy Conkeror, which is based on XULRunner so it's basically like Firefox, but it is heavily keyboard-oriented and uses Emacs-like keybindings as well.

enduser

Member

Registered: 2012-10-04

Posts: 25

Re: Readline across OS

It looks like GTK apps support it if you put the following in your ~/.gtkrc-{2,3}.0:

gtk-key-theme-name = "Emacs"

This messes up some apps though (like closing windows in chrome w/C-w), so I'll need to find a way to opt out of some keybindings (I don't really use C-w). OTOH, some apps also bind things (like C-e in thunar) that I'd rather have bound to readline-like things, so it'd be cool to unmap those.. but that's app specific I guess.

x33a

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2009-08-15

Posts: 4,587

Re: Readline across OS

Give midnight commander a try instead of thunar. It uses emacs like keybinding by default.