Re: Redo consistent keybindings for all. Ctrl+Shift+Z

On Mon, 14 Mar 2005, Ted Lemon wrote:

> Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 18:57:16 -0600
> From: Ted Lemon <mellon@fugue.com>
> To: Alan Horkan <horkana@maths.tcd.ie>
> Cc: AbiWord Developer Mailing List <abiword-dev@abisource.com>
> Subject: Re: Redo consistent keybindings for all. Ctrl+Shift+Z
>
> Eek. You should use key bindings that are consistent with the UI
> guidelines on each operating system

Should we really? Dont just assert it as being a good idea. If you must
please explain why exactly we should do it that way? [1]

Historically Abiword has been heavily influenced by Microsoft Word first
and always tried to do the same or better (but we already dont match the
keybindings of Microsoft Word all that well anymore). After that Abiword
has been consistent with itself across various platforms with platform
specifics coming somewhere further down the list.

It makes maintainance - not just of code but also of documentation - a
whole lot more difficult if we were to decide we wanted to create a very
different abiword on each platform.

If people are determined to customise Abiword the source code allows them
to do so and in fact Abiword has a mechanism to support other sets of
keybindings (like Vi and Emacs) if people really want them but I think it
is very important that the defaults remain as consistent as possible.

> - GNOME on GNOME, Windows on Windows, Mac on Mac.

The Gnome Human Interface Guidelines are all well and good (except
when they're not) but it is more important that Gnumeric and Abiword use
keybinding that are consistent with each other. In this case I'm saying
we should follow the Gnome Guidelines and use Ctrl+Shift+Z for Redo but
that we should do the same on Windows too.

> The key bindings on Mac are quite dissimilar to those on GNOME - in
> general, anytime the control key is used in GNOME, the equivalent key
> binding on Mac uses the Apple/Cloverleaf key; the control key is not
> used as a shortcut key at all on Mac.

I thought you said they were dissimilar? That is not really dissimiliar
at all.

I think your confusion lies in that you believe I was suggesting usign
Ctrl rather than the standard Meta key for the Mac but it far easier in
most cases to say "Ctrl" rather than "Meta" and need to explain the
Exceptoinal case of the Mac (and BeOS used to use Alt instead of Ctrl as
the meta key and I had the misfortune of encountering it on some really
obscure versions of Netscape on Unix somewhere).

I assume that on the Mac Frank did pretty much a straight swap
replacing Ctrl for Apple Meta key in almost all cases, which is very
similar and quite consistent and what most applications do when ported
properly to Mac OS.

Sincerely

Alan Horkan

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Abiword is Awesome http://www.abisource.com

[1] Other well known software doing it counts only as an example not an
explanation or a reason.
Received on Tue Mar 15 03:02:35 2005