'Emacs style' delete line shortcut (CTRL/U) doesn't work correctly in Firefox

[Liam Proven]

On Wed, 10 Oct 2018 at 15:14, Chris Green <cl at isbd.net> wrote:
> >
> I'm even older (as regards computer use and probably actual age) I
> started my programming career back in 1970/1971.  Keyboard meant a
> 10cps teletype back then, with a few of the new whizzy VDUs.

Heh! Excellent -- well played! :-D

I'd give you the secret handshake but I've forgotten it.

> On the other hand you can find vi (or a vi clone like I use)
> *everywhere* and you can use it via an ssh connection.  Thus I only
> know *one* editor and use it for absolutely everything, I use mutt for
> E-mail (with vi as its editor), I use tin for news (with vi as its
> editor), I use vi (or my GUI clone, xvile) for programming, I even use
> vi in text boxes in Firefox with the help of the textern add-on.

Fair call.

The thing is, though, that Vi or Emacs style UIs weren't taken up by
many other apps -- e.g. on the DOS playform, Wordstar commands
dominated for a while. (E.g. early releases of DR-DOS had a text
editor that understood Wordstar commands, while MS-DOS still only
offered Edlin.)

There were too many competing standards -- Vi, Emacs, Wordstar, old
Windows keystrokes, old classic MacOS ones, etc.

Which is why CUA came along.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access

It took the idea of the exceptionally rigorous Apple HIG (Human
Interface Guidelines) and extended them in a more PC-centric way.
Basically _everything_ since then has conformed to them -- Windows and
OS/2 directly, Apple indirectly as it adopted most of them in Mac OS
X, Linux because all the leading desktops are copies of Windows 95 &
its accessories, so accidentally grandfathered in the same UI.

I learned the CUA stuff around 1989-1990 and every editor since then
adopts it by default. I remember a handful of older things --
including Ctrl-U to clear a field -- but happily I've let my muscle
memory of all else fade away since then.

Which is why I don't like Emacs or Vi, despite nearly 30 years of
reluctant Vi usage. They don't conform. But these days I use Tilde
instead, which does and is fine. As a non-programmer I need nothing
more.

> See above!  :-)

Well, fair call. Remembering both might be a bit much for almost anyone...


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