Re: ANNOUNCE: Style Guide available for review.

["Robert J. Slover" <robert slover Rose-Hulman Edu>]

Christopher Blizzard wrote:

> This is dealt with in the Keyboard Binding Policies.  Also,
> I don't think that every menu item needs an accelerator.  It
> can get really confusing for users.
> 

Maybe not by default...but I hope the capability is there.  My
favorite Mac Apps are the ones where this is the case.  I can
work *much* faster navigating by keyboard.  Also, don't forget the
shortcuts for common GUI operations that aren't necessarily exposed
via menus.  A typical example would be the 'nudge' feature implemented
in a lot of drawing packages....I select an object and use the arrow
keys to nudge it around a point or pica at a time.

For the Apps that don't have keyboard accelerators where I felt the
need for them...I often found myself hacking with ResEdit on the Mac
to *Add* them.  Gnome should make this easier.

> 
> Ok.  When a key binding standard is both available and the
> software is ready for use, we can add information about the
> key binding standard.  However, I personally feel that
> individual applications still have no business changing the
> key binding for a common operation that may be used in other
> places.  Changing that in a global area is fine, but not in
> each program.
> 

I'd find an application for setting global key bindings useful *if* it
provided some heirarchical way of doing it...so the common things (Cut,
Paste, Copy, Save, Quit, etc.) are easily changed, while less common 
ones (Alt-F-S for <F>ont <S>ize in App A) might be overloaded (to be
Alt-F-S for <F>orward <S>election in App B) just as easily.  Otherwise 
the useful bandwidth for accelerator binding will be quickly consumed.
I realize that this might be a bad example...in this example, I might
choose binding strings in each program that are different for the two
cases, (e.g. "Font-Size" and "Forward-Selection"), but what happens 
when along comes AppC which has *both* functions?  Perhaps answering
that last question intelligently is all that is needed...?


-- 
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 Robert J. Slover | Admin Sys Mgr | Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
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 "Yesterday starts tomorrow, Tomorrow starts today.  The problem 
  always seems to be we're picking up the pieces on the ricochet..." 
                                                    -Marillion, "Jigsaw"