Re: Command Buffer for Accessing Menus

["ricardo colon" <rico colon gmail com>]

Sorry for taking so long to answer this.
Yes, the way you describe is one possible solution.

But what if you accidentally mistype one of the letters, are taken to
a different menu and have to backtrack? Or what if your finger
twitches and momentarily releases the alt key in the middle of typing?

I think interface wise it would be nice to be able to access all menus
and submenus via keywords using the keyboard as it could provide a
more seamless experience.

In the extreme case, you could even ignore the pull down menus
altogether, which would be nice.

You wouldn't have to remember all the obscure letter combinations to
reach every menu you wanted to go to. "Ctrl-X atm" is certainly a lot
easier to remember than:

   "Press Alt
       Press t to open Tools menu
       Press m to open Midi submenu
       Press a to open Automation submenu
       Press whatever key corresponds to the mnemonic on what you want there
  Release Alt"

In the case, where you could define these shortcuts yourself, you
could even enforce your own standards for accessing menus in multiple
applications. So you could bind "Ctrl-X blur" to the same menu in GIMP
or let's say gPhoto.

Even better, if you didn't know where a certain menu resides, you
could do a search on all the application specific keywords. It'd be
like googling for the right menu in your application.

I don't know. Maybe my idea sounds a little out there.
But I still think it would be a killer feature to have in GTK.

Thanks.

On 6/14/07, muppet <scott asofyet org> wrote:
> On Jun 12, 2007, at 9:36 PM, ricardo colon wrote:
>
> > For example, let's say Ardour has a menu called "Automation".
> > You would type something like Ctrl-X and then type in "Automation".
> > The Automation menu would directly pop-up. You wouldn't have to go
> > through Tools -> Midi -> Automation or anything like that.
> >
> > "Automation" would be the full-length keyword. To make things quicker,
> > you could have a "full name" and maybe a shorter name. So for example,
> > you could type "Ctrl-X automation" or "Ctrl-X atm". and it would mean
> > the same thing.
> >
> > Even better, you could assign common command buffer commands to a
> > single key. So you could bind "Ctrl-X atm" to Ctrl-F1 or something
> > similar.
>
> Perhaps i'm missing something.   Provided the application sets up its
> mnemonics correctly, how is your proposal superior to what we already
> have?
>
>     Press Alt
>        Press t to open Tools menu
>        Press m to open Midi submenu
>        Press a to open Automation submenu
>        Press whatever key corresponds to the mnemonic on what you
> want there
>     Release Alt
>
>
>
> --
> Doing a good job around here is like wetting your pants in a dark
> suit; you get a warm feeling, but no one notices.
>    -- unknown