Feature Request: Support Emacs-style key bindings

[Guest]

Although I already posted this feature request in the official place, I am cross-posting it here to get it the attention that (I think) it deserves. If you feel that this is a worthwhile feature, please vote by clicking the link above. BTW, Adobe FrameMaker, which is no longer supported on macOS, supports Emacs-style key bindings, and when I was forced to transition from FrameMaker to InDesign about a dozen years ago, this is one of the features that I missed in InDesign.

Please, please, please support Emacs-style key bindings...

...at least for macOS. Virtually all macOS apps, especially those developed by Apple, support Emacs-style key binding that are incredibly useful for text navigation and text selection purposes. As an almost daily user of InDesign—and a 26-year employee of Adobe—I would very much like to see this supported. Most of the commands involve the use of the "control" key, which appears to be unused for InDesign keyboard shortcuts, so this is likely to be a no-brainer.

[Barb Binder]

Hi Ken: I'm a long-time user of FrameMaker and InDesign but I have no idea what "Emacs-style key bindings" are. Are you referring the sequential Esc key shortcuts in Frame? (I can't support what I don't understand, and a google search was not helpful.)

~Barb

[Guest]

Barb: I am referring to text navigation, such as Control+A to go to the beginning of a line, and Control-e to go to the end, along with Control-n and Control-p to navigate to the next and previous line, respectively. If you edit some text in the Text Edit app, you'll see what I mean. FrameMaker supports these.

[Barb Binder]

Yes, I just never heard that specific term. Thanks for the clarification, and you have my vote.

[Jongware]

Are those functions not redefinable in the usual way then?

[Guest]

It doesn't matter whether these are user-definable, in my opinion. The request is to make them default key bindings.

These key bindings are defined by the OS, and there is no reason why InDesign should not be using them, and given that FrameMaker supports them, and that a non-zero number of FrameMaker users were forced to move to InDesign, the justification is definitely there.

[rob day]

Or they could be defined via scripting

Control-A assigned to:

tell application "Adobe InDesign CC 2017"

    try

        set selection to insertion point 1 of item 1 of object reference of every line of selection

    end try

end tell

Control-E assigned to:

tell application "Adobe InDesign CC 2017"

    try

        set t to object reference of every line of selection

        set lc to count of t

        set c to count of characters of item lc of t

        set selection to insertion point c of item lc of t

    end try

end tell

[robertr10281526]

Dear Dr. Lunde -- I was about to post a question on the Framemaker forum and saw your InDesign post.  I started using Framemaker a long time ago (1989!), took a break, and recently purchased Frame 2019.  As far as I can tell, Frame 2019 doesn't support the emacs bindings, at least as a default.  Has there been a change since 2017 (your Indesign post suggests the Emacs bindings were there at the time)?   Thanks for any help on this, its been driving me crazy - Rob