macOS: Alt-Left/Right should jump one word

[diabloproject]

It is kind of a standard (on macOS) that Alt-arrows allow you to jump one word left and right, because ctrl-arrows switch workspaces.
Probably very easy to implement:
Modify this and this to handle alt instead of ctrl (on macos?). I am not sure about other OSes, but this behavior is consistent across editors (VSCode, Emacs, Vim, etc), as such, probably edit should support it too?

[TreeBranches]

It is kind of a standard on every OS except MacOS that what you're trying to do is done with Ctrl + Arrow. It would need to be something specific to the MacOS build.

[diabloproject]

It is kind of a standard on every OS except MacOS that what you're trying to do is done with Ctrl + Arrow. It would need to be something specific to the MacOS build.

Which is why I specifically mentioned macos, and pointed out location in which you can just write cfg!(macos) in if statement

[lhecker]

Yup that sounds like something we should do!

In the future we should put an "input --> action" mapper in between input.rs and tui.rs and the rest of the UI code in bin/edit. This would then also allow us to reconfigure keybindings (part of #22). In the meantime we can just use #[cfg(target_os = "macos")].

[DHowett]

Definitely having the infrastructure for platform-specific key bindings will be good. I am worried about deviating too much between platforms however.

[diabloproject]

If you want, I can start making a draft for the input -> action mapping, and we can go from there.

[lhecker]

You can try and see what's required for it, but I suspect it'll be a difficult change to make.

To get an idea, check out create_context and textarea_handle_input in tui.rs. The former shows how inputs are currently ingested, and the latter show an example of what types of keybindings it handles. Simultaneously we must keep in mind that the TUI module should be abstract and not specific to the editor (= we can't hardcode an actions enum into tui.rs). So, the actions mapper should be something that maps inputs (from input.rs) into actions and the actions type should be defined in bin/edit.

HOWEVER, the problem is that some actions are specific to the context. Copy and Paste for instance are specific to the "focus is in the editor" context.

What I think may be the easiest approach long-term is to add an API like this to Tui:

pub fn register_action(context: NotSureWhatType, &mut self, name: &str, shortcut: InputKey) {}
pub fn consume_action(&mut self, name: &str) -> bool {}

Then we define a few well-known actions such as "copy" and "paste" so that the tui.rs code and bin/edit code remain separated. This then allows us to do something like:

tui.register_action("textarea", "copy", kbmod::CTRL | vk::C);

Then, inside tui.rs in textarea_handle_input we can do:

if self.consume_action("textarea", "copy") {
    // copy line into clipboard
}

[lhecker]

Since that would require quite some effort, I think it may be best to first implement this with #[cfg()] and then implement it with an action mapper.

[diabloproject]

I think it may be best to first implement this with #[cfg()] and then implement it with an action mapper.

Sure.