On Sat, 2008-03-08 at 08:10 -0800, Kirk Bridger wrote:
> My guess is that this is simply a reflection of a common issue with
> keyboard accelerators: sometimes the menu has more than 1 word
> starting with the same letter.
>
> In this case, if 'P' went to programming, how would someone get to the
> top-level "Places" without using the cursor keys? I'm sure
> Programming has some letter accelerator, but P isn't it. Making
> Places the P destination makes sense as it is the top level menu and
> your scenario was right after opening the menu.
>
> The same thing happens with the 's' - it opens System rather than
> Sound...
>
> The solution might be to indicate somehow what the accelerator key is
> in the menu, but the behavior makes sense to me in some ways. I've
> just opened the menu and the accelerators take me to the top level
> menu items.
I think you may mean access key. the access key has an underscore to
indicate the key you can press to select the item. An accelerator key is
a <Meta|Alt|Control|Shift><key> combination that jumps into the menu, or
directly activates a menu item.
I'm surprised any access keys works. Since there is not an underscore
indicating that the menu item has an access key, I've never tried it. I
use <ALT>F1, then arrow keys to select items. In general the menu is
behaving like a list where the key press will select the first item that
starts with that key.
I do not experience the described behaviour by the way in Ubuntu Gutsy.
<Alt>F1 activates the Menu Bar. The keys 'p' and 's' do activates the
Places and System menu respectively, and pressing a key will select any
submenu that starts with that key. The Application menu is a problem. It
is not activated by <Alt>F1, I cannot activate it with the 'a' key, even
though I can see the menu items.
The GNOME Main Menu also has problems. I can activate it and access the
menu items, but it does not behave like application menus. Selecting an
item that has a submenu should make the submenu active so that I can use
keys to select an item.
I think the GNOME Main Menu (and the Menu Bar used by Ubuntu) violate
the HIG. Reading the guidelines at
http://library.gnome.org/devel/hig-book/stable/menus.html.en
I think the general problem is that both menus do not provide access
keys. The Menus are special though, They are not verb/adjective based
since they focus on things.
I filed this as GNOME bug #521227 and linked it to the ubuntu bug in
Launchpad (bug #199866).
--
__C U R T I S C. H O V E Y_______
Guilty of stealing everything I am.
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part