[Usability] a tool for generating keyboard accelerators

[Mark Summerfield <mark qtrac eu>]

Hi,

I just wanted to let you know about a tool I've developed for
automatically generating keyboard accelerators as used in menus and
dialog texts.

I value keyboard accelerators because I don't like using the mouse (it
slows me down), and I know that some people prefer accelerators because
they find the hand/eye coordination required to use a mouse too
difficult.

The tool is called Accelerator and is available here:
http://www.qtrac.eu/accelerator.html

I wrote it using C++/Qt4 but the job it does is not platform or
tool-specific and it is v. easy to compile. (On say, Fedora, you need
the qt4-devel package; which I guess is qt4-dev on deb based distros.) 

Naturally humans can add accelerators manually (and may produce more
aethetically pleasing choices), but the program does has the advantage
of being easy to use and for longer menus can save some puzzling.

The algorithm can also be tuned to work very fast (but potentially
producing sub-optimal results)---this might be useful for dynamic menus.

Anyway, if you try it out I hope you find it useful.

-- 
Mark Summerfield, Qtrac Ltd., www.qtrac.eu