Re: key bindings and case sensitivity

From: Alan Horkan (horkana_at_maths.tcd.ie)
Date: Sun Apr 04 2004 - 12:19:12 EDT

  • Next message: Hubert Figuiere: "Re: key bindings and case sensitivity"

    On Sun, 4 Apr 2004, Tomas Frydrych wrote:

    > Date: Sun, 04 Apr 2004 15:16:46 +0100
    > From: Tomas Frydrych <tomasfrydrych_at_yahoo.co.uk>
    > To: abiword-dev_at_abisource.com
    > Subject: key bindings and case sensitivity
    >
    >
    >
    > someone changed key assignment of Ctrl+s to 'fileSaveAs', I have

    that would be a mistake/oversight
    it should definately be Ctrl+S for Save

    > changed that back to 'fileSave' as that is what I expect from the
    > binding and pretty much all normal applications I recall using behave
    > that way (with the exception of Emacs, but then that is not a
    > 'normal' application).

    > I have contemplated also changing Ctrl+Shift+s to 'fileSaveAs', since
    > the idea clearly was to allow quick access to the Save As dialogue,

    you are definately correct
    it should definately be Ctrl+Shift+S for Save As

    > but upon reflection decided against that, because that means that if
    > the user has CAPSLOCK on, Ctrl+s becomes 'fileSaveAs'. I think all
    > letter based keyboard shortcuts should be case insensitive.

    I'm not entirely sure how this works.
    If I recally correctly things are done a little differntly when keys are
    used for keyboard accellarators.
    Even though the combination of Caps Lock and S is the same as Shift + S I
    believe that for keyboard shortcuts that the meanings of the keys are
    largely ignored.

    We talk about keyboard shortcuts as Ctrl+S even though strictly speaking
    that would be Ctrl + 's' that is the lowercase character S.
    Instead for simplicity (I imagine) keybingings refer more to the actual
    key rather than the associated meanings.

    Think of Zoom, very often + is used to Zoom In but programmers often mean
    the key with the + , which on an American/British keyboard means you would
    actually have to combing Shift and = to get it even though they still
    allow you to just hit = (as well as =) to enable zooming.
    (I realise this is not an ideal example please dont nit pick to much)

    The point I am trying to make is that I am pretty sure the Caps Lock key
    is ignored in the case of Shift + Letter keybindings and is only honoured
    when dealing with text input. (Unfortunately I dont have much that I can
    test this with although my test with Mozilla fits this theory).
    So your intial reaction was correct, and dont worry about the Caps Lock.

    Hope that makes sense.

    Sincerely

    Alan Horkan
    "Dont know much about programming but I know what I like."



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sun Apr 04 2004 - 12:20:21 EDT