modifier-only shortcuts

[Jakob Petsovits]

On Saturday, 8. July 2006 16:49, Alexander Dymo wrote:
> On Friday 07 July 2006 19:18, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> > On Friday 07 July 2006 6:44, LiuCougar wrote:
> > > alt+space is widely used in Asia as the trigger key for input method,
> > > so I do not think it should be the default either
> >
> > ctrl+space?
>
> No please! This has been used for ages in IDE's (like KDevelop)
> for code completion.

Perhaps there should be some thought about what kind of shortcuts should be 
used by applications and what other kind should be used by desktop-wide stuff 
like keyboard switching, window/desktop management and whatever.

When I was on Windows, my impression was that Ctrl and Shift are used for 
application-level shortcuts while Alt and even more Win are usually not 
touched by the application and Windows itself uses most of those shortcuts.
(Maybe that impression was inaccurate, and it's some time ago already.)

Whereas in KDE, all of those modifiers are mixed without much thought behind 
it. Applications use Alt and Ctrl interchangably, depending on what's still 
unoccupied, and desktop-wide shortcuts clash with local ones (occasionally, 
at least). I don't know what to expect from a certain modifier.

There needs to be some system behind it, maybe this would be a good candidate 
for inclusion into the new Human Interface Guidelines. (And if shortcuts are 
to be copied from other desktops, they should also be evaluated if they fit 
into that scheme.)

<yelling for 10 minutes>Consistency!!!</yelling>

bye,
  Jakob