Re: Patch for Delete key behavior (for dia-0.96.1)

["Sameer Sahasrabuddhe" <sameerds gmail com>]

On 9/27/07, Michael Ross <michael e ross gmail com> wrote:
> My early experiences with computing were with CAD programs.  Pre-Windows
> there was AutoCad (DOS) and a number of UNIX based systems.  Heavy users of
> CAD, which has a very strong mouse or stylus use component like Dia, would
> quickly find that placing the left hand on the keyboard and the right on the
> mouse and using as many left hand keystroke shortcuts as possible was the
> most productive manner of operating the programs.

Hear! Hear!

Allow me to hijack this and once again root for my personal favourite
combination: F2 and "second click" to enter text edit mode. This has
the additional plus point that it copies a well-known key-mapping,
from Nautilus and Explorer. In terms of user interaction, I see no
difference between a file icon and a text object ... their appearance
suggests the same interface for the related action of "editing text
visible in that icon". This also does not interfere with selecting an
object by simply clicking on it.

To exit text edit mode, I would vote for Shift-Esc as well as clicking
elsewhere, since Esc is strongly associated with abort. We could even
try "Enter" as an additional shortcut since that will round off the
analogy with file renaming. It does affect the ablity to enter
multiline text, but if we choose to do that, we can use "Ctrl-Enter"
like Pidgin to start a new line.

Sameer.
-- 
Research Scholar, Department of CSE, IIT Bombay
http://www.it.iitb.ac.in/~sameerds/