Re: accelerator keys for non-ASCII character languages

[Christian Rose <menthos menthos com>]

tis 2003-04-15 klockan 19.12 skrev Raphael Finkel:
> Is there any consensus on how do establish accelerator keys for languages
> (Hebrew, Yiddish, Arabic, Farsi, Hindi, Russian, Armenian, ...)  that don't use
> Ascii?  I can easily use & in my translations, but the effects are poor.

This type of shortcuts is in GNOME lingua called "access keys"
(http://developer.gnome.org/documents/style-guide/gnome-glossary-generic-terms.html) and are triggered by using an underscore (_) before the wanted character, not ampersand (&).


> 5.  One suggestion is to place an Ascii accelerator even on non-Ascii menu
> entries, such as "×עקע (&F)".  The result looks ok on pop-up menus, but
> terrible on toolbars.  There is no easy way for me to tell as I enter
> translations how a particular message will be used.

I believe this is currently the most common practice for languages with
non-latin scripts, both for toolbars and menu entries. Some translators
of languages with non-latin scripts may choose to leave out access keys
completely, but that's bad both since it enforces more mouse usage and
therefore potential mouse usage strain, and has overall negative effects
also on accessibility. We in general try to go in the opposite direction
in GNOME.


Christian



PS. I wrote something about access keys last time in November, I think.
I should try to get it in the translator guide, I know.
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-i18n/2002-November/msg00133.html
DS.