Re: ANNOUNCE: Style Guide available for review.

[Kai Wetzel <k wetzel welfen-netz com>]

Paul Hepworth wrote:
[...]
> > > "All menus must be navagable 
[...]
> > > by keyboard using cursor keys and accelerators.  Each menu
> > > item should have a unique accelerator."
[...]
> Terminology question:  hotkey and accelerator tend to be used
> interchangeably to say "a button I press to avoid having to navigate the
> menu" yet we have two types:  the application-wide ones, and the "this
> menu only" / "this button-group only" variety (the underlined letter).
> Is there a good separate term for these?

Yes.  Keyboard equivalents come in two varieties:
1. keyboard mnemonics and
2. accelerator keys.

1 are the underlined thingies while 2 are the "global"
keyboard shortcuts.  This difference was not needed on the
Mac since it only has variety 2.
There can be accelerator keys which trigger commands that
can't be invoked by means of the GUI but they are an exception
rather then the rule ("hidden commands", etc.)

Note that keyboard mnemonics will be localized naturally with
their corresponding label while accellerator keys will NOT
be localized.

[...]
> *Applications* should not change the binding.  However,
> they should read the binding from a user keybinding preference database.

Applications usually should not configure their key bindings
but the user should be able to configure key-bindings on
a per-app basis.  E.g. I'd like to use Emacs-style bindings
in an editor, but not in a drawing package, etc.
An exception would be apps which define a quick method
(hot-key and/or GUI toggle) to switch bindings without
the need to launch a seperate control panel/configurator.
I'd personally only expect this from an editor if at all, though.

[...]
kai