To make things clearer, we should restrict this report to readline keybindings only and move all discussions on GUI keybindings into bug #41217.

There are two independent sets of keybindings going on.

One affects the terminal widget when the keyboard focus is there. This is what is driven by readline and configured with the inputrc configuration file. The same set of actions work in Octave command-line mode as in the GUI.

The other set is the set of bindings handled by the Qt GUI itself. These are bindings for switching tabs, opening files in the editor, controlling the debugger, etc.

So as we're keeping track of these here, make sure to note the context, and whether the binding has to do with the terminal (command window), such as next/previous history, or the rest of the GUI, such as opening a file.

This bug report started out as only changing the readline bindings for the command window.

hum, there seems to be two overlapping keybinding environs, depending on which dock you're typing in: the command window or the editor.  it seems the latter is a superset of the former, e.g., F9 ("Evaluate current selection") only makes sense in the editor, but most (all?) keybindings valid in the terminal should remain the same in the editor?

exactly, but --traditional should do enable the magic.
the migrating user shouldn't have to learn about this nuisance.

> pardon, but for a matlab user, inputrc is a nightmare.

This sounds like an excessively negative statement. Can you please moderate your tone? Feel free to call me out if you think I am not doing the same.

Also, there's an obvious solution to avoid giving Matlab's users night terrors and making them sweat in a panic due to a configuration file: we write it ourselves and make it easy for them to enable it.

I don't think you mean left-arrow and right-arrow to go backwards and forwards a word at a time, do you?

I'll reopen this as a feature request and retitle appropriately to what it sounds to me like you want to do. If you want to try to come up with a patch that will set some key bindings based on the --traditional option, feel free. But keep in mind that there is already a simple way to set up keybindings, and dropping an inputrc file somewhere isn't that much more difficult than editing a shortcut launcher command line.

Double-ESC would be the next best thing then:

"\e\e": kill-whole-line

"\e[2~": overwrite-mode  # ins key

set bell-style none

Can I leave these as a feature request related to --traditional?
Later I may work on a patch.

I'd like to reopen this as a feature request, that --traditional honors the following:

o up-arrow key should recall command history
o esc should clear current command line
o ins key should allow overwriting text

I'll work on a patch after clarification in the maintainers list.

I'm using Linux and Octave 3.7.7+.
But it's indeed a problem of configuration of my platform and I'll look into the preferences in ~/.inputrc.
Sorry about the confusion.

@Philip: You said Ctrl-C does interrupt processes on Windows? Can you look at bug #37672 and comment there on whether that bug affects Windows or not?

@Guillaume: The arrow keys are configurable with readline, for example I prefer the behavior you describe so I have my up and down arrows mapped to the readline functions previous-history and next-history. Octave typically installs its own readline configuration file that maps them to history-search-backward and history-search-forward. Maybe that configuration is getting lost or overridden by some other preferences like your ~/.inputrc file. What OS by the way?

Nevermind, apparently I tried an ancient build (v. 3.6.2), available from <http://mat.caminos.upm.es/octave/>.  Already pretty impressed with the GUI though.  Let me know if you're aware of a more recent windows binary with the GUI enabled, then I can test it.

I had someone report to me that the HOME and END keys were no longer working as expected in the command window with a recent windows build.  Can someone confirm?  I think HOME is supposed to move the cursor to the beginning of the line and END should move it to the end of the line.

How did you compile the GUI for Windows 7? Are you using MXE?

If you're using the ancient GUI version that Goffioul made a long time ago, that does not reflect the current development status.

What system are you running the GUI on? The arrow keys all work as they should for me, as does Ctrl-C. Escape and Insert are mapped to other functions in readline by default.