Re: on keyboard shortcuts
Re: on keyboard shortcuts
- Subject: Re: on keyboard shortcuts
- From: Martin Hewitson <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2012 16:09:42 +0200
Ken, thanks for your thoughts. That helps me a lot. You say that providing good keyboard shortcuts in the first place is the best approach, and that's what I think I did, at least for people using a US keyboard. It's hard to predict what others find comfortable and it certainly depends on the keyboard they are using.
I'll take a look at the mechanism the system provides, that might save me a lot of work!
Thanks,
Martin
On 19, Sep, 2012, at 03:21 PM, Ken Thomases <email@hidden> wrote:
> On Sep 19, 2012, at 2:23 AM, Martin Hewitson wrote:
>
>> I distribute a LaTeX typesetting and project manager app and one of the main feature requests is the ability to assign keyboard shortcuts (or rather modify the ones I ship).
>
>> But during my reading I also started to wonder if offering such a feature is frowned upon. I'm finding it hard to find an example desktop app which offers changing the keyboard shortcut bindings.
>
> Xcode. TextWrangler and, presumably, its big brother BBEdit. It's pretty common in programming editors/IDEs. It seems reasonable for your LaTeX app.
>
>> Also, with these solutions, it's not clear to me if the actual keyboard shortcut associated with a menu item can be changed, and whether that will be reflected in the UI. That's really what the users want to do.
>
> If you set the key equivalent and the key equivalent modifier mask of the menu item, then that is reflected in the UI.
>
>
>> Does anyone have any advice, opinions, or suggestions as to how to implement the ability of the user to modify menu item keyboard shortcuts, and whether this is a good idea or not?
>
> Usually, I would suggest that you try to set good shortcuts yourself. You can build in a feature to let your users customize the keyboard shortcuts. It's not a horrible idea. But, sometimes, offering customization is just an excuse to avoid making the hard choices that design demands.
>
> Also, note that the system already comes with a mechanism to allow the user to customize the keyboard shortcuts for the menu items in any application. System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Application Shortcuts > plus ('+') button.
>
> Regards,
> Ken
>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Martin Hewitson
Albert-Einstein-Institut
Max-Planck-Institut fuer
Gravitationsphysik und Universitaet Hannover
Callinstr. 38, 30167 Hannover, Germany
Tel: +49-511-762-17121, Fax: +49-511-762-5861
E-Mail: email@hidden
WWW: http://www.aei.mpg.de/~hewitson
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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