Atari Mega Archive 1/Atari Mega Archive - Volume 1.iso/lists/gem/l_0799/442

Internet Message Format | 1994-08-27 | 7KB

Date: Sun, 12 Jun 94 15:03:00 +0200
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
From: [e-mail] (Bo Leuf)
Subject: Re: Proposal 6
To: [e-mail]
Precedence: bulk


[comments mostly to]
 > Proposed Keyboard Shortcut Standard  v6 - 10 June 1994
 > ===========================================================
 > [...]

I've followed the discussion for a while and although most of this is very
good, but I still have problems agreeing with some of the proposed items. For
one I feel that it far too often some suggestions try to "standardize" too many
functions at this stage. Also I find the logic a bit inconsistent with regards
to Shift/Ctrl/Shift-Ctrl as modifiers. I'll take up a few with some added
thoughts:


> CTRL A -                 Select All
> Shift CTRL A -           Deselect All

Strictly speaking, "deselect all" is just "deselect marked items". In this
sense it would also remove markers for single blocks etc. In this light I feel
that "select all" is much stonger and should require a shift modifier to in
some way protect from accidental selection, especially as some have noted that
ctrl-A is rather easy to hit unintentionally. I would much prefer that the
order was reversed:

 Ctrl-A = Deselect marked (all), i.e. "Abandon" selection
 Shift-Ctrl-A = Select all


> Delete -                 Delete selected objects

By similar reasoning, "delete selected objects" is a very strong command since
in theory "all" can be selected (which can in fact be an entire partition on
your harddisk), much more so than either:
> Shift Del -              Delete to end of line
> CTRL Del -               Delete word to right

I would of course expect a well-behaved system to request confirmation on
"delete selected", but I would also prefer a modified key here, not just
delete, since this key is perilously close to both BS and return.

Ideally:
 Delete = your standard delete-following/single-current-item-when-editing
          (character in wp, cell in spreadsheet)
 Shift-Ctrl-Delete = Delete selected (multiple items)
although most might settle for Ctrl-Delete here, see below.

Shift-Delete, Ctrl-Delete (and -BS) may of couse be ok for editing text, but
again, isn't deleting to end of line stronger than just next word? I would
therefore expect these commands to be given in the order:
 Shift-Delete = delete next word (to right)
 Ctrl-Delete = delete to end of line, or delete entire line
and also
 Shift-BS = delete previous word (to left)
 Ctrl-BS = delete to beginning of line

I must here agree with the the expressed opinion that Shift-BS is _not_ the
best choice for a destructive operation, since it is very common to type
capitals by just holding Shift and too easily forget to release Shift before
doing a simple destructive backspace. In the above, reversed order of
interpretation, at least it wouldn't be the entire line that goes. Undo or not,
this could be a very annoying thing as it would likey keep occuring.

As given however, these are very text(edit)-specific commands, and I'm not
entirely happy with them even in this context. I feel that they can be defined
in a more system-wide general sense and combined functionally with insert (see
spreadsheets) as follows:

 Delete = delete current item (cell contents)
 Shift-Delete = cut current/selected (cell contents) to (internal) buffer
 Ctrl-Delete = delete selected (cells' contents) ("stronger" than cut)

 Shift-Insert = copy current/selected (cell contents) to (internal) buffer
 Ctrl-Insert = paste copy buffer to current (cell, and following)

Note that here Delete alone should _not_ affect any _selected_ items beyond the
current one (active cell, next character, whatever). By contrast
(modified)-Delete would act primarily on selected items and it would be up to
the application whether action would be allowed on current item if there are no
selections active, or would not be taken at all (perhaps with an alert), or
would be applied to "all" (definitely with an alert confirmation!).

Insert by itself and Shift-Insert have varying usages today. I don't myself
feel that there is any inherent problem with the proposal that Insert becomes
an insert/overwrite mode toggle, even though this does away with the equally
common usage that Insert = insert one space at current position. Perhaps it
should be considered whether this mode-toggle would better be assigned
Shift-Ctrl-Insert instead to preserve the simple insert function as an
unmodified Insert?

Some might say that the delete/insert set could _in principle_ be extended
with:
 Shift-Ctrl-Delete = cut current to file...
 Shift-Ctrl-Insert = paste from file...

_BUT_ these are probably better handled as "clipboard" extensions, (especially
considering a possible Shift-Ctrl-Insert = toggle mode):
 Shift-Ctrl-C = copy current/selected to file...
 Shift-Ctrl-X = cut current/selected to file...
 Shift-Ctrl-V = paste from file...

Many programs do make a distinction between an internal copy buffer and
external clipboard. Delete/insert commands seem best for the former, and
clipboard extensions seem more appropriate for disk reading and writing of
selected blocks. (Those who still prefer Ctrl-R and Ctrl-W can of course make
this their personal configuration instead.)


> CTRL D -                 Abandon Window (put in a menu or iconify)

A better English mnemonic here might be "Diminish window".
I find Ctrl-D to be a fairly common delete (line) command today, so I'm sure
this one will cause considerable confusion ;)

> CTRL Y -                 Delete line
> Shift CTRL Y -           Delete Paragraph

Very text specific, not very intuitive, but undeniably an established standard
of sorts, at least as far as Ctrl-Y goes.


> CTRL F -                 Find
> CTRL G -                 Find next
> Shift CTRL G -           Find previous
> CTRL R -                 Replace
> CTRL T -                 Replace Next
> Shift CTRL T -           Replace previous

Now _why_ make this take more entries than really necessary?

 Ctrl-F = Find (next)
 Shift-Ctrl-F = Find (next) and Replace
 Ctrl-G = Call up Find&Replace dialog (with direction toggles and all)

This should surely suffice. If there is no find-string defined, Ctrl-F should
function just like Ctrl-G. If there is no replace-string defined, Shift-Ctrl-F
should also function like Ctrl-G.

I am however rather unhappy with Ctrl-G as the selection here, since
 Crtl-G = Goto (line, page, whatever)
is a very common and well-established command in many applications which also
use Find&Replace. I'd like to instead suggest:

 Shift-Ctrl-D = Call up Find&Replace Dialog (with direction toggles)
Actually, this could even be "Call up last-used function's settings Dialog" to
make it a very general command. Good programs should be at least this context
sensitive, shouldn't they?


There seems happily to be a consensus on most shortcut key bindings, although
there is also a tendency to lose sight of the proposal's concept that we are
here dealing with _minimum_ system-wide application _defaults_, not a rigid
Apple-like "always do it this way or we will not endorse your application".

Many modern applications (and shells) also provide even now for very free
configuration of bindings by the user. I for one will modify some settings in
light of this proposal and will definitely try to accomodate both these and a
*.SYS parsing in future development.

 (illegible signature) Bo Leuf
 - Email: [e-mail]