Re: accel key... <alt> or <ctrl>

["Eric M. Monsler" <emonsler beamreachnetworks com>]

Michael L Torrie wrote:
(snip)
> For whatever reasons, everybody is standardized on Ctrl-X, Ctrl-V, and
> Ctrl-C.  Now of course I wish gnome apps would allow ctrl-ins and
> shift-ins like windows used to.

"Everybody" has certainly not.

There was some discussion (quite a while ago) on what keybindings should
be used by default for text entry.  In entryboxes, for example.  Some
subset of users are trained on Ctrl-V,C,X, while others will expect the
same bindings as emacs/bash (a far richer set, btw).  

I'd like to see that as a themeable or rc-able setting, to use the same
bindings in all of a user's gnome or gtk apps.  Unfortunately, that
would require all app developers to avoid a fairly significant set of
accelerator combinations to avoid conflicting with either setting.

> Netscape for some bizarre reason used to used Alt keys for this thing (cut
> and paste) and it always was a huge glaring inconsistancy compared to all
> other GUI programs on my desktop.

Probably because Netscape wanted an easy transition for the MS-trained
crowd, without using keys commonly used by UNIX users for purposes
different than the users were accustomed to.  Not sure I agree with
their decision to be compatible with neither, as it was a glaring
inconsistency on my xterm/xemacs desktop also, but I can see why they
did it.


Eric