[Deskbar] Suggestion to speed up use of deskbar-applet

[hsg phy duke edu (Henry S. Greenside)]

I have just learned about and have been trying
deskbar-applet on my Fedora 7 system. It is a nice piece of
software (a big thanks to the developers) but I wanted to
ask if a future version could make it easier to choose a
line in the deskbar pop window in a way that does not
require one to move fingers away from the main row of the
keyboard. As far as I understand, the only way to select one
of the many options that might pop-up in deskbar-applet is
to use the up and down arrow keys. This slows things down
since reaching these keys requires a large shift of the
right hand position, and a second shift of the hand back to
the center of the keyboard.

One possibility would be to number successive lines such
that a control or alt plus the number would execute that
line, e.g., if I type "lock" into deskbar-applet, I get four
entries:

    Actions
       Search for file names like lock
       Lookup lock in dictionary
       Lock the screen
    History
       Lock the screen

These could instead be presented on screen as:

     Actions
       C-1 Search for file names like lock
       C-2 Lookup lock in dictionary
       C-3 Lock the screen
     History
       C-4 Lock the screen

and typing C-3 (control + 3) would then lock the screen
quickly, or C-2 would look up the word in a dictionary,
without having to take ones fingers off the main set of
keys.

Another possibility would be the Windows-like way to select
menus by the keyboard, i.e., choose a unique letter in each
row and give it an underscore, then type Alt + the
underscored letter to activate a given line. I don't like
this so much, takes too much time to parse the screen to
look for the special letters

Also useful might be to allow the emacs bindings ctrl-n and
ctrl-p (move cursor to next line, move cursor to previous
line). These commands would allow one to move the line of
focus quickly up or down in the pop-up list, and then select
an action by hitting enter.
       
    Thanks,

    Henry