Re: keyboard

[bratsche dfw net]

This is really great for a single application, but it seems like it would
be a little awkward for an environment like GNOME. Here's my thoughts:

It would be fine for 'stock' menu items. e.g., you do this for "New.." in
one GNOME application and it sets it as the key binding for 'stock New'
menu items. However, you either break the consistency by not providing
this feature for non-stock menu items (e.g., "Export to PDF" in a word
processor) or you add code to do that on a per-application basis for all
GNOME apps, which would require each app to also have to test the binding
against GNOME's global settings.

Example: say Ctrl-P is the user's binding for GNOME stock "Print" menu
item. The user goes to "Export to PDF" and hits Ctrl-P. The application
needs to compare this value against all of GNOME's stock key bindings, and
when it finds Ctrl-P already occupying the "Print" binding, it'll have to
remove the "Print" key binding in order to set "Export to PDF".

This is fine, really, except for one thing. Suppose our word processor
isn't loaded and the user sees that his "Print" binding is empty and tries
to set it back to Ctrl-P. GNOME can't check key bindings against all
applications' local key bindings. I suppose this can be worked around
easily enough by having some sort of dialog warning popup at the
application's next startup and informing the user that his key binding for
"Export to PDF" has been removed because its key has been assigned to
GNOME's global "Print" stock.

It might be a cool feature, but I still think it may be a little awkward
for an environment like GNOME. Anyone else have an opinion on this?

Cody

On Thu, 3 Dec 1998, Matthew Albright wrote:

> For keybindings in an application (like Alt-Q being quit, or Alt-O
> being File Open), The GIMP has a really cool way to do it.  
> 
> You pull down a menu with your mouse, and while you are over let's say
> "File Open...  Ctrl-O", you just press the key combination you want to
> bind with that menu item.  So if you press Alt-O, the menu item
> changes to "File Open...  Alt-O", and Alt-O is now your shortcut for
> File Open.
> 
> Check it out in The GIMP if that explanation is too opaque.
> 
> Obviously this does not solve the problem of binding things in all
> applications, or remapping Ctrl to Alt or something, but it's a start.
> 
> matt
> 
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