Re: Keyboard keys, commands, shortcuts, "accelerators"

[David Z Maze <dmaze@debian.org>]

Miernik <miernik@ctnet.pl> writes:

> I'd appreciate to see a project of standaraling keyboard shortcuts 
> among all applications which perform common operations (file save, 
> open, cut&paste).

Ow ow ow.  So let's pick two different sets of keyboard accelerators,
both of which are in fairly widespread use: the Emacs keybindings (C-a
for start-of-line, etc.) and the Windows keybindings (C-v for paste,
etc.)  These actually have a fairly minimal overlap, and so you run
into programs like Konqueror that try to implement both.  This lets me
do something I do all the time:

  C-e (move to end of line, Emacs)
  C-SPC (in Emacs, this would enter select mode, more or less)
  move cursor (should select text; no UI response, but there isn't any
    in Emacs)
  C-w (in Emacs, this cuts text -- where'd my browser window go?)

I think the existence of conflicting key commands, like C-w for either
cut or close window, dooms you.  And you'd just be trying to fight an
Emacs vs. vi battle, anyways, which is intrinsically doomed to
failure.

(That having been said, programmable keybindings with multiple sets of
sane defaults would be a win.  GUI programs don't seem to do the modal
input thing [I've seen very few that could even pretend to do vi
emulation], so I'd make the normal default Emacs-like, and that seems
to be what most Linux GUI programs have done.)

> Another thing I would do:
> a consistent line-commenting character among all languages/config files. 
> I propose #  (because it looks like a small fence, and what is behind 
> the fence is not seen by the application). Like in bash scripts.

#include <stdio.h>  // :p

-- 
David Maze         dmaze@debian.org      http://people.debian.org/~dmaze/
"Theoretical politics is interesting.  Politicking should be illegal."
	-- Abra Mitchell