Re: [Usability] Re: [Gimp-developer] Redo shortcut (was: Undo shortcut)

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On Thu, 2003-09-25 at 19:08, David Neary wrote:

> If you like, I'm arguing populism here. More people use 
> Ctrl-Shift-Z as redu than Ctrl-R.

Having said that, there are probably more (non-gtk/GNOME) apps out there
that use Ctrl-Y than either Ctrl-Shift-Z or Ctrl-R :)

> If the GIMP were the only graphics application choosing this
> keybinding I would agree. I guess that when in doubt, following
> the crowd is a fairly safe bet (note this leaves open the
> possibility of not following the crowd when not in doubt ;).

Somebody pointed out earlier that GIMP is kind of a special case for
Undo/Redo because you often want to flip quickly between the two
states.  I have some sympathy for that argument, but remember also that
for much the same reason, GIMP provides a special tool (the Undo window)
in which you can quickly toggle between any two consecutive historical
states using only the up and down arrow keys, which is even more
ergonomically-friendly than Ctrl-anything :)  I guess the question is
whether it's worth going against the HIG on ergonomic grounds, when the
application already provides a more efficient way to achieve the same
effect anyway.  (Although admittedly it's only " more efficient" once
you've actually navigated to the Undo dock in the first place.)

Whimsical muse: since there are almost no other gtk/GNOME apps that use
Redo (and the only one I can think of doesn't use Ctrl-Shift-Z either),
it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that we might end up changing
the HIG to whatever you decide anyway :)

Cheeri,
Calum.

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

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems