• You are not logged in.

Don't use the mouse

  • Started by vaskozl
  • 60 Replies:
  • Reputation: 7
  • Registered: 21-Apr-2010
  • Posts: 818

> The point is to use software that is designed to be used with a keyboard, not just usable with a keyboard.

That's actually quite an interesting topic in itself.  I mean most websites in my experience ignore good keyboard support, and the browsers aren't that much better either.

You do need some kind of top down approach.  If your OS / desktop / widget kit, has some guidelines on how to cater for different input devices with your app, then that's a good start. 

Touch screens in some way are better than the pointer and keyboard.  Even toddlers grok it.  I've seen one year olds interacting with touch screens, whereas they'll probably just thump a keyboard to death.  And potentially cause way more harm.

You only experience keyboard nirvana, after you've spent too many hours sitting in front of a computer.  By that point you probably have long hair, struggle to venture out in public, have bowed legs and a tell tale computer hunch.

Or look something like this:

Darth Vadar with Mask removed

--
Physicians deafen our ears with the Honorificabilitudinitatibus of their heavenly Panacaea, their sovereign Guiacum.

Offline
  • 0
  • Reputation: 0
  • Registered: 11-Oct-2013
  • Posts: 79

I've just written a script so that when I am playing quake, I can simply use the numpad for pointer movement and throw way the mouse entirely :D

But in all seriousness, this was a pretty helpful post even if I'm not so against the mouse as you. I've been trying out some window managers (awesome wm) lately and plan on trying out ratpoison right now. I doubt I'll switch away permanently from a DE, but as someone who is really bad about having a hundred windows open this might help streamline my focus.

The only reason I haven't used Pentadactyl is because it isn't available for any of the recent versions of FF. Chrome + vimium is worse than IE! Vimium is actually pretty annoying, but it's mostly usable with almost no learning curve. On the other hand, firefox doesn't work well with my current workflow. At this point, I can't tell whether I'm annoyed more by chromium or firefox, but I'm hating them both.

I'd also have to add Krusader in as an highly configurable gui file manager that is keyboard friendly.. certainly not to the extent of Ranger I would assume, but similar to MC.

Cmus and apvlv also look quite promising.

Offline
  • 0
  • Reputation: 0
  • From: Malmö, Sweden
  • Registered: 10-Sep-2012
  • Posts: 122
angelic_sedition said:

I've just written a script so that when I am playing quake, I can simply use the numpad for pointer movement and throw way the mouse entirely :D

vaskozl said:

But yes... kill the mouse to kill the pain... I do agree with the general theme of your topic.

The only excuse for using the mouse that I would accept from you is that you're playing quake :)

I my mind, the mouse is something like a joystick that is used very situationaly. FPS games in which you aimed should be played with a mouse just like flight simulators should be played with a joystick.

angelic_sedition said:

But in all seriousness, this was a pretty helpful post even if I'm not so against the mouse as you.

You're welcome!

angelic_sedition said:

The only reason I haven't used Pentadactyl is because it isn't available for any of the recent versions of FF.

Pfff, yah it is. It's just that the devs are to lazy to update it on the firefox add shop or whatever. Just get it from here. It literaly gets updated every single day.

angelic_sedition said:

Chrome + vimium is worse than IE! Vimium is actually pretty annoying, but it's mostly usable with almost no learning curve. On the other hand, firefox doesn't work well with my current workflow. At this point, I can't tell whether I'm annoyed more by chromium or firefox, but I'm hating them both.

Hahahaha! Pendactyl really is the only reason I'm using firefox over chromium :D. I would love to use chromium which can handle flash without plugins now, but then again, it's addons are just horrible. It's generally accepted that all browsers suck...

angelic_sedition said:

I'd also have to add Krusader in as an highly configurable gui file manager that is keyboard friendly.. certainly not to the extent of Ranger I would assume, but similar to MC.

Ouch, the 200mb of KDE dependencies really trew me off when I went ahead ot install it. The webpage gives me the impression that it is really powerfull though. Ranger on the other hand is actually very lightweight, working in the cli and keeping things simple. Have your tried gnome-commander?

Posted without the aid of a rodent.

Offline
  • 0
  • Reputation: 0
  • Registered: 11-Oct-2013
  • Posts: 79
vaskozl said:
angelic_sedition said:

The only reason I haven't used Pentadactyl is because it isn't available for any of the recent versions of FF.

