Re: [Usability] Using Control-Esc and Windows keys to access the start menu

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Mon, 2006-08-21 at 17:43 +0100, Alan Horkan wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Aug 2006, Calum Benson wrote:
> 
> > There's also a recent patch that will let you define multiple
> > keybindings for the same function, so that distros who are so inclined
> > can set both Alt+F1 and Ctrl-Esc to pop up the menu and keep everyone
> > happy.
> >
> > http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=164831
> 
> Excellent, good to know we have the underlying infrastructure to do
> this cleanly but why leave it to the distributions?
> (I need to figure out where exactly to patch but ...)
> 
> The windows keybindings are fairly well known and I do not think
> there would be much/any harm having the enabled by default, or at least
> provide some way to enable this set of keybindings rather than expect
> every user to configure each of them individually.

The harm is that there are a finite number of key
combinations that we human beings are physically
capable of typing.  Every keyboard shortcut that
gets handled by the window manager can't possibly
be used by applications.

> Here's a list of the keybindings (and I refer to the Windows key the more
> generic "Super" key)
> 
> Super  		to open up the main menu*, also
> Ctrl+Esc
> Super+E 	to open the File Manager
> Super+M 	to Minimize All, Show Desktop
> Super+M+Shift 	to Maximize All
> Super+F 	Search/Find tool
> 
> I think there may have been additional keybindings added in
> since Windows XP.
> Super+U 	Utilities manager, a program to turn on accessibility
> software like the
> Mangifier, Narrator (text to speech) or on screen keyboard.
> 
> Super+L 	to Lock Workstation
> (I'm finding it mildly annoying since I have hit this accidentally a
> couple of times.  It is still nowhere near as annoying as the stupid
> keybinding to switch keyboard layouts since it took me years to
> discover what was causing that bit of evil.)

That's eight keyboard shortcuts being taken away
from applications.  One of those uses Ctrl, which
we try very hard to let applications use.  You'll
notice nearly all of our current global keyboard
shortcuts use Alt.

Super hasn't had much formalized use.  It's hard
when Gnome gets run on systems that may have any
combination of Control, Alt, Super, Hyper, and
Meta.  (And I don't even know what the Command
key on Mac keyboards looks like to GTK+.)

I'd been experimenting with using Super to do
emacs-like cursor movement commands in GTK+ text
areas (Super+E for End, etc.)  I actually have
my right Windows key mapped to Compose, but that
wouldn't be affected by any of this.

But if we add all these keybindings, then nobody
else can use them for anything.  Users can hack
their own systems, sure, but ISDs aren't going
to tell all their users to disable such-and-such
global keybinding just to use their application
effectively.

--
Shaun