Keyboard shortcut settings

[Jannis Pohlmann]

Am Tue, 14 Oct 2008 16:47:22 +0200
schrieb Joost Kremers <joostkremers at fastmail.fm>:

> 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".

I know this is bad argumentation, but if I remember correctly,
GNOME and Metacity suffer from the same problem. They just don't
provide a GUI for configuring the Metacity shortcuts (you have to use
gconf-editor to access them). 

However, the problem is this: the shortcuts in the keyboard settings
are a feature of the desktop environment and the shortcuts of xfwm4 are
a feature of the window manager (which is just one single application).
Normally this not an issue at all because applications don't need to
grab their keys on the root window. But in the case of the WM and the
desktop environment there's the possibility of collisions because there
can only be one owner of a key combination on the root window.
That's why I think the dialog for resolving shortcut conflicts is a
nice addition and the "confusion" mainly exists because it's not always
easy to hide the technical aspects of software from the user.

> 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 window manager shortcuts are part of the window manager settings,
so they are obviously window manager shortcuts - there's no option to
make them launch applications in that section.

The "application shortcuts" are actually not only for launching
applications ... well, at least it depends on how you understand the
word application. In my understanding an application is different than
a shell command for example. While the shell command most often is a
one-liner for one specific task an application often builds up its own
environment (e.g. a user interface).

But even if there would be a consensus on how to call these shortcuts,
it's quite obvious that they are there for launching shell commands or
applications - there's simply nothing else to bind to them in the
keyboard settings dialog. 

> 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.

IMHO the shortcuts clearly belong to the keyboard settings, not to
preferred applications. Even if this is not clear to everybode, moving
them from the keyboard settings to a dialog called "application
management" won't help.

  - Jannis
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