[Usability] Bad keyboard shortcuts (was Re: My (ongoing) analysis of the proposed modules)

[Christian Rose <menthos menthos com>]

ons 2003-05-14 klockan 13.51 skrev Alan Horkan:
> > > The HIG should really advise on this issue so that all of the apps can
> > > do the same thing.  I think Larger Text and Smaller Text items are good
> > > (pick more suitable names as you please), and we should overload the
> > > Ctrl++ and Ctrl+- (and possibly Ctrl+= for Normal Text Size) for them.
> 
> > Also, I don't like ctrl++ / ctrl+= doing different things,
> > since they are the same key on US keyboards. In gucharmap
> > ctrl+= does the same as ctrl++.
> 
> There are many non US or UK keyboard users who absolutely hate trying to
> Zoom using Ctlr+= as = is not easily available (there are lengthy
> complaints about this in bugzilla, filed against the HIG I think).

Absolutely. But there's no report against the HIG that I know of. If you
know a HIG report about this problem, please let me know.

Here are some other reports for specific pieces of software:

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=55629
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=56108

In short, neither "=" nor "+" make good shortcuts, since the position of
these vary between keyboard layouts and more importantly also whether
they are composed keys or not. Thus, on some layouts they make excellent
shortcuts, while on the same time really bad shortcuts on others.

Allowing both of these simultaneously, as often suggested, still leaves
the issue of what shortcuts should be displayed in the menus, so it
doesn't really solve the problem. The user is still shown a shortcut to
use that may be a really bad one, without knowing of the alternative
simpler/better/working one.

Also, trying to solve the last problem by some adaptable shortcut
display in menus is a very complex task, because what shortcut is
reasonable is tied to the keyboard layout used, not the locale used, and
there's often no connection between these two pieces of information. And
I don't know how easy it is to retrieve keyboard layout information nor
how portable such solutions are. Perhaps Sergey knows.


> I much prefer to have both Ctrl ++ and Ctrl+= be Zoom In.

See the above about alternative shortcuts -- it only solves one part of
the problem.


Christian