AW: AW: AW: AW: AW: AW: making fallback access keys configurable

[Lubos Lunak]

On Thursday 02 March 2006 12:52, Tobias Anton wrote:
> > When I press Ctrl it could be for any number of reasons,
> > not necessarily to activate access keys.
>
> This is reflected by my proposal.
>
> > If they learned a shortcut they can learn another one -
>
> Wrong answer. If they learned a shortcut they will most probably refuse to
> learn another but rather switch the desktop system. Unnecessary removal of
> established usage patterns is plain poor software quality. Ever heard of
> the "fragility of user trust"?

 Yeah, switching one desktop environment is certainly simpler than switching 
one shortcut. Since we've done this already several times in the past one 
kinda has to wonder how come we still have users.

> > one that doesn't get in the way of everyone else...
>
> The functionality need not get in the way of anyone. We could reach a state
> of unintrusiveness without changing the modifier, but you don't seem to
> believe that. Why don't you? Which other modifier would you propose? There
> are only 8 combinations of three modifiers, all of which are in use at my
> machine.

 No other modifier. Modifiers are so often used keys that using them for 
something else than just being modifiers is asking for trouble. I'm quite 
sure we have some some bugreports about the Alt-alone-activates-menubar 
feature (I'm so glad it doesn't work with standalone menubar for some reason 
so it doesn't get in my way), and don't get me started on the 
Win-key-alone-activates-KMenu feature.

> > Well you get a windowDeactivated event, but this is all a special case,
> > there are tons of other things that people can do with Ctrl+something.
>
> Just as every case is and just as they can do with every other key
> combination.

 Not true. If F12 is assigned to mean "activate accesskeys" in Konqueror, then 
the only single thing people can do with F12 in Konqueror is to activate 
accesskeys.

>
> It is a perfectly clean solution to enter the accesskeys mode as a reaction
> to ctrl being pressed as a key*, as long as the KHTMLView is focused and
> unless the fallback accesskeys supersede any application-specific
> shortcuts.
>
> Long ago, I had a similar discussion when I wanted to use Ctrl+Tab in
> KHTML, which was not possible then because it collided with
> non-configurable key bindings of KWin. The argument was: "The keyboard
> combination is taken, we can't simply reassign it". Now exactly this
> argument holds here, too, and I don't understand why you don't second this
> if your annoyance is taken care of.

 s/non-configurable/default/ . And I silently removed Ctrl+Tab from KWin's 
defaults some time ago and it seems nobody has noticed (or complained, at 
least). So much for never changing shortcuts. Removing Ctrl+Tab from KWin's 
defaults has more benefits that loses and IMHO that's also the case of the 
Ctrl alone shortcut for accesskeys.

-- 
Lubos Lunak
KDE developer
---------------------------------------------------------------------
SuSE CR, s.r.o.  e-mail: l.lunak at suse.cz , l.lunak at kde.org
Drahobejlova 27  tel: +420 2 9654 2373
190 00 Praha 9   fax: +420 2 9654 2374
Czech Republic   http://www.suse.cz/