Re: [HIG] conforming to the GDP word list

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

Maciej Stachowiak wrote:

> But the keyboard shortcut "Alt+F" is by no stretch of the imagination
> a mnemonic. It's not a reminder of something else, it's something you
> actually use directly.

You're certainly right to say that it's the underlined character that's
the mnemonic, not the Alt+letter combination itself... thanks for
picking me up on my sloppy usage.  (Although I'm not sure how important
the distinction is in this case-- by remembering that F and S are the
mnemonics for the File and Save shortcuts, you remember that Alt+F-S
will save your document; just as by remembering that since ROYGBIV is
the mnemonic for the visible spectrum, green is the middle colour in a
rainbow... there's just an extra level of indirection in the keyboard
case).

Anyway, to heck with the semantics  :o)  I guess the reason I've never
personally liked the term "access keys" is because I always get it
confused with the other type of shortcut they co-exist with, which are
typically called either "shortcut keys" (which just sound to me like the
same thing) or "accelerators" (which doesn't look all that different to
"access", especially if English isn't your first language).  Apart from
the fact that an access key is almost always a key combination rather
than a single key anyway,  at least "mnemonics" and "shortcut keys" look
and sound completely different!

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson ireland sun com    Desktop Engineering Group
http://www.sun.ie                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems