Hi,

Steve Litt writes:

> Hi all,
>
> BACKSTORY...
>
> I'm the *originator* of VimOutliner, an outline processor that uses the
> Vim engine. VimOutliner's top priority was authoring speed. That
> priority drove most VimOutliner keyboard commands to begin with a
> double comma (,,), which is both extremely easy to hit from typing home
> position, and very unlikely to happen within written text. I published
> VimOutliner 0.13 June 1 2001.
>
> Several other people used it, liked it, and improved it far beyond my
> capabilities. Several Linux distros acquired VimOutliner packages.
> Unfortunately, the Debian VimOutliner package manager insisted on using
> double backslash (//) instead of double comma (,,) as the first two

You mean double slash, right? Double backslash would be \\ (and way too
Windows for my taste ;-).

On my Japanese keyboard these are right next to one another, two places
to the right of the comma. Of the three, the comma would be easier to
type.

What's the Debian maintainer's rationale for changing the command
prefix?

> characters of commands. The double backslash is slower, and more
> important, it's a key that appears in different places on different
> keyboards. Use of the double backslash represents a degradation of
> VimOutliner's top priority: Authoring speed.
>
> I'm thinking of making the Devuan VimOutliner package use double comma.
> I'd take the Debian package and replace all appropriate double
> backslashes with double commas.

Just a thought, but would it be possible to make the command prefix
configurable upstream? Then anyone could set it in a system-wide and/or
per user config file and everyone could use whatever is most convenient
for them. Upstream can use ,, as the hard-coded default and the Debian
maintainer can simply plonk a system-wide configuration file in place.

Since everyone seems to be donating ;-) that was my two yen.
--
Olaf Meeuwissen, LPIC-2            FSF Associate Member since 2004-01-27
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