Keyboard driven applications to make your life easier

[kidd]

Thnks kidd for this thread, I am starting to follow your advices, hmmm may be you will convert one for your cause. I started to use vimperator and its nice, some sites are unusables, because they lock the "console" and I cant input no commands anymore, but are just a few ones. I will try some wm too, if I can make the time. I really like to keep things very minimalistics, so, keep those tricks coming!

yw .
vimperator has some focus problems with a few sites.  That's a known bug (I hope it gets solved for 0.5).
I'll do wm propaganda in another post, you could start taking a look at wmii or ratpoison (for me these are the greatest). As lagagnon suggested, printing the shortcuts and having them near the first week can prevent some headaches

I wonder who else here uses the 'find' command as frequently as I do. The applications are truly limitless. Ex., replace '-O2' with '-O2 -march=i586 -mtune=i686' in all Makefiles in and below the current directory (recursive search):

Code:

find . -name Makefile -exec perl -i -pwnle 's/-O2/-march=i586 -mtune=i686/g;' {} \;

Definately find is a great tool, but lately I'm using it less than before, as in zsh, globbing is as powerful as find,

Code:

perl -i -pwnle 's/-O2/-march=i586 -mtune=i686/g;' **/Makefile(.)

That would do the same, and will restrict Makefile being a file, not a directory.

Many more  (adavanced) zsh tricks in http://rayninfo.co.uk/tips/zshtips.html

[kidd]

I'm not very demanding on image viewers as I only look some photos in slideshow from time to time.  I've used gqview and lately I'm using feh.

gqview is good enough, and it can set an image as wallpaper, but I haven't found a way to automate it through the commandline (wm I use don't have an option to set wallpaper).

On the other hand, feh is another prog, complete enough to fit my needs, and it can set an image as background

Code:

feh --bg-scale image.jpg

feh lack of interface(unless -t flag) is a feature for me, and you can browse through the right click menu (it pops up with 'm' too) with hjkl .

That's a killer feature for me .

Suggestions are welcome again.

HTH,

PS: emacs with some plugin is accepted too, I just haven't spent time to explore emacs universe, if anyone is feels like posting, go on please.

[Triarius Fidelis]

gqview is good enough, and it can set an image as wallpaper, but I haven't found a way to automate it through the commandline (wm I use don't have an option to set wallpaper).

In ratpoison, it doesn't matter b/c you can't see the background...

[kidd]

In ratpoison, it doesn't matter b/c you can't see the background...

I know
I'm making the assumption not everyone uses ratpoison.
Console programs with transparencies (aterm for example) see directly the background, no matter how many "stacked" windows you have in that frame.

When I used gaim, I had the Buddy List window unmanaged, so it stayed in the background of all "virtual desktops", and I got there with ctrl-t _ .  That showed the wallpaper if any.

[vvucic]

keyboard driven aplications are not only for vim or emacs users.  Actually, a variety of accessibiity issues are related with possibility to access commands with assigning Alt + some key to access certain function.  Thus, schools, various institutions, somones family member may benefit from that.
here is example of assignment of some functions from one accessible learning content management system (ATutor), just as an illustration how this can work.  Thus, keybaord driven activites may improve social responsibility of use of free software.
Thus, use your skills, creation of shortcuts aand make software accessible for people with disabilities.

General AccessKeys
[Alt+1 to Alt+0] Main Navigation Tabs
[Alt+,] Previous topic (i.e. Left angle bracket <)
[Alt+.] Next topic (i.e. Right angle bracket >)
[Alt+.] Resume (i.e. Right angle bracket > while outside the course content)
[Alt+j] Jump Menu
[Alt+s] Submit (active on many form pages)
[Alt+c] Jump to content top (top and navigation bypass link)

Content Editor AccessKeys
[Alt+n] Content Tab
[Alt+p] Properties Tab
[Alt+g] Glossary Tab
[Alt+r] Preview Tab
[Alt+a] Accessibility Tab
[Alt+s] Save

Chat AccessKeys
[Alt+c] Jump to Compose Message field
[Alt+r] Refresh Messages
[Alt+m] Jump to Message List
[Alt+q] Quit Chat

Inbox AccessKeys
[Alt+r] Reply to Messages


best wishes,


veki

[Triarius Fidelis]

Clever.

