repeat_last_motion (Alt+.) with find_next_char (f) does not respect context

[Alexis-Lapierre]

Summary

For helix 23.05, using repeat_last_motion with find_next_char or till_next_char always extended selection.

However this was deemed 'odd' and was fixed in #7159

The behaviour on master (using 23.05-245-g505213d4) is now using "f" will respect the context.
In:

• normal mode => invoke find_next_char
• extend mode => invoke extend_next_char

This however have the side effect of storing the "extended-ness" the next time we use Alt-.
This mean that if we type "f" in extended mode to look for something, and then exit back into normal mode, the next Alt-. is till going to extend the selection.
The opposite is also true, typing "f" in normal mode then going into extended mode is going to cancel selection at each Alt-.

Reproduction Steps

On helix 23.05-245-g505213d4

I tried this:

1. hx some_file_with_text
2. fCvj<Alt-.>

Here is asciinema of input:

I expected this to happen:

Alt-. to extend the selection I made in visual mode

Instead, this happened:

Alt-. cancelled my selection

Helix log

N/A

Platform

Linux - Ubuntu 23.04

Terminal Emulator

kitty

Helix Version

23.05-245-g505213d4

[Alexis-Lapierre]

One easy solution would be to instead having

find_next_char and extend_next_char in helix-term/src/command.rs
be hard-coded extend / not extend

have the underlying function, find_next_char, ask the Context it already have at each call to see if it should extend or not the selection depending on something like Context.editor.mode == Mode::Select

[pascalkuthe]

This is on purpose. The concept of visual mode as a special mode will be removed entirely in the future. Visual mode will just be a keymap mode, with each command having a an extend and non-extend variant

[Alexis-Lapierre]

OK thanks for the response.

For people that really like the old behaviour, it is pretty easy to keep it with 5 lines to add in config.toml:

[keys.normal]
f = "extend_next_char"
F = "extend_prev_char"
t = "extend_till_char"
T = "extend_till_prev_char"