Suggestion for improved usability

[john]

I like to select files with the mouse or arrow keys, then act on them on the command line. It seems like I’m wearing my fingers out with ctrl-z to keep changing the focus from file to command line and vice versa. Specifically, I’d like the arrows or mouse to maintain focus on the file list while the keyboard keeps focused on the command line. Instead, I have to keep pecking away at ctrl-z.

If you have tried midnight commander, you know what a difference this makes.

Is there a way to get emelfm2 to act like this?

[TomPh]

In general, the application responds to a key event in a manner that is context-specific. In other words, the same key does different things. So the application needs to know what the user intends. Using the ‘current focus’ is one way of achieving this, there may be others that are suitable. I don’t know how MC does it.
Can you suggest an example or two of what is triggering excess focus-shifts? There may be some other niceness we can add to make for smoother usage.

[john]

Thank you for your question. Here is a very specific example. Suppose the focus is on the file list and I find a file by using the up/down arrow, and I want to bring it down to the command line. So I hit ctrl-insert to bring it to the command line. So far so good.

But now I want type “cp” (or any command) in front of that file. So I’d like to use the left arrow key to get the cursor to go to the left of my filename (on the command line). But the left arrow key isn’t focused on the command line, so I have to do the ctrl-z to get it there.

Forgive me for mentioning midnight commander, but the way they have it is superbly efficient. They have the up/down arrows focused on the file list (so use use up/down to find a file). And then they have right/left arrows focused on the command line, so you get get the cursor right where you want it. No extra key strokes are needed to set the focus.

John

[TomPh]

Well, if you don’t want gtk’s default behaviour (scroll the treeview horizontally), nor emelfm2’s default behaviour (open the adjacent dir in the ‘visited-history’) then you could bind your ‘panes’ arrow keys to the action command.focus. You could add to your ‘commandline’ bindings some key for command.toggle_focus, but that’s no better than <Ctrl>z, I suppose.