[tomh38]

kidd:  Thanks for recommending feh.  I'd never heard of it, and now I like it a lot.

Since this thread is about keyboard driven applications ... the "m" key on my old IBM Model M keyboard died (irony ...) so now I'm using this Memorex MX5500RF keyboard that I had laying around.  Unfortunately the multimedia keys aren't supported in the usual software (linEAK, etc.).  It's not that important, but I would kind of like to use the extra keys.  Would anybody recommend something to map the keys (xbindkeys, etc.) as the best for mapping these keys?

[kidd]

@vvucic: nice add-on, and good point: shortcuts are not only for emacs/vim junkies (I tend to forget it).

@tomh38: yw . It's good to see this thread is helpful for others. 

You can assign that keys to F13-F30 keys, and then map FXX key to anything you want (amixer is your  friend).
With xev you can find out what keycode is sent when you press any key. then you can map it to the desired function key with xmodmap.

Alert!! F15 is assigned to Windows (Super) Key  in 5.8 SOHO IIRC, so better don't touch F15.
 

[kidd]

Let's make it bounce 

Thanks to hanu we have now a vim 7.1 package in our repos.
Now, what's so cool about vim?

Well, as an example of its ease of configuration to fit your needs I'm  pasting a couple of interesting things from my 550 line vimrc:

Code:

"cool meta-customization
nmap ,vimrc :new ~/.vimrc<cr>

"given a line with numbers separed by spaces, outputs the sum of them.  ':%j!' is a good friend of this command
nmap ,sum :.!gawk "{s=0; for (i=1; i<=NF; i++) s=s+$i; print s}"<cr>

"escape is too far, and no word in my language (spanish) uses jk. jj is another option
inoremap jk <esc>

If you have to program html there are some cool plugins (html.zip), but as a quick one-line help :

Code:

"type table,,, to get <table></table>
imap ,,, <esc>bdwa<<esc>pa><cr></<esc>pa><esc>kA

HTH,

[Triarius Fidelis]

Let's make it bounce 

You horridible Necromancer of threads!

Thanks to hanu we have now a vim 7.1 package in our repos.
Now, what's so cool about vim?

Well, as an example of its ease of configuration to fit your needs I'm  pasting a couple of interesting things from my 550 line vimrc:

Your .vimrc is pretty awesome. Mine is much shorter (see 'Resource customization envy'), but it has one of the most useful snippets I've seen...of course it isn't mine:

Code:

" This one came from Salman Halim on the vim mailing list back in the day;
" executes all currently selected Vim script lines
function! Vim_execute()
  execute getline('.')
endfunction
autocmd FileType vim noremap <buffer> <LocalLeader>v :call Vim_execute()<CR>

[kidd]

That's a nice snippet. I didn't know when a funtion is called witin a range (visual mode),
the function acts on each line in the range.

For those who use rxvt-unicode (urxvt) , there's a cool perl script that allows you to open urls present in your console with alt-u,alt-n and alt-p
http://www.jukie.net/~bart/blog/20070503013555

If you don't have git program, you can get an earlier version from http://raimonster.googlepages.com/urxvt

As I use irssi (combined with GNUscreen) and browse lots of text files with references to urls, I found that "plugin" very useful.

[kidd]

I've tried soooo many msn applications to see which one fits my needs, and I have to say I still haven't found a 'perfect' one.

The main requirement is (obviously) to have a nice keyboard support, configurable, and If it can run on a console , still better.

I've tried centericq, pebrot,tmsn and a few more, but none of those are too extensible (if you don't want to mess up with code).

