307779 - All text area keybindings were switched to Microsoft style, and all the methods of changing them are broken.

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(SeaMonkey :: Preferences, defect)

Description

[Gerry Lawrence]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050727
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050727

Sometime after Mozilla 1.5, and all Firefox and Thunderbird, keybindings
were quietly switched to be microsoft style instead of Emacs style.

All the methods that claim to change this behavior, chrome, .gtkrc-2.0,
toolkit.jar, comm.jar do not work.  All the references to the XBL and XUL
options do not change the way they're documented.  And they're documented in a
lot of different ways, I've tried them all.


If a user wants PC style editing with a UNIX operating system, I don't have a
problem with that -- so be it.  But to force users who have enjoyed emacs
keybindings under Unix since BEFORE mozilla was even a project (goes back to
Netscape 1.0) is heavy handed and ignores the culture of Mozilla users.

 How about a nice setting in the preferences -- "PC style" "Emacs style" or
"Other"?  

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install any UNIX mozilla.
2.  Notice the behavior of CTRL/A as an example.
3. Read all the various methods that claim to change back to emacs bindings.
Spend hours trying them out.  Quit in frustration.  Then file a bug as I am doing.


Actual Results:  
Key bindings remained PC like -- never changed.
A filed a bug as I realized that things were extremely broken.


Expected Results:  
The software should revert to emacs bindings like all the docs say.
Actually the software should have never switched to PC bindings for UNIX. I mean
do you have any people actually asking for PC like bindings on UNIX?


There are lots of bug references going back to 2002 with people reporting
problems with the procedure of changing the keybindings.  Please don't dupe this
bug those other efforts seem to be lost.  Please, please please take this
seriously, my hands are getting tunnel carpel from having to use PC keys.

Comment 1

[Gerry Lawrence]

OK, I've managed to get Mozilla (and Firefox,thunderbird as well) to pay
attention to the Gnome settings "theme key" settings set to Emacs.

So maybe this is just a problem in KDE.

I still think a "make emacs keybindings" regardless of what the
wm/desktop thinks it should be doing would be a good thing.

Comment 2

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

The GNOME thing is the way to go....  That's the design for the GTK2 version of thinge.