Re: control-arrow to move focus

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

Murray Cumming wrote:
> 
> Holding down the control key while using the arrow keys "moves focus" in
> GTK+. I'm not really sure what this is supposed to do.

Generally, arrowkeys are used for fine-grain focus movement, and
Ctrl+arrowkeys for a higher level of focus movement.  For example, in
GtkTextView, arrowkeys move cursor one letter (left/right) or one line
(up/down) at a time, and Ctrl+arrowKeys move it one word
(Ctrl+left/Right) or one paragraph (Ctrl+Up/Down) at a time.

> For instance, in the gtk-demo, ctrl-arrow in the left-hand TreeView
> moves an outline rectangle up and down the rows, but this doesn't seem
> to be useful for anything. In the Dialog and Message Boxes example,
> ctrl-arrow has exactly the same effect as arrow - it just moves the
> selection to the next widget.

Where there is no sensible 'higher level' of focus movement,
Ctrl+arrowkeys just does the same as unmodified arrowkeys.  For example,
in a dialog, there isn't really a higher level of widget grouping that
you could move focus between.  (The exceptions perhaps being paned
windows and notebook controls, which we currently have different
shortcuts for navigating between).

> I'm asking because I'd like to use the Control key as a modifier key
> when doing keyboard navigation in Nautilus list views.

How would you like to use it specifically?

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson ireland sun com    Desktop Engineering Group
http://www.sun.ie                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems