Re: Alt-key mnemonics in menus

[Allin Cottrell <cottrell wfu edu>]

Just for the record, in case anyone else wonders about this, here's 
what I have found (history below):

Suppose you have a menubar with a top-level menu _File (with 
underscore-mnemonic F). How do you open the File menu via the 
keyboard? Easy: using Alt-F.

Now for the question I was asking: suppose that under File you have 
a menu item _Baz (with underscore-mnemonic B). With the File menu 
open, how do you select Baz via the keyboard?

(a) By pressing B; xor
(b) by pressing Alt-B; xor
(c) by doing either of the above, both work.

I said that for my GTK app the answer was (a) but for some GTK-based 
apps the answer was (c). (I'm not aware of any for which the answer 
is (b).) And I wondered if something in my code was disabling (c).

Having built a minimal test program, showing a plain GTK window with 
a menu, I can confirm that the GTK default is (a). And I find this 
to be the case with all the gnome apps that I've tested. I infer 
that apps that support (c) -- e.g., Firefox, Thunderbird and 
LibreOffice -- must be making some special effort to achieve that 
effect. Maybe for compatibility with MS Windows?

On Mon, 5 Sep 2011, Allin Cottrell wrote:

> I've noticed that in my GTK app Alt-key mnemonics work like this: pressing 
> Alt-F, for example, opens the _File menu, but once you're in the menu 
> pressing Alt-N does not activate _New, although pressing plain N does so.
>
> In various other GTK apps both Alt-N and plain N work in this sort of 
> context.
>
> Any idea on what might account for the difference? I'm wondering if I've 
> inadvertantly done something that disables Alt-key within menus but I don't 
> know what that could be.

--
Allin Cottrell
Department of Economics
Wake Forest University