Pleave remove Insert (INS) / Overwrite (OVR) modes

Bug #62140 reported by Jason Gerard DeRose
4
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
gedit (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

I must have tripped up onto my interface soapbox tonight... ;)

So here is another gedit interface opinion: the Insert/ Overwrite modes should be removed and gedit should always behave as if it is in what was formerly known as the Insert mode. Here is my rational:

1) The INS/OVR mode is just that... a mode, always questionable if not bad in interface design, something which should never be included without a very good reason.

2) The INS/OVR mode is apparently totally worthless, certainly not passing the exception above. I've never found it even moderately useful to use OVR, nor have I ever observed anyone else doing so. If someone has a compelling case otherwise, I'm all ears.

3) On most keyboards, the INS key is near the HOME, END, PAGE UP, and PAGE DOWN keys, which are all used fairly frequently. I code with gedit, and it seems that at least a few times an hour I hit INS by mistake, type over a good number of characters that I did not intent to, realize that I'm now in *that* mode, and then waste time yell obscenities and correcting my mistake.

4) We can take a good lead from Apple who uses this key as something potentially useful: the HELP key. I think the INS/OVR modes are crufty leftovers anyway and not something people actually expect to be there, just something that annoys and confuses them if they switch to OVR by mistake. Firefox, which I'm writing this with, doesn't do any such nonsense... and I doubt anyone has ever complained about this lack of "functionality".

Thanks! Happy hacking!

Revision history for this message
Constantine Evans (cevans) wrote :

Thank you for your comments. I believe that you do make good points, but bug reports are not the proper venue for discussing such changes. Your ideas would be better received as a specification (https://features.launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+specs, and https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FeatureSpecifications), especially since, if such changes were to be made, it would be best if they were made consistently throughout packages in Ubuntu's main.

Changed in gedit:
status: Unconfirmed → Rejected
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