Default button in dialogs

[Michael Rogers <mrogers cs ucl ac uk>]

Sorry if this has been covered before - I did a quick search of the 
archives and didn't find anything.

One of the usability problems in Gnome that frequently trips me up is 
setting the default button in dialogs to the "least dangerous" button 
(usually Cancel) rather than the OK/Proceed/Apply button. This makes it 
inconvenient to use dialogs from the keyboard, because there's often no 
keyboard shortcut for the OK button, while the Cancel/Close button has 
two shortcuts (Escape and Enter).

At the command line, Enter means "apply what I've just typed". I don't 
see why this convention should be broken in Gnome, particularly as 
Windows and MacOS have established the convention that Enter means "OK" 
and Escape means "Cancel". So, could the style guide please reflect 
this convention?

Thanks,
Michael

-- 
I used to know the secret of Zen, but then I remembered it