Re: Keyboard shortcuts (was Re: PATCH: bug 76293 and bug 48317)

[murrayc t-online de (Murray Cumming)]

On Tue, 2002-04-30 at 04:52, Alex Larsson wrote:
> Why would you need to re-learn this keybinding (Ctrl-U)? No other app uses 
> the other one (Alt-Up). If anything you need to re-learn it if we change 
> it and you're used to what nautilus does currently.

The point of Alt-Arrow is that you don't need to take one hand off the
arrow keys to use it. You can navigate around the items or icons with
the arrow keys then just hold down alt with your other hand to actually
open one of them. Alt-Up isn't really acting on a selected item, but it
would be consistent with Atl-Down, which would be acting on an item.

Anybody who has used a Mac extensively knows how neat this is.

These bugs are also relevant to this discussion:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=79223
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=79150

> > > If you want easy to remember you use the menus or the toolbar. Keyboard
> > > shortcuts are a way for users used to a piece of software to quickly
> > > do an operation. 

Yes. See above.

> But I don't know any other Gnome app that has a Go up keyboard shortcut. 
> What software is it that you think we should harmonize it with?

Remember, this is not just a question of Alt-Up to Open-Parent. It's
also Alt-Down to Open-This-Item. They should be consistent and
convenient.
 
> > > All our other shortcuts use Ctrl. Alt is normally used for menus and 
> > > mnemonics. I guess since it's a non-alphanumeric key it can't collide with 
> > > those though.

As mentioned in the above bugs, Ctrl-Arrow seems to be used to 'move
focus' in GTK+, though nobody seems to know what this means. Just try it
in the Nautilus list or the gtk-demo TreeView.
-- 
Murray Cumming
murrayc usa net
www.murrayc.com