Pfff, yah it is. It's just that the devs are to lazy to update it on the firefox add shop or whatever. Just get it from here. It literaly gets updated every single day.

Oh wow :D Thank you for that.

vaskozl said:
angelic_sedition said:

Chrome + vimium is worse than IE! Vimium is actually pretty annoying, but it's mostly usable with almost no learning curve. On the other hand, firefox doesn't work well with my current workflow. At this point, I can't tell whether I'm annoyed more by chromium or firefox, but I'm hating them both.

Hahahaha! Pendactyl really is the only reason I'm using firefox over chromium :D. I would love to use chromium which can handle flash without plugins now, but then again, it's addons are just horrible. It's generally accepted that all browsers suck...

If chromium was less restrictive (and had Pentadactyl, a decent download manager, etc.) and didn't suck with themes, I would like it a lot more. If firefox was less ugly and had maintained equivalents of all the extensions I'm using, it would be much better for me. At this point, if I'm using one, I'm frustrated that it doesn't have something that the other does.

Does Pentadactyl allow for bookmark saving and navigation? That would be a big plus for me. I'm currently using an extension called bookmarx that allows for mouseless folder navigation when saving bookmarks to compensate for chromium's terrible way of adding bookmarks.

vaskozl said:
angelic_sedition said:

I'd also have to add Krusader in as an highly configurable gui file manager that is keyboard friendly.. certainly not to the extent of Ranger I would assume, but similar to MC.

Ouch, the 200mb of KDE dependencies really trew me off when I went ahead ot install it. The webpage gives me the impression that it is really powerfull though. Ranger on the other hand is actually very lightweight, working in the cli and keeping things simple. Have your tried gnome-commander?

Yeah, it's not a lightweight file manager. It has a great deal of features. The only downside is that the default keybindings are heavily modifier based which can be a pain (they are changeable though) and it's easy to get lost in everything it can do. I think it even has a vi input mode for its internal editor. I've never used gnome commander, but I do love two pane file managers. Knowing that ranger is meant to have vi like keybindings is enough to get me to switch though. There's also vifm (a two pane file manager I haven't tried), but it seems to be less robust than ranger. I'll probably end up trying them both.

Offline
  • 0
  • Reputation: 0
  • From: Malmö, Sweden
  • Registered: 10-Sep-2012
  • Posts: 122
angelic_sedition said:

Does Pentadactyl allow for bookmark saving and navigation? That would be a big plus for me. I'm currently using an extension called bookmarx that allows for mouseless folder navigation when saving bookmarks to compensate for chromium's terrible way of adding bookmarks.

Of course simply do ":bmark -k short" and the current page will be bookmarked. When you use the ":open" (by default just "o") you can type short to get there (you can use autocomplete if it is long).

You can even quick mark pages with M<character> and get to them with go<character>.

Last edited by vaskozl (19-Oct-2013 18:22:28)

Posted without the aid of a rodent.

Offline
  • 0
  • Reputation: 0
  • Registered: 11-Oct-2013
  • Posts: 79
vaskozl said:
angelic_sedition said:

Does Pentadactyl allow for bookmark saving and navigation? That would be a big plus for me. I'm currently using an extension called bookmarx that allows for mouseless folder navigation when saving bookmarks to compensate for chromium's terrible way of adding bookmarks.

Of course simply do ":bmark -k short" and the current page will be bookmarked. When you use the ":open" (by default just "o") you can type short to get there (you can use autocomplete if it is long).

You can even quick mark pages with M<character> and get to them with go<character>.

Hmmm very cool, but at first glance, it doesn't seem to have a way of choosing the folder the bookmark goes in.. or am I wrong?

Offline
  • 0
  • Reputation: 0
  • From: Malmö, Sweden
  • Registered: 10-Sep-2012
  • Posts: 122

I've never needed that kind of depth for bookmarking. What exactly do you want with the folders? Do you want to be able to browse them like in a file manager?

Posted without the aid of a rodent.

Offline
  • 0
  • Reputation: 0
  • Registered: 11-Oct-2013
  • Posts: 79
vaskozl said:

I've never needed that kind of depth for bookmarking. What exactly do you want with the folders? Do you want to be able to browse them like in a file manager?

