Keyboard shortcut settings

[Joost Kremers]

On Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 04:23:38PM +0200, Jannis Pohlmann wrote:
> This would only mess things up in xfce4-settings-manager. I guess
> people just have to accept the fact that there are two shortcut
> dialogs. However, with 4.6 we're striving to make things a bit more
> transparent by allowing to resolve shortcut conflicts between xfwm4 and
> the other dialog, similar to how it can be seen in this video:
> 
> http://lunar-linux.org/~jannis/videos/xfce/xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts-20080907.ogv

that would be a good idea, but i can't help but feel that it's still
confusing to users. i've been using (almost) linux for 10 years, used xfce
for most of that time, and this is the first time i hear about a difference
between keyboard shortcuts for xfce on the one hand and xfwm on the other.
while i understand it makes perfect sense from a developer's point of view,
a mortal user (i think) would be easily confused.

the problem, i think, lies in the fact that window manager shortcuts are a
kind of keyboard shortcuts, i.e., the former are a subcategory of the
latter. as a user, i would therefore expect the wm shortcuts to be found
with the (more general) "keyboard shortcuts".

my suggestion: rename the shortcuts under keyboard preferences to
"application shortcuts". that is pretty much what they are, and to a mortal
user the distinction between "window manager shortcuts" and "application
shortcuts" makes a lot more sense: wm shortcuts are obviously a different
thing from application shortcuts, they're certainly not a subcategory.

the question then of course becomes whether application shortcuts should
still be in the keyboard settings. personally, i think it would make sense
to merge them with the "preferred applications" dialogue and rename it to
"application management" or something.

just my €0.02.


-- 
Joost Kremers
Life has its moments