vim-like :commands and :!exec

[linuxcaffe]

this is a crazy proposal for discussion.
iadd's keybindings work just great, but there comes a point where more exotic or unusual things maybe be shouldn't be jammed in there. This suggestion is for a key-binding on a leading ":", like when using vim, to preface vim-commands, or when using a leading ":!" to execute arbitrary shell commands.

:command
might have some iadd core navigation/ commands, and might also be configured to run any other hledger command, like reg or bal or..

:!exec
might be used to launch aliases, scripts or macros or just to issue a shell command (see #20 and #21)

in either case, on clean exit, iadd would resume entry of the transaction, and if the command exits with error, the error-message (if any) should be displayed and the iadd "Cancel Transaction? Y/n" should be triggered.

for your consideration.

[hpdeifel]

While I like vim-like ex-commands in many curses applications, I think it would probably be overkill for hledger-iadd. We currently have 13 different key bindings of which two are aliases for other keys (C-d and F1).

We also could not use the colon as prefix, because it's something the user might want to enter in the text area (e.g for account names).

:command
might have some iadd core navigation/ commands, and might also be configured to run any other hledger command, like reg or bal or..

Like I said above, I'm not sure this is necessary right now. Maybe if iadd gains a lot new features, but currently there are only a handful of core functions (navigation, accept, comment, undo, quit) with a few variations. Ex-commands have the advantage over key bindings of being mnemonic but as long as the key bindings fit on a small in-app help screen, I don't think that's very important. This advantage would also be mitigated by implementing @simonmichael's proposal of a permanent help bar at the top or bottom.

I can't think of a good reason to have hledger commands like bal or reg available from within iadd as opposed of just running them in another terminal. Do you have any use-case in mind?

:!exec
might be used to launch aliases, scripts or macros or just to issue a shell command (see #20 and #21)

This would be very useful! As outlined above, we'd need to bind it to something other than :!. A prompt for an arbitrary shell command to pipe the current transaction to would indeed solve #20 and #21; add a nice persistent command history and we don't even need a config option for that any more.

[linuxcaffe]

I agree!

• :commands are not necessary, and would mostly duplicate existing functions
• :!exec keybinding would be super-versatile, offloading a ton of personal usecases
• non-conflicting key(s) must be picked, instead of the ones used for the above example