Re: Alt-key mnemonics in menus



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



[Date Prev][Date Next]   [Thread Prev][Thread Next]   [Thread Index] [Date Index] [Author Index]