Just to be able to choose which folder it saves in (essentially like a file manager I guess). I have all my bookmarks organized by topic. I just installed ratpoison. It's nice and minimalistic. Out of curiosity, are you using arch?

Last edited by angelic_sedition (20-Oct-2013 23:41:50)
Offline
  • 0
  • Reputation: 0
  • Registered: 11-Oct-2013
  • Posts: 79

Let's keep this awesome thread alive :) (with another unreasonably long and complex post from me). I'm currently looking into and trying several window managers (ion, awesome, evilwm, xmonad, etc.), but don't really have the time to get familiar enough with one to use it as productively as a DE (right now I'm using xfce).

Because of this, I've come up with a sort of hybrid "mouse-less" lesspain solution while still using a DE. The rodent is still usable but is pretty much unnecessary ( and it did come in handy recently when I messed up my keyboard trying to get something to work in xmodmap). I think it's quite a nice solution for someone who likes their DE but still would rather rely mostly or entirely on the keyboard (I will also admit to being a sucker for pretty things and gui). A lot of what I was doing was already primarily keyboard-oriented, but I am doing a few new things like using quicktile, ranger, and pentadactyl. So here's my current setup (maybe it will be useful to someone):

Basic keyboard stuff:
Colemak with caps layer for navigation (left, right, pgup, esc, home, etc.)
Wishlist: hardware- Maybe a keyboard with a thumbcluster for more easily accessible modifiers/layers; software- numbers closer to home row with modifier .. maybe caps (for vim and related programs)

Basic basic stuff:
•Xfce with a basic panel with battery, time, and system tray; 4 desktops/workspaces; some visual stuff and other basic, useful settings like hibernation and start-up apps which I admittedly used the mouse to set up; looks pretty
•basic keyboard shortcuts with xfce like minimize, change velum (which didn't work with my fn keys by default on arch for some reason).. alt tab for moving between stuff; and shortcuts for switching between workspaces
•quicktile for pseudo-tiling (I guess) without a tiling wm
Alternative- Use a different window manager with your DE (you can use awesome with gnome for example)

For launching stuff:
•dmenu (alt space)- lightweight, easy to use, looks nice, and doesn't run in background but lacks some of the features of other launchers (like intelligent search and plugins; still can do a lot of cool things with it); set to shortcut in xfce settings
Alternatives- kupfer, gnome-do, or synapse
•launchy(Ctrl space)- It's great for opening stuff buried deep with in my directory structure where I keep all my documents. It doesn't complain that I make it index ~30k files like gnome do does. It's fast and knows exactly what I want to open. I've been having problems opening things a certain file depth though (which might have something to do with the fact that I'm now mounting things in /run/media/username... maybe I should change that).
Alternatives- synapse works for stuff you've already opened (zeitgeist.. which I have mixed feelings about).

Browsing:
•firefox w/ pentadactyl; After remapping gt and gT it's just as easy to do basic things as vimium and isn't a pain in the arse. If only I could find a keyboard based tree style tab saver. It's also nice that you can choose an existing profile from any folder since I'm dualbooting
Alternatives- maybe vimprobable (has anyone tried it?) or uzbl for a browser or vimium or VimFx as an extension if you want something more simplistic. I also found something call jV which only has 30 users, and there's also ELinks and w3m.
•chromium w/ vimium- Meh. Has all the basic functionality if that's all you need, but it's annoying that it only works on web pages.

Almost everything else: The Terminal (the insane combination of zsh, guake, and tmux)
•shell- I'm using zsh and have vi mode enabled (you can do this in bash and other shells, but I don't know if you can get the display to show whether you're in normal or insert mode). It also might be considered keyboard friendly because of things like auto-complete, correction, etc. Aliases for long commands yatta yatta.
•terminal- I prefer a drop down terminal and have guake bound to alt+r (s qwerty) running on startup.
•Multiplexor- I'd actually highly recommend tmux. The default keybindings (especially the prefix key) aren't that great, but they are totally configurable (so you can set it to ctrl-a like screen if you want). I have my prefix key set to a symbol that I have set to caps-f (qwerty e). The status bar is very customizable as well, and it has a lot of nice features. For example, copy mode (scrollback and copy) supports emacs and vi keybindings by default. I have it set to prefix key then escape (and escape to exit), which I have set to caps-w.

