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

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Tue, 2006-08-22 at 15:44 +0100, Alan Horkan wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Aug 2006, Shaun McCance wrote:
> > 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
> 
> With Inkscape I have seen the downside of trying to have keyboard
> combinations for absolutely everything
> 
> It makes it that much harder to choose a keybinding for a new frequently
> used feature and to an extent it discourages developers from reorganising
> step by step features into tools which would handle a whole task.
> (compare inset/outset in Inkscape to the inset/ouset dialog in freehand)

So I'm going to use Mathematica as an example.  Mathematica needs
to have quite a number of keyboard shortcuts to enable you to input
mathematical expressions using only the keyboard.  Unlike Inkscape,
Mathematica is a very keyboard-oriented application.

Here's a sample of Mathematica's shortcuts, many of which use keys
that aren't commonly used by other applications:

Ctrl+6  superscript
Ctrl+-  subscript
Ctrl+7  overscript
Ctrl+=  underscript
Ctrl+/  fraction
Ctrl+2  radical
Ctrl+.  extend selection
Ctrl+Space  end subexpression

There are a lot more, but these ones are critical for anybody
who wants to write nicely typeset mathematics.  I doubt you
could find a single Mathematica user who would argue against
having these shortcuts.

Mathematica is also a nice example because the *Nix version
runs on a number of X desktops, including Gnome, KDE, and CDE.
And it's run on machines with different keyboard layouts, like
those Sun keyboards that have an honest-to-goodness Meta key
(but sure as hell don't have a Windows key).

It's very hard for ISDs to produce software with good keyboard
shortcuts for the myriad of keyboards Gnome might be running
with.  As a notable example, Mathematica has this odd behavior
when you select cells with NumLock turned on.  It's a feature,
technically, but on GNU/Linux PCs it's triggered with an odd
key because Mathematica is just checking X modifier masks, and
that modifier mask is actually useful on other systems.

> > > Here's a list of the keybindings (and I refer to the Windows key the more
> > > generic "Super" key)
> 
> > That's eight keyboard shortcuts being taken away
> > from applications.
> 
> [...]
> 
> > Super hasn't had much formalized use.
> 
> I would not expect applications to be using the Super key.

The Mac is very fortunate to have three modifier keys that
are standardized and available to all application developers.
They've made very good use of that.

> > 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+.)
> 
> There used to be systems which used Alt instead Ctrl but their keybindings
> were otherwise pretty much the same.  (I'm talking about both BeOS and an
> old version of Netscape I was running on some odd version of Sun OS.)
> This was at least part of the reason why Gnome made very little use of the
> Alt key.
> 
> Gtk/X11 applications on OS X use the control key as they would normally.
> I would expect Gtk Mac OS X to use the Apple/Command key everywhere
> instead of Ctrl, as it has always been standard practice for applications
> ported to Mac OS.
> 
> > I'd been experimenting with using Super to do emacs-like cursor movement
> > commands in GTK+ text areas (Super+E for End, etc.)
> 
> Gnome has an emacs mode of text boxes and things like that doesn't it, so
> I expect the keybindings you are proposing would not appear in the
> standard defaults.  (Given the amount of trouble most users have with
> Insert/Overwrite modes are a very bad default for beginners.)

Enabling the emacs mode is just a bad idea.  It conflicts
too much with common application shortcuts.  The idea behind
using emacs-like keybindings with Super is that there would
be no such conflicts, and it wouldn't be too hard to train
your pinky to strike half an inch to the right instead.

I'll also point out that, since Apple uses Command for all
application shortcuts, Ctrl is pretty much free.  So what
did they do with it?  They added emacs keybindings into
all standard text areas, in the standard defaults.  Does
everybody know them?  Nope, not a chance.  Are there some
people who have learned them and love them?  Absolutely.

The first thing you learn in typing class is to keep your
hands on home row.  But then you're forced to take your
hands away from home row just to go to the previous line.
Meanwhile, we provide a convenient shortcut for printing
your document.  Tell me which action you do more often.

--
Shaun