Re: [g-a-devel] add keybinding to start the user's preferred visual assistive technology

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On Thu, 2007-04-05 at 13:50 -0500, George Kraft IV wrote:
> I would like to propose adding a GNOME (metacity) keybinding such as
> "<Ctrl><Alt>s" to start the user's preferred visual assistive
> technology.
> 
> http://live.gnome.org/GAP/ScratchPad/PreferredApplications
> 
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=387973
> 
> What key sequence would work the best and not conflict or be confused with others?

Unfortunately there's a bit of inconsistency in how our default global
shortcuts have been chosen generally... note that we also now have
Ctrl-Alt-L for lock screen :/

Alt-F1 (pop up main menu)
Alt-F2 (open Run... dialog)
PrintScreen (screenshot)
Alt-PrintScreen (screenshot of focused window)
Ctrl-Alt-L (lock screen)
Ctrl-Alt-D (show desktop)

The dilemma, as usual, is that Ctrl-alt-<letter> is easier to remember
for users, but potentially takes shortcuts away from application
developers.  Alt-F<n> is less likely to be used by an application, but
is harder to remember for users.

That said, applications should very rarely need to resort to using
Ctrl-Alt-<letter> for their own purposes... are there any examples of
GNOME apps that do?  If not, I'd be inclined to slightly prefer
Ctrl-Alt-<something>; if so, I guess we should go with Alt-F<something>.

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            GNOME Desktop Group
http://ie.sun.com                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems