[kde] KMail key binding and the User Interface Guidelines

[Henrique Pinto]

Hi Robin!

I'm forwarding your message to the kde-usability and kmail-devel 
mailinglists, where it is likely to get more attention.

Robin Rosenberg escreveu:

>Not sure if I should report this as a bug or not. 
>
>For some time KMail has not obeyed the "standards" with regard to the common keys like arrow-up, down, Ctrl-A etc. In
>most applications arrow up mens "focus on next item", in KMail it is "scroll down in mail". Ctrl-A means select all item, i KMail
>it means select all messages, typing a letter focuses on the list item starting with that letter (in kmail its a combination
>oa actions and selecting items).
>
>Of course these are useful to some and people coming from inconsistent mail clients may not notice the inconsistency. I do notice. The
>consistency in KDE's user interface is a big reason for me preferring KDE over Gnome (and GTK applications in general) I'm used to being 
>able to navigate just about everything from the keyboard using  the "standard" conventions common in Windows and KDE and some other 
>environments. Kmail breaks a lot.
>
>I could subscribe to the idea that without a predefined focus some non-standard bindings could be used, but when I explicitly select a pane, by
>clicking in it or using tab to shift focus to the next pane, things should work the same in all applications.
>
>The "focus" is very unclear in KMail. If I use the arrow keys it appears that the messge has focus, but if I press Ctrl-A it appears that the message list has focus
>pressing J (or something not prebound in Kmail) shifts focus on the first message box starting with the letter 'J'.  Pressing 'K' does not focus one the KDE-list folder
>
>If I click on a message and press Ctrl-A, the whole message would be selected in any KDE application I can think of. Except KMail. 
>
>Another thing is the +/- keys which is most apps mean open/close trees in lists. Again Kmail has it's own idea.
>
>A very "similar" application is KNode, but keybindings are very different, but more consistent with the KDE User Interface Guidelines. 
>
>It seems KDE is moving towards the ad-hoc key bindings of traditional unix apps, where every developer has his own standard.
>
>Ofcourse, considering the alternatives, KMail is still my choice, but these are things that annoy me and are possibly very annoying to peoply who cannot choise their method
>of interaction as easily. 
>
>-- robin
>  
>
--
    Henrique Pinto
    henrique.pinto at kdemail.net