Control-/ is broken in vim-gtk and vim-gnome

[Scott Bronson]

Binary package hint: vim

vim-gtk and vim-gnome mistakenly convert Control-/ to plain "/", making it impossible to map Control-/ to anything.

console vim, vim-lesstif, and most other platforms treat Control-/ as the same as Control-_ (due to terminal legacy). The all other platforms just pass through Control-/ unmolested.

Here's how to test, expected behavior first, actual behavior second:

- fire up console vim
- hit "i" to enter insert mode
- hit Control-V Control-/. Notice how "^_" is printed. Excellent!

- fire up gvim
- hit "i" to enter insert mode
- hit Control-V Control-/. Notice how "/" is printed. Not good.

This is on stock Karmic, Vim 7.2 patches 1-245.

[Will Gray (graywh)]

Well, ctrl-/ isn't a real character. The fact that your terminal sends a ctrl-_ when pressing ctrl-/ is not vim's problem. However, gvim does interpret ctrl-7 as a ctrl-_, so use that instead.

[Scott Bronson (bronson)]

Maybe I wasn't clear. The bug is that gtk and gnome vim won't detect
control-/. When you type ctrl-/ they produce plain /.

All other vims that I've tried support ctrl-/ just fine, even the terminal!
That seems like a bug doesn't it?

On Apr 30, 2010 2:21 PM, "Will Gray" <email address hidden> wrote:

Well, ctrl-/ isn't a real character. The fact that your terminal sends
a ctrl-_ when pressing ctrl-/ is not vim's problem. However, gvim does
interpret ctrl-7 as a ctrl-_, so use that instead.

--
Control-/ is broken in vim-gtk and vim-gnome
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/534124
You receive...

[Will Gray (graywh)]

What do you mean by "won't detect"? And what do you mean by other vims supporting it?

[Scott Bronson (bronson)]

I mean:

In the terminal: Control-/ produces Control-_. Vim can detect that it's
different from just pressing the / key and I can bind an action to it.

In vim-gtk, Control-/ just produces /. Vim can't detect control-/, so I
can't bind to it.

Strange, no?

[Will Gray (graywh)]

Vim detects that character / (0x2f) is different from character ctrl-_ (0x1f). Your terminal is the one that produces the ctrl-_ when holding control and pressing /. Regardless, you cannot map ctrl-/ in either case--you map ctrl-_. GVim and most terminals (e.g. xterm, gnome-terminal, konsole) can make a ctrl-_ by holding ctrl and pressing 7 or _. If that's not good enough, get on the vim-dev mailing list and complain about it.