Re: GNOME Shell magnifier and Keybindings

[Robert Cole <rkcole72984 gmail com>]

Hello, Joseph, and thanks for your reply.

I am sorry for my delayed response.

Doing something like SHIFT+Scroll Up to Zoom In and SHIFT+Scroll Down to 
Zoom Out would be a great idea, if possible. I have seen magnification 
software which only makes use of the scroll wheel for zooming, but this 
makes it difficult (and sometimes impossible) to scroll when reading 
documents because the zoom function would be invoked in the 
magnification software. Even CTRL+Scroll Up/Down could cause conflicts, 
as some applications (such as Firefox and Evince) use the CTRL+Scroll 
Up/Down combination for their own zoom features. I personally do not use 
the built-in zooming features in applications such as Firefox or Evince; 
it is much easier and it is much more efficient for me to just use 
magnification and pan around the application when reading or when doing 
work.

As far as keyboard shortcuts for the magnifier go, I had originally set 
mine as follows:

1. Start/Stop the magnifier: CTRL+ALT+M (There do not seem to be any 
conflicts with this one)
2. Zoom In: ALT+Up Arrow
3. Zoom Out: ALT+Down Arrow

The keyboard shortcuts for zooming in and for zooming out conflicted 
with a predefined set of shortcuts which are used to change the search 
engine in the Firefox search bar, so I changed them to the following:

1. Zoom In: ALT+= ('=' on the number row)
2. Zoom Out: ALT+- ('-' on the number row)

These do not seem to cause any conflicts.

Thanks again for your response, Joseph. I hope you are having an 
excellent day (or evening, depending on where you are located).

Take care.

On 06/13/2012 07:49 AM, Joseph Scheuhammer wrote:
> Hi Robert,
>
> You wrote:
> > I was just curious as to whether or not it is possible (or would be 
> > possible) to use the scroll wheel on my mouse in combination with a 
> > key on my keyboard (e.g. the Control key) to zoom in or out on the 
> > magnifier. 
>
> Anything is possible :-).  And, this is a no-brainer.  I'll take a 
> look to see if there is a feature request in the bug data base 
> somewhere, and, if not, raise it.
>
> But, this has me thinking about a related issue.  The GNOME UI design 
> team is currently working on a menu that allows quick access to useful 
> accessibility preferences -- things like "turn on/off magnification", 
> "turn on/off inverse video", "turn on/off screen reader", and so on.  
> They are mulling over what should be in that menu.
>
> Controlling magnification factor using the scroll wheel falls into 
> this "quick access" category.  Now, in this case, it's not part of any 
> menu; it's simply available from one of the common UI devices (the 
> mouse).
>
> > I ask this because many of the key bindings which I used for Zoom in 
> > and Zoom Out are used by other programs.
>
> In case you don't know, you can configure key bindings for Zoom from 
> the "Keyboard" control centre panel:
> 1. Go to System Settings.
> 2. Open the Keyboard panel.
> 3. Choose the Shortcuts tab.
> 4. Select the Universal Access item from the list on the left.
> 5. Choose the preference on the right, and set the keystroke you want 
> (follow the direction at the bottom of the window).
>
> You can at least assign some key stroke to the zoom in/out functions 
> to avoid having to invoke the full zoom options dialog. Hopefully they 
> aren't too different from what you are used to (the bindings that are 
> use by other programs).
>
> Hope that helps.