Textarea Resize And Curly Quotes For Conkeror

People say Google Chrome is a step behind Firefox because Firefox has addons. Well, excuse me, but Firefox was already a step behind Conkeror and Vimperator! Making Google Chrome a whopping TWO steps behind. (But I’m sure we’re all another full step behind some completely obscure browser which only runs on Plan 9 and is being ported to the Erlang VM.)

Here are a few Conkeror hacks that can be easily dropped into your ~/.conkerorrc. (If you need a introduction to Conkeror, see Conkeror Comes Unstuck.)

 function resize_textarea_up(field) {
   var h = field.offsetHeight;
   if (h > 120)
     field.style.height = (h - 60) + "px";
 }
 function resize_textarea_down(field) {
   field.style.height = (parseInt(field.offsetHeight) + 60) + "px";
 }
 interactive(
   "resize-textarea-up",
   "Resize a textarea to be smaller.",
   function (I) call_on_focused_field(I, resize_textarea_up)
 );
 interactive(
   "resize-textarea-down",
   "Resize a textarea to be taller.",
   function (I) call_on_focused_field(I, resize_textarea_down)
 );
 define_key(content_buffer_textarea_keymap, "C-up", "resize-textarea-up", $category = "Movement");
 define_key(content_buffer_textarea_keymap, "C-down", "resize-textarea-down", $category = "Movement");

This one enables Ctrl-Up and Ctrl-Down inside a textarea. So you can stretch the box without reaching for the mouse. How about that!

 var quotes = [["squote", "C-quote", "2018"],
 ["apostrophe", "M-quote", "2019"],
 ["lquote", "C-S-quote", "201c"],
 ["rquote", "M-S-quote", "201d"],
 ["emdash", "M--", "2014"],
 ["ellipsis", "M-.", "2026"]];
for (var i in quotes) {
  var q = quotes[i];
  eval("function curly_" + q[0] + "(field) { modify_region(field, function(str) \"\\u" + q[2] + "\" ); }");
  interactive(
    "curly-" + q[0],
    "Inserts a curly " + q[0] + " at the cursor in a textarea.",
    eval("function (I) call_on_focused_field(I, curly_" + q[0] + ")")
  );
  define_key(content_buffer_text_keymap, q[1], "curly-" + q[0], $category = "Editing");
}

I find myself using more UTF-8 characters that aren’t on the keyboard. Like these are four keybindings for curly quotes.

If you hit the Ctrl key and the single- or double-quote key, you’ll get a left-side curl. An Alt gives a right-side curl. There are a few dashes in there, too. This stuff could be done in the keymaps, but I wanted to see how it could be scripted. OS X already has keymaps for these I think.

One other thing. If you are in a textarea and you hit Ctrl-I, it’ll open the textarea in an external editor. For some reason, vim wasn’t doing it for me. Well, I had the setting wrong.

 define_variable("editor_shell_command", "gvim -f");

Lastly, if you’re using a site that has its own keybindings (such as Try Ruby,) you can use Ctrl-Alt-Q to let all keystrokes pass through. Hit Esc to give focus back to the browser.