The rest is mostly cli apps like ranger, finch, htop, vim, etc. Ranger is absolutely amazing.

Offline
  • 0
  • Reputation: 0
  • From: Malmö, Sweden
  • Registered: 10-Sep-2012
  • Posts: 122

I see you like XFCE :). There is absolutely no problem in using the panel with ratpoison if you would like to. Infact I have it setup right now and can toggle it with a keybind.

Ratpoison has a tmpwm where you can temporarily give control of the windows to another wm. I've used it a few times with JWM and it works wonders if you wan't to stack something ( I think the only case in which I did that was when I wanted a window to span across multiple monitors).

Terminal multiplexors are a must for any serious terminal user. I started using GNU screen and even though tmux is arguable better, I haven't bothered because ratpoison is based on screen and is largely more consistent with :0.

Ranger is pure awesomnes, easy marking of directories, multiple tabs and ease of use made me stick with it.

Edit:

Uhm, the machine I'm using right now is running ubuntu since at the time when I was installing a distro, the kernel didn't support the ethernet chipset and arch didn't have a wifi driver by default. Soo if I wanted arch I had to install it without internet connection and then download the source for the ethernet drivers from somewhere else and then install them through usb :/. Ubuntu atleast had the wifi drivers by default :D.

Last edited by vaskozl (01-Nov-2013 11:21:35)

Posted without the aid of a rodent.

Offline
  • 0
  • Reputation: 0
  • Registered: 11-Oct-2013
  • Posts: 79

I do like xfce. I have a newfound obsession with trying out window managers. I might just end up changing the wm and keep using xfce. I'm still not sure whether I prefer a prefix key or modifier setup though. Do you know of any other keyboard based window managers that use a prefix key? Ratpoison is the only one I've tried that takes this approach Ratpoison with a panel on toggle seems like a great idea. I might end up sticking with that.

Wow that's an interesting feature. Does Ratpoison support multiple monitors?

I love tmux apart from it's C-b prefix key, which has to be one of the worst default keybindings of all time. Screen works fine too of course, but I usually end up changing a lot of keybindings no matter what I use.

The only problem I have with ranger is that I didn't find it sooner. I move around a lot of files, and doing it with a normal file manager is a total nightmare. Mouseless file management is infinitely more sane so far.

It's definitely less of a pain sometimes to go with something like Ubuntu. Did you end up uninstalling a lot of stuff? :P I prefer choosing exactly what's on my system these days.

Offline
  • 0
  • Reputation: 0
  • From: Malmö, Sweden
  • Registered: 10-Sep-2012
  • Posts: 122

In ratpoisoin you can bind any possible keyboard combination to it's function. It uses emacs like syntax so you can bind control, super, shift and meta (alt) to anything you might want. By default however ratpoison utilized a escape key which is kind of like a sticky key.

Ratpoison does support multiple monitors very well. I have a dual monitor setup and it is working flawlessly.

With ubuntu I ended up removing much more than I installed. Imo it doesn't matter how much stuff you have installed if you are not running them and most of the programs I use are very resources lite anyway :).

If I need to install GNU/Linux on this machine again, then I would probably chose arch or the ubuntu minimal install.

Posted without the aid of a rodent.

Offline
  • 0
  • Reputation: 7
  • Registered: 21-Apr-2010
  • Posts: 818

There's still a disjoint between the shell and gui desktop.  And lack of consistency between apps.  Which is really annoying.  I think Gnome/shell could really have worked hard on that.

I get by with metacity, xfce, synapse and nautilus.  I don't particularly love them, but they generally work for me. (More so than Windows / OSX in my opinion).

When I'm in the terminal navigating between directories, none of that is reflected in the gui apps, and vice versa.  Nautilus seems to forget where I've been, and the keyboard shortcuts / focus, is annoying.

Those file management tasks are pretty core to working with an OS, for me at least anyway.  (Notice that Android tries to take that away from you, not sure if I like that approach.)

Ranger feels part way there.  But it doesn't really help me when I go to save something.

It would be nice if the OS had some great helpers and bridging functionality.

Last edited by pinkyache (06-Nov-2013 13:21:47)

--
Physicians deafen our ears with the Honorificabilitudinitatibus of their heavenly Panacaea, their sovereign Guiacum.

