Re: Review of Keybindings [Re: Dia's user interface]

[Adrien Beau <adrienbeau yahoo com>]

On Monday 22 April 2002 10:28, Lars Clausen wrote:
> Ctrl-A should be Select All.  I'd like to make Front and Back
> be Ctrl-> and Ctrl-<, but those are clumsy on US keyboards.

One of the problems with key bindings is that if they use
something other than letters, they always are clumsy on at
least one kind of keyboard.

One of the things that work quite well for me (as a user),
once all Ctrl+Letter combinations have been exhausted is,
well, I don't know a good name for it so I'll call it
Ctrl+MultiLetter combinations.

I have used a few applications that implement this, notably
a text editor in Windows. IIRC, it had several search
shortcuts, all of which where in the form Ctrl+F, another
letter. E.g., Ctrl+F,F would "search again", Ctrl+F,N would
start a new search, Ctrl+F,B would "search backwards", etc.

If you don't abuse this scheme (no three level indirection,
meaningful letters), it works quite well.

> We shall probably need to break a number of long-standing
> settings soon.  I don't know if this should be before or
> after the next release.  Probably after, I think this release
> has waited long enough already.

I wholeheartedly concur: release a new Dia asap, "break" it
afterwards.

-- 
adrienbeau yahoo com - Free account at http://mail.yahoo.com