Re: Tab completion in gmc

[Marcus Brubaker <spoon elpaso net>]

On Wed, 27 Jan 1999, Sri Ramkrishna wrote:

> That would require some sort of delay between keypresses I suppose.  Still
> non-intuitive though.  This is a difficult thing to figure out because
> your trying to combine commandline behavior with gui behavior.  The
> mentality is that in a gui, tab will move to the next element.  My guess
> is that you would not have tab work once you in a text widget, I know some
> apps that behave that way.  Another way could be to navigate using the
> arrow keys and not depend on tabs, lousy for programmers but might be
> useful for regular people.  Lastly, I hope you guys plan on letting use VI
> keys for navigation.  Tab would work very intuitively with that system.

Even in a GUI, myself and others, would like to have to be able to use the
mouse as little as possible.  Having to reach for the mouse and then go
right back to the keyboard is a waste of time.  It is necessary that we
allow navigation of widgets with the keyboard alone.  We need to realize
that a GUI is not a console, and people coming from consoles are going to
realize that not everything is going to be the same.  Some kind of meta
key plus tab is about as intuitive as we can get.  And to make it better,
we should perhaps make this a standard in all GNOME apps to help it feel a
little more natural over time.

Regards,
Marcus Brubaker
spoon@elpaso.net
http://www.elpaso.net/~spoon

There *is* too much art and not enough science in software. 'Computer
Science' is to 'Science' as 'Plumbing' is to 'Hydrodynamics'.