Re: Accelerator for New Window

[David Moles <david moles vykor com>]

On Tue, 2002-05-07 at 13:49, Ben FrantzDale wrote:
> 
> I havn't read this thread so sory if this is a duplicate:
> One problem with Ctrl+N for new folder is that those people used to
> emacs/shell keybindings instinctively use ctrl+N instead of reaching for
> the down-arrow key. Many times I've found ``New Folder''s on my desktop
> from when the desktop had focus rather than a text-editor and I hit
> ctrl+N.
> 
> BTW: There's a similar problem for pressing ctrl+D while editng the name
> of a file in icon view. Perhaps I should open a bug for that one(?) I
> don't think people would really want to be duplicating a file when they
> are already editing the file name.

As an Emacs user, I sympathize, but I don't think that there's any
way we're going to be able to get keyboard shortcuts that are both
sensible to the wide universe of non-Emacs users (particularly ex-
Windows and ex-Mac users) but that also don't conflict with
popular Emacs keybindings. Just off the top of my head I can come
up with:

  shortcut    commercial GUI consensus    Emacs meaning
  --------    ------------------------    -------------
    C-x       "Cut"                       "Begin 2-stroke sequence"
    C-v       "Paste"                     "Page Down"
    C-n       "New"                       "Cursor Down"
    C-z       "Undo"                      "Background/iconify Emacs"
    C-w       "Close Window"              "Cut"
    C-a       "Select all"                "Home" (go to start of line)

And I'm sure there are dozens of others. I think it would be
reasonable to have an Emacs-friendly keybinding theme, but I don't
think it would be reasonable to expect the universe of non-Emacs
users to learn / work around Emacs keybindings.