Re: Review of accelerator changes

[Bill Haneman <bill haneman sun com>]

Tim Janik wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 18 Nov 2001, Bill Haneman wrote:
> 
> > > also, changing accels is not so easy if they need to be combined
> > > with modifiers by default, and accidental changes can be reverted
> > > just as easy as the wee made.
> >
> > Not if you're a naive user and aren't sure how the change happenned in
> > the first place.  I predict that we will get zillions of bug reports
> > about this if it's the default.
> 
> we've been having this as default for the last 4 years and did not
> get zillions of bug reports.

The plan is for Gnome 2 to have a much wider and more diverse audience
than Gnome 1.  I don't think you can  go by past experience here.

> > > >  Unexpected for everybody the first time
> > > > it happens, I'd dare say.
> > >
> > > well, pretty much _everything_ new is going to be unexpected, it wouldn't
> > > be something new other wise (if you come from a different toolkit), that
> > > doesn't autmatically make it bad though.
> >
> > OK, my vote is that these are evil.  Consider it one vote.
> >
> > Don't get me wrong, I think configurable keybindings are cool, but I
> > don't see why they have to be configurable via keystrokes, there could
> > just as well be some onscreen utility or popup for doing this that at
> > least would make it less likely to happen by accident or 'silently' from
> > the users' point of view.
> 
> that'd require special handling by every app and just not be a standard
> toolkit feature anymore.

I don't think so.  As libgail proves, it's easy enough to install an
in-process client of gtk+ APIs.  And it would be easy enough to provide
a default keybindings editor that could be invoked from GTK+.  I think
that would be a lot more flexible than the current approach and not much
more work.

The idea would be that a certain (user-configurable, of course)
keycombination when a widget is focussed would bring up a keybindings
editor component, say as a popup, that used Gtk+  API for editing
keybindings . (would be easier to code also I think than the current
method of attaching keybindings from the keyboard).  Right now you have
keybindings editing as a standard feature, you could just as well invoke
some GtkWidget method that popped up a keybindings editor as 'standard'
but more configurable and flexible in the  future.

-Bill

> >
> > -Bill


> >
> 
> ---
> ciaoTJ