Access keys

[Luciano Montanaro]

On giovedì 29 marzo 2007, Gunnar Schmi Dt wrote:
> Hello,
>
> On Donnerstag, 29. März 2007, Ellen Reitmayr wrote:
> > On Thursday 29 March 2007 11:14, Krzysztof Lichota wrote:
> > > Ellen Reitmayr napisał(a):
> > > > Olaf and me also had a look at access keys and would love to see
> > > > the following changes:
> > > >
> > > > Initialisation: Alt-Shift-Space instead of Ctrl
> > > > Direct call of a (known) access key: Alt-Shift-<key>
> > >
> > > Please keep in mind that right Alt is used in Polish keyboard layout
> > > to enter Polish letters (with Shift to make capital letters), so it
> > > should be limited to left Alt only. I hope no keyboard layout uses
> > > left alt with shift :)
>
> I suppose with "right Alt" you mean the key labled something like "Alt
> Gr" (at least on German Keyboards). From a programming point of view that
> key is different from the "left Alt" key (which is simply called "Alt").
>
> In German Keyboard layouts, the "Alt Gr"-key is used for entering
> characters as "@" (used in email addresses) or "€" (the Euro sign).
>
> > oh!
> >
> > but alt-space opens the window menu under Windows and Gnome. we can't
> > use that one.
>
> I suppose we have a misunderstanding here. The suggestion was not to use
> Alt-<key>, but to use "left Alt"-Shift-<key>, i.e., "right Alt (i.e., Alt
> Gr)"-Shift-<key> should not be used for access keys.
>
> If we really want to see a problem with mixing the "Alt" and "Alt Gr"
> keys, we have to answer the following questions:
>
> * Are there keyboards which do not have an "Alt" key?
> * If there are keyboards that do not have an "Alt Gr" key, how often is
> the "Alt" key reconfigured to behave like an "Alt Gr" key (so that in
> fact the "Alt" modifier is missing in the configuration)?
> * How often is the "Alt" key reconfigured to behave like a second "Alt
> Gr" key on keyboards that do have both an "Alt" and an "Alt Gr" key?
>
> * Do we want our solution to work for the users with keyboards in the
> above scenarios?

If there are keyboard without an Alt key out there, we already have a 
problem, since many shortcuts are already unavailable. So I'd say it's 
reasonable to assume we do not have users in this condition. I'm not sure 
about Mac keyboards, maybe they have different symbols on them, but for 
sure they can be configured to send the right keycode. 

The right alt key can be reconfigured easily. I normally use an US layout, 
but assign it to "Compose" to be able to type accented letters and symbols.
There are "international" layout variants that use it as an "AltGr", so each 
key has additonal symbols assigned when pressed with it (with or without 
the shift key).

That's not a problem though. 

>
> Gunnar Schmi Dt

Luciano

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