Wanted: Keyboard-controllable software with GUI

Question

Hi!
I am both providing a list of GUI-based keyboard-controllable programs and asking for the names of other such programs. “keyboard-controllable” means that I am able to control the program’s functionality completely with the keyboard. Mouse support may or not be included, what matters to me that I am not required to use it. What is clealy not “keyboard-controllable” are programs which have some shortcuts . Also I think the Alt+[something] and then pressing the cursor keys and hitting [Enter] to access the program menu items is pretty cumbersome, the same is true for “tabbing” through all the possible widgets (in the worst cases one thinks one has to press [Tab] a thausand times to get to the widget one desired ). Long story short the programs should be optimized for keyboard usage, some crappy shortcuts are not sufficent.
And maybe, just maybe, one day I will be able to use a GUI AND to throw my mouse out of the window.
Preferably, these programs should be GUI-based, but I would not instantly shy away from console-only programms if there is no GUI alternative at hand.
Here is a list of keyboard-controllable programs which use a GUI:
PDF reading: zathura
Browsing: Mozilla Firefox + the add-on “Pentadactyl”, uzbl, jumanji
System administration/file management: a console + a shell (I am not going to list all possible combinations)
Raster image viewing: sxiv
Dictionary lookup: Ding (I kinda cheated here, see below)
Tiling window manager: Awesome, xmonad, dwm, other tiling window managers I forgot
Text editing: GVim
e-mail: Mozilla Thunderbird + the add-on “Teledactyl”
keyboard-controllable (obviously!) console programs, a GUI replacement would be nice:
Text editing: Vim, Emacs, sed
Hex editing: DHex
Browsing: Lynx
Text in bold type are programs that I use. Text not in bold type are programs I heard of or used earlier.
Here is a lenghty list of reasons why I picked “this” program and why I did not pick “that” program (note: You can safely skip this section):
I picked Vim because I think it makes me more productive than, say, notepad.exe
I didn’t pick GVim because I think the GUI here gets just gets me in the way. This may be an exception to the rule that prefer GUIs.
I didn’t pick Emacs because I never tried it.
I didn’t pick sed because I am not nerdy enough.
I picked zathura because it has (a) Vim-inspired key-bindings and (b) lets me choose a PDF library. (c) because it is fast.
I picked Pentadactyl because of the Vim-inspired keybindings and it is very advanced. It provides the basic privacy management features. Cookie management is even natively supported and integration with the NoScript Firefox add-on is provided through a Pentadactyl plugin. Another plugin allows proxy selection, which is useful for Tor users, for example. Yes, there are plugins for Pentadactyl. Sadly, the plugin functionalty in the nightlies are currently unstable and the stable build 1.0 works with Firefox 4.0, but not neccessarily for later versions! If the problem pertains, I am probably going to flame the Pentadactyl mailing list.
I did not pick uzbl because it lacks the most basic privacy management functions.
I did not pick jumanji because it is imcomplete and lacks the most basic privacy management features.
I picked DHex because it is the only hex-editor in existance I know which does not suck. It would be nice to see a similar program which is not console-bound.
I picked sxiv because it is blazing fast.
I picked Ding because it is the only program I know which fits my needs. Actually, I cheated here since you can’t configure the program without using the mouse. But since I never feel like to reconfigure the program ever again, this is a non-issue for me.
I picked Awesome because … umm … I forgot! Umm … maybe because it is a tiling window manager?
I stopped using xmonad because … umm … why did I stop using it in the first place?
I stopped using dwm because I think the idea of configuring your application with a C header file, requiring you to recompile the application each time is kinda nuts.
I do not like console-based browsers at all because they lack the capability of showing images and  But if I have access to a console only and badly need a browser, I use Lynx, it is the only one I know. Normally, Lynx does it job—as a console-based webbrowser—well except one thing, which annoys me. This one thing I hate about lynx is that it renders tables in a really awkward and non-intuitive way. Try to open any webpage which contains tables with Lynx and you’ll instantly understand.
I never tried Teledactyl because the developers consider it unstable.
I use rxvt-unicode + GNU Bash (aka “the console”) because anything is possible with them. Lots of GUI configurators have been created, I think they all suck
As for file management/filesystem browsing, I also use the console but am open to find about a graphical application if it turns out that I am actually more productive with it
Currently, I am still looking desperately for programs which can be controlled by the keyboard, are optionally GUI-based and are one of this:
feedreader which supports:
RSS
Atom
e-Mail client
good standalone SVG viewer: (I mean “good” in the sense of “allows zooming” and “implements at least most things of the SVG specification”. Boy, does such a program—wheather keyboard-controllable or not—even exist?)
to-do-list manager
BitTorrent
music player which supports (I don’t care wheather natively, pluginly or librarily) at least:
MP3
Vorbis codec
FLAC
OGA: Ogg container
MKA: Matroska container
XM: Extended Module
IT: Impulse Tracker
MOD
PS: I am a long-time Arch Linux user, I just were quiet.
Last edited by Wuzzy (2013-05-04 19:04:07)

Answer 1

Wuzzy wrote:The List of Applications does not make distinction at all wheather or not an application is keyboard-controllable or not. And I don’t feel like editing the descriptions since the wiki page looks to me as if it wants to keep the descriptions very short. I think it would be better to create a new page in the wiki. Additionaly, Pentadactyl would simply be wrong in the full List of Applications, since it is just a plugin.
Actually vimperator and pentadactyl, though they are just extensions, offer a whole framework for further extension. Many people in this community say they use vimperator or pentadactyl rather than saying they use Firefox. And, for the record, it's a wiki. Feel free to contribute to it, if the moderators or other wiki users feel as though it should be done differently, they will revert or modify it.
In my definition, an application is “graphical” if it uses GTK+, or Qt, or Tcl/Tk or even just X or whatever else in that direction, I hope you get the idea. It doesn’t really matter. It is graphical if it uses windows and that stuff. An application is graphical if it works on a per-pixel basis (you can move a window on a per-pixel basis) instead of a per-character basis (like an application in a terminal). Anything console-based does clearly not fall into the “graphical” category, at least not into my category.
All of the applications you mentioned I heard of somewhere earlier and all of them except one are not graphical.
Fair enough. You're going to find that GUI applications are far less likely to have extensive {vim,emacs}-like keybindings (unfortunately). Personally, if everything had vim-like keybindings, I would be extremely happy.
I also already tried MPlayer. This is the exception. Oh my! I seem to have totally forgotten that program. The reason I went away from MPlayer is that it apparently it does not support playlists or organizing playlists or stuff like that. Correct me if I am wrong. But thanks anyways, I certainly need to look on MPlayer closer again. I know MPlayer has lots of keybindings so it is a shame I forgot that.
Mplayer absolutely supports playlists. However, in terms of keeping a library, that's easiest when you just have a nice and organized file hierarchy.
But applications which are both graphical and keyboard-controllable seem to be a rarity. (Examples for this are in the initial post.) That’s the reason why I started this thread after all. I may even be the first one to publicly start to collect such applications. Oh, and if someone mentions another graphical keyboard-controllable application maybe I create that wiki page. Don’t panic, I am certainly not going to edit my initial post to make this monster even bigger. ;-)
Zathura -- Graphical PDF application that uses vim-like keybindings and supports mouse control (also has plugins available for djvu compatability).
dwb, uzbl, luakit and others -- graphical web browsers with very customizable keybindings (largely vim-like out-of-the-box).
I don't feel like there's a point to creating a new Wiki page just to track applications which are graphical and have nice keybindings. That seems like overkill.
All the best,
-HG
Last edited by HalosGhost (2013-05-05 22:01:29)