This is a mail that tries to reply to all three of your posts on this topic. It is worded pretty generally.
Other shells usually have three methods for accessing the history: 1) Up/down arrows to move in the history 2) Incremental search 3) !-commands, like !1, etc. (1) is obviously lame and limited, (2) doesn't let you easily move up down in the list of matches or see the number of matches while searching, and (3) requires you to memorize your history to use properly. Also, (3) is not discoverable and requires you to memorize an obscure syntax. Hence, all 3 are kind of lame. Fish currently has only one history access method, namely search using up/down arrows. It is (1) on steroids, but provides mostly the same functionality as (2), but with several differences: * You can intuitively move back/forward in the list. * You can start the search halfway into entering a command, when you realize that you've written this command before. I do this all the time. * Search is not incremental. You need to press the escape button to get back your original search string, and if you start searching again, you will begin at the end of the history. Overall, though I like the current fish history search mechanism, it is not without it's limits. Some nice features I'd like: * Incremental search * An onscreen list of all search matches, or as many as will fit * An onscreen count of the number of matches * Semi-programatic access, something like e.g. !3 Things to consider when designing this interface: As Philip has pointed out before, modality is unintuitive, especially if it is subtle. If there is a need for a special search-mode, it should be visually very obvious that it's enables, and preferably, there should be on-screen instructions on how to use it. I am not really interested in 'easy, temprorary fixes', since these tend to become permanent. I think the current functionality is good enough that we can take the time to get history access right if we are to change it. I don't want 3 differnent history access systems. I'd like having only 1 the best, but absolutely not more than 2. The current up/down arrow system is, in my experience, very discoverable. If the fish history mechanism is changed, this property must be retained. I have considered adding a status-line below the prompt that, when the user uses !-style history-commands, displays what they are expanded to. That would remove my biggest objection to !-style history commands, espacially if this was combined with good completion support. -- Axel ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security? Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job easier Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642 _______________________________________________ Fish-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fish-users
