Resetting of chat window entry field doesn't work

[muelli@…]

As I was chatting I wanted to delete all the contents of the text-entry widget. However, I was not able to do so. I expected to clear it with CTRL+C.

[asterix]

Ctrl+C copy selected text

Right click in text entry and choose clear. Else Shift+home and Suppr.

[anonymous]

As I don't like to switch mouse and keyboard usage very often (takes too much time, especially on my Notebook, where there just a tiny tracpoint you'll have to search and stuff), I'd like to have a keyboard shortcut. CTRL+SHIFT+HOME is not a good and convenient solutoin since it overwrites the X Clipboard Buffer.

So I suggest to implement the shortcut CTRL+C to delete the entered text. Just as bash does.

[asterix]

ctrl+C sends SIGTERM to the process, that doesn't clear the bash line. Moreover this shortcut is used to copy selected text, not to clear textview. I know no application that does that.

[anonymous]

You are right about that copy thing. (Besides that, it clears the line, just enter text in your bash and press CTRL+C.) But then take CTRL+U.

It's an usability issue not being able to chat w/o a mouse.

[asterix]

Ctrl+C doen't clear text in my bash, than sends SIGTERM.

Ctrl+U clears the line from beginning to cursor

you can chat without mouse, shift + home is no so hard to do

[anonymous]

It sends SIGINT to a process in foreground. But if there is no process in fg, then you'll a fresh prompt w/o the text you've previously written.

Anyway, as I said before, the question is not, if it's possible at all to chat w/o mouse. The question is, how comfortable it is. And it *is* an usability issue if you have to switch keyboard and mouse very often.

You propose the shit+home solution, which is -again- wrong, since it just clears the line. In order to clear the whole text entry widget, one would have to go to it's end with CTRL+END, then press CTRL+SHIFT+HOME to select all text and finally press DEL.

Got the point? I just want to be able to clear the entry widget with one event and not with three plus loosing my clipboard because I have marked text. Hence reopening.

[asterix]

Ctrl+C is not a good shortcut for that. And I don't know another application that have something like that to use the same shortcut.

[asterix]

BTW Ctrl+A selects all the text

so Ctrl+A then you begin to type a new message can be enough.

[anonymous]

Well, CTRL+C is really out of discussion. But CTRL+U is a perfect shortcut for that.

Let me explain in other words, why CTRL+A is a bad solution. When you select text, it's automatically copied into a X clipboard buffer, overwriting the existing stuff in there.

So if you have already stuff in your clipboard, you'll overwrite it, hence loosing it. That's bad. So right now a convenient is missing, thus a shortcut would be great w/o loosing the clipboard. Plus it should be relatively easy to implement

[asterix]

As I already said, I don't think any other application do something like that (Are you able to clear what you're typing in thunderbird for example? )

So nobody will know this shortcut (except you)

You can press the "popup" key, the one that pops up the context menu, and press enter (first item is clear)

[anonymous]

Replying to asterix:

As I already said, I don't think any other application do something like that (Are you able to clear what you're typing in thunderbird for example? )

So what's your point? Plus bash does it.

So nobody will know this shortcut (except you)

So what? No features would have been implemented with that attitude. And predicting the future is at least not my profession and I don't think it's yours either. Once it's implemented, it'll attract more users and if not, it will not scare them away. So you won't at least not lose any user.

You can press the "popup" key, the one that pops up the context menu, and press enter (first item is clear)

What's the "popup" key? On windows it might be the context-menu button right of the right windows key, but that doens't work on my ubuntu box plus not everyone has got such a key, think of Sun or Mac boxes.

But as I said: The scenario is to conveniently clear the entry field

• without losing clipboard contents
• without changing from keyboard to mouse to keyboard
• without pressing more than one button-combination

an adorable goal. I don't see any reason not to implement this and there were no reasons against it in this discussion so far. Besides the (rather lightweight) point that no one would use it except me, which I obsoleted above.

[asterix]

Ctrl+U doesn't do that in bash, it clears text from beginning of the line to the cursor, not from beginning of text to end of text ... That can confise user.

in my debian context-menu key works, it should in all linux. I don't know if MAC keyboards have such a key.

To be precise: I'm n ot against such a feature, but that should not be a too easy key combination to not do it by error. What about Ctrl+Alt+C ?

[anonymous]

Great. CTRL+ALT is more or less reserved for windows managers.

Up to now, CTRL+U is the best we have, so I vote for this shortcut. But I agree, that another shortcut might be less confusing to a couple of users. One could commit CTRL+U to trunk and see how the community accepts it. Then either release it or change the shortcut.

[asterix]

I just tested, but Ctrl+U already do that ! GTK handles that it seems

[anonymous]

d'oh!

really, I didn't want to burn so much useful time ;-) Works for me too... I really could have tested that...