[MonoDevelop] Feature Request: Adding two Emacs-like features to the text editor

[Zane Whitney]

Hello,

I would like to request some features for the text editor that would add make it easier for emacs users to set up key bindings similar to emacs.

Two functions that help me navigate through text quickly in emacs are forward-sentence and backward sentence, these functions allow the user to navigate forward or backward a block of text. What defines a block of text depends on what mode you're in, but this usually means a multiple different lines with no spaces in between them. For instance, in Python mode, with a block like the following, the emacs cursor would jump forward to all the different locations of the break symbols:


|def servicerequest(path, socket):
    """Services an HTTP request based on the provided file path"""|

    if (os.path.exists(path)):
        print str(id) + " DELIVERED"
        fd = open(path, "r")
        file = fd.read()|

        okmsg = "HTTP/1.0 200 OK\r\n"
        now = datetime.datetime.now()|

        datestr = now.strftime("%a %d %B %Y %H:%M:%S %z") + "\r\n"|

and moving backward would be:
    
|def servicerequest(path, socket):
    """Services an HTTP request based on the provided file path"""
|
    if (os.path.exists(path)):
        print str(id) + " DELIVERED"
        fd = open(path, "r")
        file = fd.read()
|
        okmsg = "HTTP/1.0 200 OK\r\n"
        now = datetime.datetime.now()
|
        datestr = now.strftime("%a %d %B %Y %H:%M:%S %z") + "\r\n"|

If "Move forward one sentence" and "Move backward one sentence" features could be added to the text editor. I think that would be really cool for emacs users.

The other feature request is based on changing the behavior of a feature that's already there. There are two functions in the text editor that I really like called "Find next (Emacs behavior)" and "Find previous (Emacs behavior)". This very closely resembles the behavior of emacs. In emacs however, when an expression is found that you were searching for, you can press enter to close the search in the mini buffer and go back to editing. Could you change the behavior of the search window when searching so that the user can press enter to cancel it? I hope I'm not being to nitpicky with this request, but I figure it might not be too hard to implement.

Thanks a ton to everyone who works on MonoDevelop. I really enjoy how you can be really specific with the key bindings in MonoDevelop.

-Zane