On 8 Jan 2006 at 20:40, Owain Sutton wrote: > David W. Fenton wrote: > > On 7 Jan 2006 at 22:30, Aaron Sherber wrote: > > > >>At 10:19 PM 1/7/2006, David W. Fenton wrote: > >> >On 7 Jan 2006 at 19:40, Aaron Sherber wrote: > >> >> Hmm, not sure what you mean here. The WinFin toolbar *is* > >> >> customizable -- we just don't have an equivalent to the > >> >> Cmd-Click master access you have on Mac. And the keystroke > >> >> shortcut (I > >> assume >> you mean the Alt-F-S combos, or whatever) are of course > >> built into the >> OS, not a Finale thing. I'm a little surprised > >> that Mac doesn't have >> something similar. > >They are not built > >> into Windows. They are built into Microsoft >development tools. And > >> they don't happen automatically -- you have to >assign the > >> keystrokes > >> > >>Sorry, wasn't thinking straight. Of course you're right -- they are > >>provided by the application, not the OS. I'm just so used to seeing > >>them in every single Windows app. > > > > There are two reasons for that: > > > > 1. it's part of Microsoft's recommended UI standard. > > > > 2. most developers of Windows software use Microsoft development > > tools to write their software, and the MS development tools are > > designed to promote conformity with MS's UI standards. > > One of the purposes of MS's standards is to ensure that all software > is fully-compatible with non-standard input & output systems, > including those for use by disabled people. And I vaguely remember > hearing that one requirement is that all functionality is available > through keyboard commands alone, so that any peripheral that can > create keyboard commands can be used. (For example, this is why the > menu which appears when you click the icon in the top-left of a > window, with its commands such as 'move', has been retained all the > way from at least Win 3.0).
I'm not sure if it's strictly an issue of accessibility. Sometimes the system can boot without a mouse, and without keyboard shortcuts, you'd be stuck. I, for one, am perfectly capable of using Windows with no mousing at all. In fact, MS to this day has UI rules that require that you never put in a shortcut menu, for instance, something that is not accessible from some other non-mouse-oriented location. That's also the source of that extra key on the keyboard that no one really knows what it's for (between the right Ctrl and Alt keys, and right of the Windows key there) -- it launches a context menu for the currently selected object. In some circumstances, the keyboard command Alt-ENTER does the same thing, but mostly in Windows Explorer views and not in documents. The context key works in all such circumstances. Finale is non-comformant in this regard, as there are any number of things that simply cannot be done without a mouse. I'm not sure this is necessarily a terrible thing, as to have a tab order for all the notes on a screen would still make it extremely difficult to navigate between objects (ever tried tabbing through the links on a web page, i.e., the way it used to be done in the days of Lynx and text-only web browsing?). I think most graphically-oriented applications have a hard time supporting keyboard-only access completely, because they are so oriented to the visual, which requires the mouse at the very least for the selection operation. But now we're off on a completely unrelated topic, so I'll just stop there. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
