gnome key-binding standard

[Paul Hepworth <phepworth s-vision com>]

I have some ideas regarding the "gnome key-binding standard" mentioned
in the style guide.

I suggest that a per-user key binding database be maintained.
Applications, rather than checking for "F3" for instance, would check
for KeyBinding("search again"), etc.
As a user, I could make Ctrl-L be the "search again" since that's what I
prefer (from age-old brainwashing).  (Interestingly, we have MANY
different search again bindings in widespread use:
^L from wordstar (borland, etc.); F3 from M$; Ctrl-G from Navigator and
Norton stuff, 'n' from vi, etc.)
Rather than gnome standardizing on Ctrl-G, for example, Ctrl-G should be
made the default binding, but I should be free to change it to Ctrl-L
(and this should affect ALL applications).

There is no sense making the user learn the "one true way" of the system
when we can make the system learn the "one true way" of the user!  Since
I've been using F3 to open and F2 to save for over ten years, whey
should I change to using ^O and ^S all of a sudden?  Likewise
Shift+Insert, Shift+Delete vs. ^X & ^V.  The windoze-way is typically a
good default binding (because of likely novice user familiarity), but as
we all know, the windoze way is NOT the "one true way."

In short, I urge the gnome way to be "sensible defaults coupled with
user-configurability" -- truly the best of both worlds!


Paul