Offline
  • 0
  • Reputation: 0
  • Registered: 11-Oct-2013
  • Posts: 79
vaskozl said:

In ratpoisoin you can bind any possible keyboard combination to it's function. It uses emacs like syntax so you can bind control, super, shift and meta (alt) to anything you might want. By default however ratpoison utilized a escape key which is kind of like a sticky key.

Ratpoison does support multiple monitors very well. I have a dual monitor setup and it is working flawlessly.

With ubuntu I ended up removing much more than I installed. Imo it doesn't matter how much stuff you have installed if you are not running them and most of the programs I use are very resources lite anyway :).

If I need to install GNU/Linux on this machine again, then I would probably chose arch or the ubuntu minimal install.

Ratpoison is becoming more attractive by the minute. Multiple monitor support is especially nice.

Uninstalling things is kind of a pain. The nicest thing about me for arch beside choosing everything on install is the aur.

pinkyache said:

There's still a disjoint between the shell and gui desktop.  And lack of consistency between apps.  Which is really annoying.  I think Gnome/shell could really have worked hard on that.

I get by with metacity, xfce, synapse and nautilus.  I don't particularly love them . . .

You could pretty much do everything in the terminal if you wanted to (though browsing with w3m, elinks, lynx, etc all the time would probably be pretty painful). It would probably be harder to do things the other way around (synaptic and the ubuntu gui app store thing quickly became a pain for me; command line is pretty much a must for any linux user). I think a combination of the two works fine together though. As for "bridging functionality," I'm not quite sure what you mean. Where is the disjoint?

@vaskozl I've decided to totally phase out mouse usage and switch to more tui/cli applications. Right now I'm working on switching to ranger for file management and the only problem that I'm having is integrating it with the web browser/making it the default fm. I assume that you can use ranger to save files if it's the only file manager you're using. If not, what are you using to save files from firefox? I made a .desktop file to open ranger in the terminal and set it as the default with xdg-mime and put it in mimeapps.list, etc. but xfce seems to override this, and I've had no luck so far working with "preferred applications." What is your setup?

Edit: I was able to set ranger to the preferred file manager and get it to open when selecting "file manager,' but this has no effect on browser saving behaviour.. I wonder what would happen if I uninstalled thunar.

Last edited by angelic_sedition (07-Nov-2013 00:06:05)
Offline
  • 0
  • Reputation: 7
  • Registered: 21-Apr-2010
  • Posts: 818

> Where is the disjoint?

You've already identified it in part here:

> ...I assume that you can use ranger to save files...

So you get to the save dialogue.  Say you are using Thunar,  it doesn't know what you've been upto in the shell.  Things like recently opened, or accessed documents.  Your pushd dir stack.  Frequently used folders etc.

I like w3m, but in my experience it's actually slower than the popular graphical web browsers.

You'll most likely use some GUI apps, at which point, the disjoint rears it's ugly head.

I live a lot in the shell, and I really like it, but it could be so, so much better and there could be better integration with GUI apps.

I'll give you another example of failed file management.  I watch people using Sublime Text, and using the app's file and folder tree.  Why aren't they using their native file manager, or opening files from the command line?

--
Physicians deafen our ears with the Honorificabilitudinitatibus of their heavenly Panacaea, their sovereign Guiacum.

Offline
  • 0
  • Reputation: 0
  • Registered: 11-Oct-2013
  • Posts: 79

Indeed that's what I was thinking, but saving won't be a "disjoint" if I find a better way to do it. Not using the mouse with thunar is possible but very slow. If I can't use ranger to save things, then I could just opt for a more keyboard friendly gui fm. If mouseless file management doesn't matter, then I see no problem or disjoint with using thunar to save things, and if I can find a way to get rid of thunar completely, it won't matter that it doesn't know what I've been doing in the terminal. It already doesn't really matter since at this point I'm only using it for saving things.

Browsing is one thing I wouldn't do in the terminal. I don't see how using gui apps causes a disjoint. You'd have to give a specific example of how the shell could be so much better; I don't quite follow.

Well if you don't think that's an optimal solution (I don't really see why it matters) that's still a user failure. I use ST3 and have never done that.

Offline
  • 0
  • Reputation: 7
  • Registered: 21-Apr-2010
  • Posts: 818

> If I can't use ranger to save things
I doubt you can, but prove me wrong.

