Deterministic mouseless editor

[abitrolly]

As a Windows refugee, I miss Far Manager much. It is not about orthodox visual style, but about interface modality - the pathway that you construct in your brain - what are you doing to do to solve the problem before hitting the keyboard. Far Manager allowed to stack the actions. Every key press was some meaningful operation. If you knew which dialogs will appear, and what keys you need to press there, you could press those keys beforehand and switch out of Far window until it completes the job. This is far modality - predicting state machine in your head and queuing commands for it to switch the states without your intervention.

Compare this to the usual mouseful editors. Your reach is limited to the next window, next dialog. You're constantly interrupted and can not enter next command until dialog pops up. You mind is basically waiting for a new button, processing the visual image instead of thinking of what you will do next.

Distraction free mouseless interfaces require frameworks that make interaction with mouse less fun. Otherwise people will still try to reach for their own habits (much like I crave for keyboard). Text mode interfaces #62 are much better that GUI or Web frameworks. They impose regular visual grid pattern, limited set of colors, contrast. They are not entertaining, but they can be fast and responsive, give much more power thanks to 101 buttons instead of 2 under your fingertips.

On Linux vim is probably the best example of mouseless editor. The only problem is that it works in a terminal, and its shortcuts predate F1-F12 era. Terminal is a problem, because it is:

1. slow by design (parses Esc sequences, uses delay to distinguish Esc key press from Esc sequences of other keys)
2. provides chars instead of keycodes (switching input language breaks shortcuts)
3. queuing keypresses is either not allowed or is often broken (subprocesses clear the input queue)

[Ark-kun]

You can still use Far Manager on Windows.

I prefer Total Commander though. More text lines, tabs, better integration. You can use it with keyboard only.

[abitrolly]

I've switched to completely open source stack long ago, so I am not using Windows or other proprietary software like TC. I don't think TC interface is deterministic, because it looks like mouse and focus based multi modal.

[Ark-kun]

I don't think TC interface is deterministic, because it looks like mouse and focus based multi modal.

Every action has a shortcut, and most buttons have the shortcut written on them just like Norton Commander, Volkov Commander or FAR. The bulk of the shortcuts are exactly the same.

On Linux I use Double Commander.

[abitrolly]

Mere presence of shortcuts is not enough to be deterministic. You need also.

1. Shortcut buffer
2. Only one dialog at a time