Re: Menu access (was Re: RGSG)

["Dan \"Effugas\" Kaminsky" <effugas best com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: John R Sheets <dusk@smsi-roman.com>
To: Dan Kaminsky <effugas@best.com>
Cc: gnome-gui-list@gnome.org <gnome-gui-list@gnome.org>
Date: Tuesday, August 04, 1998 8:27 AM
Subject: Menu access (was Re: RGSG)


>Dan Kaminsky wrote:
>>
>> KEYBOARD CONSISTENCY.
>>
>> In windows, I hit alt-F to open the file menu, then O to go to open, and
hit
>> enter.  Works pretty well.  (Not perfect, but it works.)  Suppose the
file
>> menu was *always* something different.  OK, Session, now it's alt-s and
then
>> O.  How bout documents, now it's alt-d and then O.  How bout graphic, now
>> it's alt-g and than O.  Starcraft has this bug, it's awful.
>
>This is probably your first decent argument for the second menu
>always being called the "File" menu (or at least always the same
>name, not necessarily "File").  I don't see any easy way out of
>this.

This is among the first of the purely pragmatic arguments.  Once I started
seeing that people really believed in this *theoretically*, I started
thinking about what the actual implications of this decision might be.  See
the psychological description in the other post for more info.

I happen to think that placing a menu that deserves such little used items
as "generate screenplay" in front of the menu that has "Open Document" is
also bad, pragmatically, and I'm the guy who CREATED screenplays.  But, I'm
willing to put the menu there if it's an icon, or somehow looks different.

>Probably the foot menu should be selected if the user just
>pressed Alt...  Consistent access could be through Alt, <right
>arrow>.  Or maybe hitting Alt repeatedly could move you through
>the major menus.  So File/Session/Document/whatever would
>_always_ be Alt, Alt.  Finally, there's Alt-1, Alt-2, Alt-3,
>etc., although I don't think we want the user to have to count
>menu headings.


Alt happens to focus the menubar in Windows--I like that, though I never use
it(I WILL alt-f and right arrow/left arrow/down arrow then try to find the
little underline that quickly moves to the item I want).

I just want psycholinguistic ease...instead of making me hunt for a little
underline, I want to hit alt and the first letter, and then if there's
another item that begins with the same letter, hit the first letter again.
It's quite a bit easier for me to tell you the first letter of a word then
discern which letter has the underline.

Now, you might think this flies in the face of the Document/Graphic/Sound
thing I was railing against earlier.  It doesn't.  First I have to have the
concept, then I have to link to the word, then I need to think of the
shortcut.  The first-letter bit deals with thinking of the shortcut.  The
Document/Graphic/Sound bit has to deal with finding the word, which then
modifies the shortcut.

There IS a problem, though, that I just realized...how do you open an
Options menu?  Alt-O?  Oops, that's open.  Alt-release alt-O STILL should go
to Options, though...

Damn.  Can we come up with some default keyspaces, people?  I'm NOT
qualified to do that, because I haven't had enough experience with all the
different OS'es.  I WILL do this eventually, but someone else SHOULD.

>Probably a better suggestion would be that Alt <release> moves
>focus to the menu bar, starting with the foot highlighted.
>Hitting the space bar would page through the main menus, opening
>the submenus as it went along (and wrapping around from Help to
>the foot menu).  The arrow keys should respond intuitively to
>menu navigation.  And the Alt-S (or first letter of the menu)
>should also work.


I like this, basically.