Keyboard shortcuts get wild.

[Anders Lund]

On Lørdag den 5. februar 2011, Mark wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> let me first point you to this image (kde 4.6.0) :
> http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/5398/rightmousebuttondesktop.png
> 
> Oke, first one shortcut in that image.
> I consider myself a experienced computer user in both windows and linux but
> today i learned new shortcut things.
> ALT + d, a (which is pressing ALT and type 'd' and 'a' while ALT is
> pressed.. i didn't knew any combinations like that before)
> 
> Now lets consider what i wanted to do. What i wanted is opening the dialog
> to add widgets to my desktop.. that's it. Now that shortcut isn't working
> and i reported that here : https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=265527 but
> i wonder what the rationale is behind ALT + d, a...
> 
> ALT, i can understand.. but D and A..? What does D mean? What does A mean?
> The thing i want to do is "open the dialog to add widgets" and to describe
> it simple i would say "add widgets" but i can't find any of that back in
> the shortcut.. I would have expected something like this "ALT + a, w" for
> "adding widgets" and "ALT + a, a" for adding activities...
> 
> One that is obvious is the desktop settings is ALT + d, ALT + s even though
> ALT + d, s is also working so i suspect there is a bug in there. However,
> it's not consistent with other setting shortcuts. You can see the desktop
> settings as "properties" and in dolphin they use "ALT + Return" for that.
> (what i find odd is that ALT + Return opens dolphin when not opened..)
> 
> so perhaps it's time to take a real good look at all our shortcuts and
> define some generic application shortcuts that are the same in every
> application that makes KDE SC.
> 
> Just a little brainstorm.
> What do you think?

I find it confusing that Plasma uses two formats, some are "ALT + D, ALT + A" 
(Activities), some are "ALT + D, A" (add widgets). The latter does not work 
btw, on my system it shows the activities pane. 

"ALT + D, L" (lock widgets) works, but i find that spooky - if I press ALT + 
D, how long will it take berore reset? It's like a hidden menu :o

Plasmoids that can be configured all claims "ALT + D, S", but of course it 
does not work for all of them - in fact it works in some cases for the latest 
clicked plasmoid /on the desktop/ -- those on the panel can not be reached by 
keyboard in my experience. Since there is no other concept of a "current" 
plasmoid, this is rather spooky too, I have to click an applet to know that 
its config dialog will popup on "ALT + D, S" - if it is a ??? (yaWP or fading 
calender works, but eventlist does not).

All in all, it is safer to be a clicker, at least when it comes to configuring 
plasmoids...

Hm, looks like there is room for improvement :-)


-- 
Venlig hilsen,
Anders