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Comment by codedokode | Hacker News Reader

Why are they using weird key combinations instead of traditional Ctrl + S, Ctrl + A, Ctrl + C used in desktop applications? Why every console program wants to be a special snowflake and not use standard key combinations, please explain. I do not care that 40 years ago someone used Ctrl + C to send SIGINT, it is 2026 now.

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Atto's default key bindings match Emacs, which is about as standard as you get for non-modal editing keys in older Unix traditions.

I would assert Wordstar style are equally as old.

But are mostly forgotten while emacs keybindings are still popular and found in all kinds of places you wouldn't expect, like MacOS textboxes.

Not when using joe, for example.

jmacs.

jmacs is a rather recent mode.

https://joe-editor.sourceforge.io/history.html

Hence the qualification in Unix traditions.

WordStar was for CP/M and MS-DOS, which was very much doing its own thing. Atto is for Unix.

> match Emacs

For many, it is indeed about what they call "muscle memory". Almost impossible to change after so many years. And therefore I hope everyone would provide keybinding alternatives generally (shouldn't be that hard).

and isn't at all beginner friendly

Emacs is probably older than me why should we care about what they used in 80s?

I see you’re using Latin characters...

It's 2026, why would anyone want to use an Intel architecture?

Or ARM? It's from the 1980s! So old!

Calculus is older than you. Does that mean you won't use calculus?

Depends, do you care about UNIX and C, as products from 1970's?

UNIX doesn't exist anymore, and C has lot of negative points (easy to create buffer overflows, integer overflows, use-after-free, and other vulnerabilities).

Then use Redox OS, or convince Torvalds to merge Asterinas' memory handling code into Linux.

It surely does, Linux distros, BSDs, Aix, z/UNIX are all alive and well.

Despite all those flaws, people keep writing new software in C every day, go figure.

> I do not care that 40 years ago someone used Ctrl + C to send SIGINT, it is 2026 now.

Not "40 years ago". Non-stop all day every day for 55 years.

The fact that you personally don't use it today is as irrelevant as if you were ranting about "why doesn't Linux have a Start menu!? It's 2026!!!"

You might enjoy the new Microsoft Edit [1].

[1] https://github.com/microsoft/edit

I think you're underestimating just how "standard" many of the shortcuts are when mapped against a standard shell.

"Standard shell" also should allow Ctrl + C for copying, it makes no sense to use a different combination for console.

55 years of a standard, but then you come and say that the standard should be something else.

That's… not what "standard" means.

Okay, but now you have to modify the shell and configure a different shortcut for SIGINT without stepping on something else.

Is this problem a Nobel prize level problem?

These are about as standard as you can get when it comes to Unix keybindings

These key combinations have been used for 50 years, so I'm not sure why you call them non-standard. They're just a different standard from what you're used to.

How is Ctrl+S "more traditional" than C-x C-s? C-x C-s is like 50 years old by now. Surely that qualifies as "traditional".

That sounds like Emacs. Wouldn't know though, given that I dislike vim too.

I would prefer ms-edit or nano if I have to edit text files from the terminal.

msedit ftw

Honestly after VSCode ate a good chunk of vim and emacs users I am not sure why something with similar UX but in terminal is not the standard yet in every *nix. Talk about sunken cost fallacy.

Bazzite recently started to ship msedit by default, which makes sense since a large portion of its userbase are first time Linux users.

It did make for quite a surprise for existing users when the msedit logo popped up in their KDE Plasma launchers though.

Because this isn't beginner friendly it's a new micro Emacs and those are standard libreadline/emacs bindings.

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