I had modified centericq to allow navigating contacts with jk (It makes a great difference, you know .

Now I've found gaim-text (already installed in vl, if you installed gaim).  Apart from being really user friendly (provided you read man, man), you can configure lots of bindings to do most things you can do in IM.

my ~/.gntrc

Code:

[GntTree::binding]
j = move-down
k = move-up

HTH

If you have other suggestions (as per IRC), please comment.

[kidd]

I just found a shellscript to upload an image to imageshack.us . It's great to upload your screenshots, provided you automate it with import.  For me, taking a screenshot in ratpoison is 2 keystrokes. Now with the same keystrokes I have the screenshot done, uploaded , and if everything went well, the URL in my clipboard (see http://people.debian.org/~kims/xclip/ )

well, here it goes.

Code:

#!/bin/bash
 #
 #   imageshack_upload.sh
 # 
 #   Copyright (c) 2007 by enki <enki@crocobox.org>
 # 
 #   This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
 #   it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
 #   the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
 #   (at your option) any later version.
 #
 #   This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 #   but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 #   MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
 #   GNU General Public License for more details.
 # 
 #   You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 #   along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
 #   Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307,
 #   USA.
 #
 #   Changelog :
 #   * 2006/10/22 - Updated to support files with space .
 #       Changes proposed by slubman(http://www.slubman.net)
 #   * 2006/10/22 - First version
 
 myver='0.2'
 CURL=$(which curl)
 
 
 
 TMPFILE=$(mktemp /tmp/imageshack.XXXXXXXXXX) || exit 1
 
 cleanup() {
         rm -rf $TMPFILE
         [ "$1" ] && exit $1
 }
 
 usage() {
  echo "imageshack_upload $myver"
  echo "usage: $0 <root>"
  echo
  echo "This script allow you to send image to htpp://www.imageshack.us"
  echo "in command line"
  echo
  echo "example: imageshack_upload.sh `pwd`/myimage.png"
  echo
 }
 
 if [ $# -lt 1 ]; then
  usage
  rm -rf $TMPFILE
  exit 1
 fi
 
 if [ "$1" = "-h" -o "$1" = "--help" ]; then
  usage
  rm -rf $TMPFILE
  exit 0
 fi
 
 
 img="$1"
 
 if ! [ -f "$img" ]; then
  echo "Error: file don't exist"
  exit 1
 fi
 
 $CURL -H Expect: -F fileupload="@${img}" -F xml=yes http://www.imageshack.us/index.php > $TMPFILE
 
 echo "Url of image on imageshack:"
 echo $(cat $TMPFILE | grep -E "<image_link>(.*)</image_link>" | sed 's|<image_link>\(.*\)</image_link>|\1|')
 
 cleanup

I use a trimmed down version myself, but that's up to each one. 

Hope it's useful for someone

[kidd]

The xpdf version in 5.9 does not accept the option in .Xdefaults to emulate viKeys (http://www.vectorlinux.com/forum2/index.php?topic=3023.msg18894#msg18894)

It's well documented on the man page how to get the same behaviour, but anyway, I'll show how I did it

you have to create ~/.xpdfrc and put the next lines:

Code:

bind h any scrollLeft(16)
bind l any scrollRight(16)
bind k any scrollUp(16)
bind j any scrollDown(16)
bind g any gotoPage(1)
bind G any gotoLastPage

last 2 lines make g behave like vim's gg, and G like vim's G (go to start, and go to end)

Btw, kchmviewer (installed through slapt-get) does 'understand' hjkl too.  Great!

[alec]

while not as hardcore as posters above, I too try to avoid grabbing the dirty little mouse.
Kind of accustomed to xfce4 (overall not very keyboard friendly), but then discovered that I can't do anything without mouse in VASMCC. Can that be fixed? I mean elementary Tab moving between panelsm arrows move focus within panels