Re: [Usability] Tab consistency

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Fri, 2007-03-30 at 13:14 -0500, Matthew Nuzum wrote:
> On 3/30/07, Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org> wrote:
>         They need to do their homework.  In GTK+, Ctrl+Tab moves focus
>         between groups of widgets.  It's sort of a souped up version
>         of
>         Tab, and it has the distinct advantage of actually working in
>         a
>         multiline text editor, where Tab just inserts a tab
>         character. 
>         
>         Given that we've used Ctrl+Tab for this purpose for a long
>         time,
>         and given that we've used Ctrl+PageUp/PageDown for switching
>         tabs
>         for an equally long time, I don't think it's likely we'll
>         change.
> 
> Ctrl+Tab has been used for ages as the way to switch between windows
> in MDI interfaces on MS Windows. Since tabs are very analogous to MDI
> windows, it makes sense to reuse that shortcut here. The nice thing
> about Ctrl+Tab is that you can do it with both hands on the home-row
> of the keyboard. 

But we're not Windows.  Sometimes it makes sense to reuse shortcuts
from other platforms.  Sometimes it conflicts with what we're doing,
and changing to emulate another platform is too much hassle.

> How do you communicate that Ctrl+Tab switches between groups of
> widgets? I've been using GTK for years and never known about that.
> (just tried it in xchat and see that it works, but its not clear to me
> how it differs from just tab/shift+tab) 

How do you communicate any toolkit-level keyboard shortcut?  How
would you communicate that Ctrl+Tab switches tabs if we did change
the shortcuts?  Right now, we put it in the documentation and hope
people can find it.  Not optimal for sure.  But anything better
would apply regardless of what Ctrl+Tab does.  Red herring.

As for how Ctrl+Tab differs from Tab, I'll requote my email:

  "it has the distinct advantage of actually working in a multiline
   text editor, where Tab just inserts a tab character"

--
Shaun