Re: non-latin accelerator keys

[Abel Cheung <abelcheung gmail com>]

On 12/22/05, Matthias Clasen <mclasen redhat com> wrote:
> > > I have a number of questions here:
> > > - Does this sound like a reasonable thing to do ? (the risk of
> > >   accidentally stripping something thats not an accelerator is
> > >   probably minimal, but not 0.
> >
> > Indeed, there can be cases where a single CJK character is enclosed inside
> > parenthesis, and that's not uncommon; although when enclosed
> > character is a latin character it mostly means mnemonic key.
>
> But in the case of a single CJK character in parenthesis, it will likely
> not have an _ before it, right ?

Oh yes, you're correct :-)


> > > - Is the (_F) approach generally considered just a workaround for
> > >   the second bug, or are there languages where it is the
> > >   preferred/standard way to display accel keys ?
> >
> > Well, it is preferred, since multiple keystrokes are needed to input
> > non-latin characters, and I doubt if anything like Alt-<char> can
> > be entered at all. Hope anybody can enlighten me if this is
> > possible or not.
> >
>
> No, as you said, you normally need multiple keystrokes, unless you use
> an exotic keymap.

Not an exotic keymap, but an exotic keyboard that has 60,000+ keys ;-)
Anyway, this is probably technically an excellent thing to do, but from
usability POV it can be bad for CJK users (even if it can be implemented).
The most efficient way for activating items is Alt plus a single keystroke,
needing multiple keystrokes will reduce the efficiency. The problem is
tied to the hardware (keyboard) instead of bug #104112 for CJK users,
and I don't think too much can be done except stripping extra mnemonic
keys and parenthesis.

However, for other languages, I'm not sure at all, so others can shed
some light on it.

Greetings,
Abel

>
> >  The other bug asks for a way to underline a character in the label,
> > > but have a different character as accel key.  I wrote patches which
> > > change the Pango/GTK+ behaviour in the following way:
> > >
> > > f_oo  -> o underlined, accel key o
> > > f_[x]oo  -> o underlined, accel key x
> > >
> > > Essentially the same questions here:
> > > - Does this sound like a reasonable thing to do ? (the risk of
> > >   accidentally stripping something thats not an accelerator is
> > >   probably minimal, but not 0.
> >
> > One question not entirely related: let's say "f_[x]oo", is there
> > any hint or visual indication that the accel key is "x" not "o"?
>
> No, but the use case for this is probably situations where the user
> understand that the underlined 'o' means that he has to press the x
> key. E.g. if there is a standard input method which maps the x key
> to the 'o' character.

I see. Something like "gl_[u]ücklich", so pressing alt-u can activate the
item?


>
> Matthias
>
>


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Abel Cheung   (GPG Key: 0xC67186FF)
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