Re: on application focus navigation (was: On ctrl-tab)

[Jud Craft <craftjml gmail com>]

On Thu, Nov 26, 2009 at 2:27 PM, Jud Craft wrote:
> Does every GTK program that makes use of a text-entry in a side-pane
> face this dilemma?  Like MonoDevelop or Brasero?
>

I'll go ahead and add this:  although it has an amazing amount of
keyboard shortcuts, MonoDevelop's field navigation is pretty much
dysfunctional.

Ctrl-tab is used to switch between documents (which I appreciate, if
only the rest wasn't conflicted with it), which means that you cannot
tab out of the editor pane.  In addition, only one of the frames seem
to be accessible (Solution, for me), and hidden panes (errors,
breakpoints) can be triggered with their shortcuts, but not accessed
with Tab.

These non-editor panes also seem to eat tab at inconvenient times,
meaning that field navigation halts and is completely useless.

If keyboard navigation is handled at the toolkit level, how can there
be so much inconsistency between nearly every app?  Is the basic
functionality really not useful enough so as to require custom hacks?