Re: [Usability] Ctl+W

[Gregory Merchan <merchan phys lsu edu>]

On Wed, Dec 12, 2001 at 11:02:51AM +0000, Pete Setchell wrote:
> On Wed, 2001-12-12 at 01:07, Christian Rose wrote:
> > > GTK 2 will have Ctrl+A mean select all by default.
> > 
> > Thanks a lot, Havoc.
> > 
> > Then the Ctrl+A (Select All) shortcut should probably also be a part of
> > the HIG recommended shortcuts?
> > 
> > 
> > Christian
> 
> Has the use of Ctl+W for "Close the current document" been discussed?

Searching thought my logs, I find no discussion of the shortcut for Close.
The nearest I could find is one mention of whether Quit should be Ctrl+Q
since it is so close to Ctrl+W  (on QWERTY ;-).

There is another option which I'll present below.


> Ctl+W is already used for the extremely useful "Delete Word" shortcut in
> almost every legacy unix application - bash, most other shells, vi etc.
> 
> It doesn't seem to be one of the emacs shortcuts listed in the HIG, but
> does seem to work in Gnome 1.4 text inputs by default.
> 
> Either way - this makes for a nasty "Aaaagh! Where did my application"
> error at the moment. I use Ctl+W to clear the location bar in galeon -
> if the wrong part of the app has focus then it closes the window
> instead.

For what it's worth, I use Ctrl+K with the caret at the start of the line.


> Since bash is probably going to be a heavily used part of linux for
> quite a while, wouldn't it make sense to keep Ctl+W in it's legacy role
> and choose another shortcut for close document?

The problem is chosing that one. There are also those who think one should
never have to use a terminal and, from what I gather, that terminal users
can be safely ignored. I'm not one of them.


> The current error forces unix users to relearn behaviour and experience
> harmful errors. The people who gain from the current situation are
> ex-windows users who already use that shortcut - note that this is
> probably quite a small subset of "all windows users".

You must first convince people to care about the Unix users. (Especially those
that despite all trademarks believe that Unix is not an acronym and therefor
should not be typed entirely in capital letters. ;-)  I am not one of those
who needs convincing.


> I suspect people who regularly learn and use accelerators would be able
> to easily switch to a new system wide default, and might even gain from
> system-wide adoption of the "delete word" shortcut.

An alternative to changing the File->Close shortcut (as promised above)
is to be rid of the item entirely. (Another one is to not provide a shortcut.)

To be rid of the item, the interface must single-document; i.e., SDI.
There are ways to do things like tabbed-MDI without a Close menu item,
but they tend to be awkward. As an SDI, the Quit item should also go away.

This leaves One Way to Do It (tm). Use the window manager close command.
(Either click the button or use whatever window manager shortcut is assigned.)

Now, unleash the hounds.

> -- 
> Pete Setchell
> +++++
> Good Technology, London


Cheers,
Greg Merchan