append is not consistent with rest of insert mode bindings

[LollipopFt]

Summary

i command:

(no selection)

I command:

(no selection)

a command:

(selection of letter, in this case t)
this problem is worse if i go to end of line using command gl, press a then enter and continue typing. the entire text is selected.

meanwhile, the other append command A:

(no selection)

could a be changed to not select any text like all the other insert commands? everytime i use a, i need to move my cursor with arrow keys to remove the selection. shouldn't insert mode not be selecting any text? normal mode and visual mode should be doing that. this applies across all color schemes, nothing to do with my custom color scheme.

Reproduction Steps

No response

Helix log

No response

Platform

Windows

Terminal Emulator

Windows Terminal Preview 1.15.2282.0

Helix Version

helix 22.08.1 (66276ce)

[the-mikedavis]

Duplicate of #1411
See also #2673 and #2924

Appending is different from inserting: append retains the anchor (the start of a selection) and newly added text extends the head of the selection. This is useful in multi-cursor scenarios - if a behaved like i, you would discard any selection you had when pressing a. A (append_to_line) is actually insertion before the end-of-line character rather than appending and is roughly equivalent to glli. The description and name of the command are currently wrong (Kakoune's description is more accurate).

You can bind a to what you expect like so:

# ~/.config/helix/config.toml
[keys.normal]
a = ["ensure_selections_forward", "collapse_selection", "move_char_right", "insert_mode"]