> then I could just opt for a more keyboard friendly gui fm
Good luck with that.

> If mouseless file management doesn't matter
Defeatist!

>It (Thunar) already doesn't really matter since at this point I'm only using it for saving things.
Then you may as well just save everything into an inbox and organise it later with Ranger.

> Browsing is one thing I wouldn't do in the terminal. I don't see how using gui apps causes a disjoint.
You've already noticed that it does by mentioning the separation in the first place between GUI and CLI.

> You'd have to give a specific example of how the shell could be so much better; I don't quite follow.
You know how fantastic auto-completition/command-completion is when it works?  Why don't we have that across the board?  Imagine if your CLI or GUI could create an interface by interpreting the man page or help.  One think I like with Zsh, is the shared command history - it's a boon.  Some helpers, perhaps one for  Ranger, that scans through your CLI history to bookmark most visited places, or helpers to do automounts etc would be nice.   Have some of that in the GUI shell too.

> Well if you don't think that's an optimal solution (I don't really see why it matters) that's still a user failure. I use ST3 and have never done that.
The comment was really that users must not be happy in putting something like OSX's Finder at the core of their work pattern.  It's more a question of why do they do that?  I wouldn't say that's user failure.  There's pros and cons of the approach.

I think both of us are very file system centric in our operations.  Notice how some OSs like Android try and remove that complexity away from the user.

Some users have real difficulty in getting their heads around file management and file system traversal.

Windows uses things like the shortcut of My documents, and dynamic drive assignment.  I remember a tech support job where someone asked me about backing up files.  I suggested a low tech solution at the time: copy/drag their files into another folder (probably a network share, or a 'burn folder').  They hadn't a clue what I was talking about.  They'd never moved any files, they'd just been opening and saving files in My Documents for 3 years.  Their system worked for them.

Those type of shortcuts can help, but at the same time they can also be confusing.  Just like a black box file system.   How many times have you lost a download to some weird temp directory?

--
Physicians deafen our ears with the Honorificabilitudinitatibus of their heavenly Panacaea, their sovereign Guiacum.

Offline
  • 0
  • Reputation: 0
  • Registered: 11-Oct-2013
  • Posts: 79

>I doubt you can, but prove me wrong.
(Your method of quoting is easier and takes up less space) I doubt I can too. I couldn't find any information on doing such a thing. I don't know if it's possible to use something different for saving things at all. Keyboard use is still possible, but not nearly as fast.

>Defeatist!
Well you didn't seem to really care about going mouseless, which is why I said that.

>Then you may as well just save everything into an inbox and organize it later with Ranger.
That's one way of doing it, but I see it as a waste of time to do it later. I used to just save stuff in a folder to move later instead of putting things in the correct place and never would actually get around to fixing it (and if I did, I might not remember what I meant to do with it). But you're right; the only thing I would do differently is to move it with ranger immediately. Doing it like that kind of gets rid of the need to change the behaviour of the save menu anyway. I was really just over-thinking this whole thing. You solved the disjoint for me:
•change default save location and make a two letter alias for it
•Contol+s or click on download link; enter to save (or set auto-save for downloads)
•key combo for terminal
•two letter alias to both go to the directory and then open in ranger; cut and then move to desired directory with marks and find
Takes less than two seconds, pretty much eliminating the need to replace the gui save menu.

>You've already noticed that it does by mentioning the separation in the first place between GUI and CLI.
I don't consider separation to be a disjoint. To call using different types of applications for different things a "disjoint" just doesn't make sense to me. You might as well call using multiple windows a disjoint or not being able to do everything with just one program a disjoint. Using both gui and terminal applications isn't problematic unless there is a conflict that hurts functionality or efficiency (for example if I had to use w3m part of the time and firefox part of the time because some functionality was lacked by both that the other had; this would definitely cause a disjoint in that if I was using firefox and had to switch to w3m I would no longer have the same open tabs, bookmarks, addons, etc.). I don't see this to really be a problem in any area at the moment though.

