[NCLUG] [OT?] Vimium on Chromium on FreeBSD

[Bob Proulx]

Chad Perrin wrote:
> What would you use for Back and Forward in browser history instead
> of H and L?

I switched them with J and K since to me the forward and backward in
history is mentally more of a stack-like queue.  Up (goBack) and Down
(goForward) fit me better.  YMMV.

With a stack model I know there are people who will look at that in
the opposite direction and want that to be K and J.  (shrug) It is a
mirror image.  But for me I write left to right and top to bottom so
the newest is always down at the bottom of the log file.  The opposite
of stacking trays in the cafeteria.

> > Dear Lazyweb, does one exist for Firefox?  I haven't found one.
> > It is addicting.
> 
> Aside from Vimperator?

Yes, aside from Vimperator.  Vimperator creates a very much different
environment which brings along much more baggage than I want just for
key navigation of page links.  Plus I am not looking for a Vim
experience.  I am an Emacs person.  Did you forget about the war? :-)

> I find that Emacs users tend to appreciate vi-like keybindings in other
> applications sometimes, while vi/Vim users do not tend to get as much out
> of Emacs-like keybindings.  Maybe that's particular to the vi/Vim users I
> know, though.

I have observed that same thing too.  (I will reserve comments on my
theories of the psychology of it.)

> I can think of two solutions for this:
> 
> 1. Don't use MS Windows.  (Ha ha.  I kill me.)

Unfortunately the CUA has crept into GNOME and KDE too.  So that would
also include not using very popular desktops too.

> 2. Get a browser extension that allows you to edit text from a textarea
> using an external editor, like ViewSourceWith for Firefox, and use it a
> lot.

I don't want to edit in an external editor server.  I am not looking
to change the browser that much.  The html text area is just fine with
me.  As long as the browser respects gtk-key-theme-name (both Firefox
and Chromium use gtk+) so I can restore it to the original X (as in
MIT X Window System) keybindings (which were emacs-like) by default.
For a while that was broken in GTK+ but now it appears to be fixed
again.  Yeah!  I went for about two years with Firemacs being the only
thing that saved my sanity.  But now I can set the default system keys
back to normal again without it.

> > It is the MS "CUA" that aggravates me the most.
> 
> Do you mean the IBM Common User Access standard?

I am talking about C-x, C-c, C-v for Cut, Copy, Paste.  Was that IBM
instead of MS?  My bad then.  But I thought IBM used a different set
of keys for those things?  No?  I am not very knowledgeable about that
side of the universe and have successfully avoided learning too much
about it.

> Not to start any flame wars, or anything, but . . . I find that the GNU
> Project (which pretty much runs the "standard" for Emacs) is
> lackadaisical at best about any adherence to the Unix philosophy, and in
> some cases appears to be actively hostile to that philosophy of software
> design.

It has been drifting without an anchor over the years.  And every
project has a different maintainer and a different set of core values.
There is now a whole generation of users and developers who have never
seen a Unix machine.  Code bloat and creeping features is the biggest
threat that I see.  For example right now there is a discussion in two
different Debian mailing lists about a base Squeeze installation not
fitting into a 512M partition.

> Though it comes as a little bit of a surprise to me that CUA is
> sneaking into Emacs, it probably shouldn't.

The upstream default has changed and is now a highlighted mark mode
known as Transient Mark mode.  (I configure my emacs back to the
previous behavior now known as Persistent Mark mode.)  This was done
primarily to support users who want the CUA active.  The CUA isn't the
default but the mark mode change is a step that direction.

  http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Mark.html

  http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/CUA-Bindings.html

Bob