[Vimperator] [RFC] How to handle text fields

[Bart Trojanowski]

* Martin Stubenschrott <stubenschrott at gmx.net> [070419 11:12]:
> Would be nice indeed, added to TODO, but not on a high priority, first
> will come our own text field keybindings, but I need your input on this
> thing:

oooh.  i was thinking about launching an external vim... but your idea
is much better. :)

I was thinking something like:

 ^w e - launch external editor on text box that's in focus.

> How to handle text fields best. I thought about this:
> 
> 1. When a text field is focus (by mouse, hints, tab or whatever), go to
> normal mode (hjkl moves cursor instead of typing) (maybe with an option
> 'startinsert' to start in insert mode).

> 2. pressing 'i' will go to insert mode and 'v' to visual mode
> 
> but now the 'problem':
> 
> How to go back to normal mode?
> 
> I thought about <Esc> but this would break vims idea that you ALWAYS
> "get out" of anything with one esc. And with this idea, you needed to
> press <Esc> twice to get to the normal command mode of vim.
> 
> The other idea would be to use some ctrl- prefixed key to switch from
> insert mode back to the normal mode of text editing.
> 
> Comments?

We essentially have 4 modes.

- default mode for navigating the whole page
- normal mode for text box
- visual mode for text box
- insert mode for text box

So I like the <ESC><ESC> to get back to normal navigation mode.

What if you (also) treat the text boxes like vim windows ?

 ^w j  - go to the entry field above
 ^w k  - go to the entry field below

I like how "It's all text" uses the background colour of the text box to
indicate what it's doing.  It makes it easy to spot which text box I am
entering data into.

Maybe you could change the background to some pastel colour, when you are in
one of the "text box" modes.

-Bart

-- 
				WebSig: http://www.jukie.net/~bart/sig/