Excuse me for barging in the discussion, but it's still Friday here.
On Fri, 15 Sep 2000, hawk wrote:
> I think I've found a new best friend :)
>
> I'm also pulling from replies at various levels to put this in 1
> message rather than several.
>
> From Jules Bean
>
> > b) Actions which are used frequently should be a single key-press,
> > even if that's not very easy to remember. You learn it.
>
> Yes! keystroke count is everything!
>
> > c) Actions which are used rarely should be mnemonic -- easy to
> > remember -- even if they are multiple keypresses. Things you do
> > rarely you care less about the time it takes to perform.
>
> This would help, too. THen again, I still (rarely now) attempt
> wordstar key commands :)
>
> > 2) Math-mode entry
>
> > Under the xemacs keybindings, which I use, (damn it, I don't want
> > to confuse my poor muscle memory more than necessary by learning
> > too many different bindings for the same actions), the key sequence
> > to enter math-mode is 'M-c m'. I'm not sure exactly what to propose
> > instead, but I really think this needs to be only one keypress.
>
> I thought it was C-m, but maybe I did that myself :)
>
> > More serious, though, than the number of characters which need to
> > be typed is the confusing nature of the command. 'M-c m', typed
> > once, puts you into math-mode. However, typing 'M-c m' again
> > doesn't put you out of math-mode --- it puts you into math-text
> > mode. Then hitting it again puts you back into normal math-mode.
> > IMO, 'modal' keys should either be idempotent (so hitting it the
> > second time does nothing) or self-inverting.
>
> I think an award is due for working "idempotent" into a discussion of a
> word processor :)
>
C-m is standard (at least for cua.bind). Anyway, when you enter the math
mode, I like typing the single keypress which doesn't interrupt the flow
of writing. The inconsistency with C-m doing something else within
math-mode is a concern. I think M-m t (for textmode) is available for
this.
There was a suggestion to seperate the C-m and M-m bindings. Why do we
have to do this? As long we're consistent, we can have all the math
bindings begin with M-m, and leave C-m for one purepose. In general, it
may be a good idea to have all the keybindings start with M-, with some of
these actually being menubindings in the new terminology. Then the C- can
all be one-press 'accelerators', where we agree not to have combinations
starting with C-something (unlike emacs). This may not be the best Huffman
code, but it is consistent. and it's ok to have duplicate keybindings.
> In fact, the inverse
> > to 'M-c m' is either 'ESC' or simply a space typed at the end of
> > the block --- which is confusing, since they're not of the same
> > 'shape' as the command that got you in there.
>
> I hadn't given this thought before, but it makes sense. Going back to
> word star, this was well enough done that I routinely sed commands I'd
> never heard of, as they were obvious. To a lesser extendt, I could do
> this with the default bindings in Word 1 and 3 (mac versions. Yeah,
> I"m dating myself by referring to things fromt he days when microsoft
> wrote good software :)
>
>
I don't feel these are inverses: they are a continuation of the flow.
Especially the Space key. You're not 'exiting' math mode, but rather
continuing on with the text. Math is a special 'word' in the text. It's
easier to mark it once and not twice, anyway it's rare not to have a space
follow an equation.
> > 5) Proposal : a 'ligatures' or 'autocorrect' system
>
> > One of the very minor, but useful, features of TeX is the way it
> > lets you type the nearest approximation to what you want using a
> > 'typewriter keyboard', and substitutes the typographically neat
> > equivalent. In particular, 'fancy' quotes (") and en and em dashes
> > (---). I propose that this UI element could be taken up a level
> > into LyX, with a system that does the following (for example):
>
> > -> becomes \rightarrow
> > <- becomes \leftarrow
> > => becomes \Rightarrow (etc..)
> > ==> becomes \Longrightarrow (etc..)
>
> I like these. Come to think of it, give him a cookie :) Perhaps this
> could extend a step further, with user-definable entries? I use union,
> intersection, etc. a lot in slides for statistics classes, but such
> correction for these isn't as obvious as the arrows, and what I'd
> choose as obvious would likely be (much) different than someone else
> (especially someone who hasn't done the wordstar-word-lyx cycle :)
>
Nitpicky point: how do you interprest a<-b ?
Real Objection: \rightarrow takes longer to type than '->', but what if
the user decids on having just this inside his math-mode? If we give a
list of the symbols LyX knows (e.g. in section 5.1.8 of the user's guide,
or in the reference guide), and prehaps some we don't (for completeness),
this could help a user type faster even without knowing any LaTeX (at the
cost of duplicating some LaTeX documentation).
When I began with LyX (and mostly even today) I had no idea of LaTeX. This
did not prevent me from using \rightarrow, \cap, \cup, \times, \cdot, and
all the other constructs, although I had to create small LyX files and
export them to LaTeX in order to divine the codes.
> hawk
>
> --
>
>
>
Lior.
