Re: Use of accelerators (mnemonics) in app menus

[Matthias Clasen <matthias clasen gmail com>]

On Mon, Oct 8, 2012 at 5:32 AM, Alexandre Franke
<alexandre franke gmail com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> With the GMenu transition happening during the 3.5 cycle, we have seen
> many applications remove their accelerators (that _ characters that
> allows you to select a menu item using the alt key) from the menu
> items that were moved to the app menu (the menu you get when clicking
> the application name in the top bar in GNOME Shell). The reason behind
> such removals seems to be that GNOME Shell doesn't display nor enable
> accelerators in the app menu.

To avoid unnecessary confusion, lets agree on terms here. In a menuitem like

Bl_oatpad   Ctrl-X

The _o is a mnemonic. Accelerator is the name we use to refer to the Ctrl-X.

> However, in other environments, the app menu is consolidated and
> displayed in the menu bar of the window as the first item. In this
> context, the accelerators could be very useful and losing them should
> be considered a regression.
>
> Is there a technical reason that pushes removal of the accelerators,
> such as a bad GNOME Shell behaviour when they are present? Will GNOME
> Shell use accelerators in app menus someday? That may be seen as an
> accessibility feature. Is there by the way a keyboard shortcut to open
> the app menu?

There is no technical problem with including them. The bloatpad
example that we ship with GTK+ to demonstrate app menu usage has
mnemonics.