>You know how fantastic auto-completion/command-completion is when it works?
That seems more like an example of how gui apps could be better and learn something from the shell xD As for auto-completion, it's already everywhere. ZSH auto-completion is phenomenal already and aliases save even more pain. You're pretty much set in the terminal with that. Word processors have auto-completion (libre office and open office have smart auto-completion that learns from what you're typing). Vim and ST, for example, have plenty of plugins for auto-completion for code and normal language. Search engines auto-complete your searches. Launchers are now smart and can tell what you want before you've typed the full name based on frequency of use or open. What more auto-completion do you need? OS wide built-in auto-completion would be cool, but I don't think that you can realistically cater to every application.

Maybe what you want is autokey? You can set up your own phrases or hotkeys to expand text. Example: I have "#=" set up to the following (which I use for titles/section dividers to make my config and txt files more easily readable and navigable):

#==============================
#
#==============================   

Other text expanders (ex: phraseexpress) learn from what you type and offer auto-completion. Have you tried these? A decent clipboard manager can also give you better system wide functionality.

I don't know what you mean by create an interface. As for marking most visited places, I see very little benefit automating that process. It's easy enough to mark them yourself, and then you actually have control over what letter things are assigned to. I already have what I need set to automount as well.

>The comment was really that users must not be happy in putting something like OSX's Finder at the core of their work pattern.
Ah yes, well finder is very much a pain to work with in my experience.

I don't know why you're picking Android in particular, but a lot of people don't really care about the file system. As long as I still can get access to it, I wouldn't really care (not so much the case with iOS).

As for backup and syncing, I have aliases for rsync set up so that I can backup everything with a single command. I guess it's probably because I'm a heavy computer user with a very large and organized file structure, but trying to work with everything in a My Documents folder would be a total nightmare for me. My productivity would decrease dramatically. Organization is a problem, and I actually have created documents that detail the interaction between my whole file system (and computer). I have naming schemes, rules/policy for organizing the file structure, policy for dealing with any information I want to store or read later, policy for dealing with different file types (I keep everything I can on a usb for easy access so most videos, for example, go in a folder structure on my computer). My bookmark folders are modeled after this file structure and mirror them by topic. It's pretty complicated but necessary to prevent confusion and ensure that things go smoothly for someone who has maybe hundreds of folders and thousands of files like me.

Last edited by angelic_sedition (08-Nov-2013 03:19:53)
Offline
  • 0
  • Reputation: 7
  • Registered: 21-Apr-2010
  • Posts: 818

Perhaps when I say disjoint it's really a reference to the lack of cohesive consistency across applications and shells (GUI, CLI and other).

I feel the rub when an application lacks keyboard support, or when it repurposes common keyboard shortcuts.  I find the different methods of  tab implementation across applications irritating.

I guess I want the semantic desktop with CLI shell integration, and specifically I'd like my own text input layer that was context-aware for auto-complete/auto-suggest, that I could use across applications.   For example in my browser location bar, or when using a chat client.

And of course I want all this with delicious keyboard support ;).

I'm not a pointer hater.  I love pointer interfaces where it makes sense, but I also get bothered when there isn't a keyboard alternative (how do you use MS's Video App with the keyboard???).

I'm ultimately a fan of beautiful, simple to use, discoverable user interfaces.

What I meant by a generated interface, was something like the Fish shell doing auto-completion from the man pages.

I mentioned Android, because the engineers deliberately dropped the save as dialogue:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comment … ge/c30rko9

Last edited by pinkyache (08-Nov-2013 13:57:38)

--
Physicians deafen our ears with the Honorificabilitudinitatibus of their heavenly Panacaea, their sovereign Guiacum.

Offline
  • 0
  • Reputation: 0
  • Registered: 04-Apr-2013
  • Posts: 538

Wow, by that dev's standard, having 2 places to save is too much.

Offline
  • 0
  • Reputation: 0
  • Registered: 11-Oct-2013
  • Posts: 79

@pinkyache
Yeah, inconsistency between different programs is inevitable. I personally don't mind, as I'm used to remapping a lot of stuff and learning new key combos. I guess what you want is the OS to take care of that inconsistency and give auto-completion for everything based on everything you do. That's a pretty interesting idea. Something like that may happen in the future. And then likely even farther into the future the keyboard and mouse will both become obsolete.

As for wanting completion from man pages in zsh, maybe this is what you want: http://www.zsh.org/mla/workers/2004/msg00533.html
If not, someone has probably written a function already to do whatever it is.

I don't hate the mouse, but I'm happy to get rid of it as much as possible to save time and my hand.

