Re: [9fans] Samterm up down key patch

[Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon@orthanc.ca>]

On Nov 14, 2006, at 5:34 AM, erik quanstrom wrote:

> plus, are you really saying that if you don't want cursor keys, your
> just an old fortran programmer in plan 9 disguise?

Don't tell me you've never written a FORTRAN program that calls into  
curses :-)  Although that's not as bad as having to debug one after  
the fact ...

Anyway ... my take is that "page up" says – quite explicitly – go up  
more than a line, whereas the keyboard arrow keys have had the  
entrenched behaviour of "move one character cell in the stated  
direction" for as long as we've had glass terminals.  (The up-arrow  
vi vs. 3270 line-end column selection debate can take place else 
{where,when} :-)

Where is the research data that backs the claim that navigating via  
the mouse is more efficient than navigating via the keyboard?  I know  
my own experience says this is nonsense.  My physical context switch  
time between the keyboard and mouse is at least 300 ms; my fingers  
move quite a bit faster than that on the keyboard.  I know that when  
I'm in one of the two modes – kbd vs. mouse – I'm very quick in that  
context.  But as soon as I have to switch between them: yikes!  To  
bounce back and forth from typing source code to repositioning a few  
lines via the mouse to typing again is horribly inefficient.  And  
while I've come to grow and love acme over the last few months now  
that I use it regularly at work, that back-and-forth makes me want to  
hurl (only the keyboard and mouse, mostly, but there are days ...)

And chording on three-button mice that are really two-button+scroll- 
wheel is an exercise in carpal tunnel ... :-(

--lyndon