Suggestion: use <space> to scroll in view mode

[benjaminrich]

One thing that's always bugged me is that while h, j, k, l are so ergonomic, <c-f>, <c-b> and <c-d>, <c-u> are just the opposite; they feel characteristically "un-modal", and I've never understood why I should want to use them.

It's pretty ubiquitous in pagers, viewers and even web browsers to use <space> and <s-space> to scroll forwards and backwards page-wise, and this is very comfortable. Now, obviously <space> has a different usage in normal mode, but in view mode (and in particular 'sticky' view mode) it could be used for scrolling. That would give you the best of both worlds, it seems.

[the-mikedavis]

I think this is a good idea. If you'd like to submit a PR, the default keymap for Z lives here:

helix/helix-term/src/keymap/default.rs

Lines 274 to 285 in 0b8a00a

	"Z" => { "View" sticky=true
	"z" | "c" => align_view_center,
	"t" => align_view_top,
	"b" => align_view_bottom,
	"m" => align_view_middle,
	"k" | "up" => scroll_up,
	"j" | "down" => scroll_down,
	"C-b" | "pageup" => page_up,
	"C-f" | "pagedown" => page_down,
	"C-u" => half_page_up,
	"C-d" => half_page_down,
	},

You could bind space to page_down or maybe half_page_down might be smoother. I'm not sure it's possible to bind S-space because of either terminal or crossterm limitations. Using the event-read example from crossterm:

Event: Key(KeyEvent { code: Char(' '), modifiers: NONE })
Event: Key(KeyEvent { code: Char(' '), modifiers: NONE })

both space and shift+space register as just space.

[benjaminrich]

I will try. Please give me a bit of time, as I have not contributed before. Thanks.

[benjaminrich]

Sorry for the naive question, because I am not a real dev and have never worked with rust before, but if I make a change to the code base and want to test it, what do I do? I mean, what are the commands to compile and run my modified version of the code?

EDIT: what I did is just run cargo run and that seems to work. :)

[CptPotato]

I'm not sure it's possible to bind S-space because of either terminal or crossterm limitations.
[...]
both space and shift+space register as just space.

FWIW, ShiftSpace does appear to work on Windows on all terminal emulators I've tried (Wezterm nightly, CMD, Powershell, ConEmu).

[the-mikedavis]

Finally a key combination that works on Windows and not Linux 😄

For me the shift modified isn't being recognized on either Kitty or WezTerm

[CptPotato]

Well, if the platform support is kinda hit-or-miss, it's probably a good idea to use a different keybind 👀

[benjaminrich]

Yes. It would be quite a useful key combination, but you cannot rely on it.