I don't think that would really affect me since I do file management on the computer with mobile devices. I think it is the case that most users don't care where exactly things are being saved. I mention iOS, because it pretty much doesn't allow the user to do any file management.

Offline
  • 0
  • Reputation: 0
  • From: Malmö, Sweden
  • Registered: 10-Sep-2012
  • Posts: 122

About the download dialog:
I think the default and best behaviour is to save everything in the "downloads" folder. I then just switch to ranger and manipulate the file from there.

As to incosistency and disjoint:
It really matters how you pick your programs. Most programs by default have common shortcuts. Think vanilla ubuntu, mac or windows. They all have the same copy, paste, save and similar shortcuts for opening new tabs, documents, quiting etc. even for the default terminal.

If you start using programs like vim and emacs then you will get a disjoint because of the very different ideology behind the program. This however doesn't prevent you from using tools that are consitent with each other.

The shell's have vim and emacs navigation modes. There are tons of cli programs that have vim or emacs mappings and there are quite a few gui programs that utilise them as well such as apvlv and pentadactyl(vim) or conkeror(emacs).


It's all a matter of what you want.

Last edited by vaskozl (10-Nov-2013 22:29:30)

Posted without the aid of a rodent.

Offline
  • 0
  • Reputation: 0
  • Registered: 11-Oct-2013
  • Posts: 79

Yeah I'm just saving to the Downloads folder and going from there now. Works like a charm. I was surprised at how almost non-existent the learning curve of ranger is. It's probably my new favourite program.

I've switched completely over to vim, and the inconsistency isn't really a problem (I haven't forgotten how to copy or paste when not in vim). I did change C-s to :w though. If I ever have to go back to windows, it will definitely be a pain though. I guess I'd have to rely on cygwin as much as possible then.

As for gui programs with vi keybindings, there actually seem to be a lot more than I thought. I just found a thunderbird plugin called muttator. Apparently the developers of pentadactyl are working on an addon called teledactyl that is similar.

Offline
  • 0
  • Reputation: 0
  • Registered: 11-Oct-2013
  • Posts: 79

It's been a while since this thread has seen any love. I've changed quite a few things over the past month to make my workflow more keyboard friendly, and I thought this was interesting enough to warrant a post.

I've found out lately that pentadactyl works quite well in conjunction with shellscript, and this makes it possible to essentially replace the gui save dialog with ranger.

Pentadactyl already has ;s and :w. These make possible to bypass the dialog and allow for tab completion of path, but this is still pretty cumbersome. I've set up the following autocommand:

au DownloadPost * :silent !~/bin/ranger_browser_fm.sh <file>

This will send the file location of a download to a simple script I wrote:

#!/bin/sh
bspc rule -a termite -o floating=true center=true
termite -e "/bin/zsh -c 'xdo resize -w +300 && xdo move -x -150 && xdo resize -h +200 && xdo move -y -100 && ranger --selectfile=$1 --cmd="cut"'" &

The "bspc" and "xdo" stuff is just for my window manager. Basically it just sets terminal window to floating, centers it, and then makes it bigger. The important part is to open a terminal and execute a ranger command. I believe urxvt and xterm both also use the "-e" flag. This will select the downloaded file, and then cut it. You can also add other ranger commands if you want.

Sadly, I don't know of any way to do this in reverse for the upload dialog.

I've also started streaming all videos in mpv and am working on turning every text box into vim with pterosaur (to replace <c-i> and broken iabbr..). Pentadactyl is pretty great. Though it does kind of bug me that the issue for adding folder support to bookmarks has been open for 3 years, is the second most starred issue and of "high priority", and still has seen little progress.

Last edited by angelic_sedition (21-Mar-2014 19:24:42)
Offline
  • 0
  • Reputation: 0
  • From: Malmö, Sweden
  • Registered: 10-Sep-2012
  • Posts: 122

Pretty neat thing you've done with ranger there :D. Even though it still asks for a path with ;s for me (and then opens with ranger). Since writing the post I have also discovered the amazing urxvt-perls which allow you to enter screen like (but better) browsing of the console log trough which you can easily find and yank text into your buffer. Moreover it provides for a quick way to open links with the keyobard, which would otherwise have to be done with the mouse.

Posted without the aid of a rodent.

Offline
  • 0