On Tue, 2006-08-22 at 15:44 +0100, Alan Horkan wrote: > On Tue, 22 Aug 2006, Shaun McCance wrote: > > On Mon, 2006-08-21 at 17:43 +0100, Alan Horkan wrote: > > > On Mon, 21 Aug 2006, Calum Benson wrote: > > > > > > > There's also a recent patch that will let you define multiple > > > > keybindings for the same function, so that distros who are so inclined > > > > can set both Alt+F1 and Ctrl-Esc to pop up the menu and keep everyone > > > > happy. > > > > > > > > http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=164831 > > > > > > Excellent, good to know we have the underlying infrastructure to do > > > this cleanly but why leave it to the distributions? > > > (I need to figure out where exactly to patch but ...) > > > > > > The windows keybindings are fairly well known and I do not think > > > there would be much/any harm having the enabled by default, or at least > > > provide some way to enable this set of keybindings rather than expect > > > every user to configure each of them individually. > > > > The harm is that there are a finite number of key combinations > > With Inkscape I have seen the downside of trying to have keyboard > combinations for absolutely everything > > It makes it that much harder to choose a keybinding for a new frequently > used feature and to an extent it discourages developers from reorganising > step by step features into tools which would handle a whole task. > (compare inset/outset in Inkscape to the inset/ouset dialog in freehand)
So I'm going to use Mathematica as an example. Mathematica needs to have quite a number of keyboard shortcuts to enable you to input mathematical expressions using only the keyboard. Unlike Inkscape, Mathematica is a very keyboard-oriented application. Here's a sample of Mathematica's shortcuts, many of which use keys that aren't commonly used by other applications: Ctrl+6 superscript Ctrl+- subscript Ctrl+7 overscript Ctrl+= underscript Ctrl+/ fraction Ctrl+2 radical Ctrl+. extend selection Ctrl+Space end subexpression There are a lot more, but these ones are critical for anybody who wants to write nicely typeset mathematics. I doubt you could find a single Mathematica user who would argue against having these shortcuts. Mathematica is also a nice example because the *Nix version runs on a number of X desktops, including Gnome, KDE, and CDE. And it's run on machines with different keyboard layouts, like those Sun keyboards that have an honest-to-goodness Meta key (but sure as hell don't have a Windows key). It's very hard for ISDs to produce software with good keyboard shortcuts for the myriad of keyboards Gnome might be running with. As a notable example, Mathematica has this odd behavior when you select cells with NumLock turned on. It's a feature, technically, but on GNU/Linux PCs it's triggered with an odd key because Mathematica is just checking X modifier masks, and that modifier mask is actually useful on other systems. > > > Here's a list of the keybindings (and I refer to the Windows key the more > > > generic "Super" key) > > > That's eight keyboard shortcuts being taken away > > from applications. > > [...] > > > Super hasn't had much formalized use. > > I would not expect applications to be using the Super key. The Mac is very fortunate to have three modifier keys that are standardized and available to all application developers. They've made very good use of that. > > It's hard when Gnome gets run on systems that may have any combination > > of Control, Alt, Super, Hyper, and Meta. (And I don't even know what > > the Command key on Mac keyboards looks like to GTK+.) > > There used to be systems which used Alt instead Ctrl but their keybindings > were otherwise pretty much the same. (I'm talking about both BeOS and an > old version of Netscape I was running on some odd version of Sun OS.) > This was at least part of the reason why Gnome made very little use of the > Alt key. > > Gtk/X11 applications on OS X use the control key as they would normally. > I would expect Gtk Mac OS X to use the Apple/Command key everywhere > instead of Ctrl, as it has always been standard practice for applications > ported to Mac OS. > > > I'd been experimenting with using Super to do emacs-like cursor movement > > commands in GTK+ text areas (Super+E for End, etc.) > > Gnome has an emacs mode of text boxes and things like that doesn't it, so > I expect the keybindings you are proposing would not appear in the > standard defaults. (Given the amount of trouble most users have with > Insert/Overwrite modes are a very bad default for beginners.) Enabling the emacs mode is just a bad idea. It conflicts too much with common application shortcuts. The idea behind using emacs-like keybindings with Super is that there would be no such conflicts, and it wouldn't be too hard to train your pinky to strike half an inch to the right instead. I'll also point out that, since Apple uses Command for all application shortcuts, Ctrl is pretty much free. So what did they do with it? They added emacs keybindings into all standard text areas, in the standard defaults. Does everybody know them? Nope, not a chance. Are there some people who have learned them and love them? Absolutely. The first thing you learn in typing class is to keep your hands on home row. But then you're forced to take your hands away from home row just to go to the previous line. Meanwhile, we provide a convenient shortcut for printing your document. Tell me which action you do more often. -- Shaun _______________________________________________ Usability mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
