Re: menu accelerators

[Lars Clausen <lrclause cs uiuc edu>]

On Mon, 4 Dec 2000, Mark Leisher wrote:

> 
>     Lars> More irritatingly, if you press the underlined letter (without
>     Lars> Alt), it will activate that item rather than set the letter.
>     Lars> I've never been one to make use of the underscore letters, and
>     Lars> now they're in the way of sensible shortcuts.  Is there a way
>     Lars> to turn them off completely?
> 
> I think I missed some of the conversation here, but the mnemonics are
> there specifically to activate menu items.  It works that way on just
> about every user interface that supports mnemonics.
> 
> Mnemonics arose out of a need for keyboard navigation for people who
> don't have or can not use a mouse.  And from personal experience, it is
> nice to be able to continue to work even when a mouse is not working.

Yes, very true.

>     Lars> Very possible.  I feel (but not strongly) that the underline
>     Lars> markup should go away in favor of right-hand changeable
>     Lars> shortcuts.  The underline markup is an ugly mix of name and
>     Lars> functionality.
> 
> Changeable accelerators are not a good idea for users, just for
> developers.  Using a GTK+ application I wrote, users started complaining
> that their "shortcuts" (in Windows terms) were not working right.  When I
> looked at it carefully, their keyboard behavior was causing their
> accelerators to change, which was causing a lot of confusion.

Yeah, we need to do something about the interaction between underline
accelerators and dynamic accelerators.  But as a user, not developer, of
Gimp, there is no way I want to lose the dynamic accelerators.  Assigning
single-letter shortcuts, so you don't even have to get the menu open, makes
it a *lot* faster to use.  I would say that disallowing Alt- in dynamic
shortcuts would be fine, that way the two won't interact.

> I do however, believe that underline accelerators will be needing a
> replacement concept in the near future.  Underline keyboard accelerators
> get complicated very quickly when you start working with more than one
> language.  Imagine an application localized for German that does some
> work with Arabic text.  You have to make sure the German input method is
> active before you can use the underline accelerators.

Though I have no replacement in mind, I feel that the underline
accelerators is a nasty mix of functionality and display, and it's
obviously causing trouble already (not to mention those twisted-sounding
menu items some use to allow an accelerator in a large menu).

-Lars

-- 
Lars Clausen (http://shasta.cs.uiuc.edu/~lrclause) | Hårdgrim of Numenor
"I do not agree with a word that you say, but I    | Retainer of Sir Kegg
will defend to the death your right to say it."    |   of Westfield
    --Evelyn Beatrice Hall paraphrasing Voltaire   | Chaos Berserker of Khorne