multimedia keys vs. keyboard shortcuts (was: Re: rawhide and cooker compared)

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le jeudi 21 février 2008 à 21:06 +0000, Bastien Nocera a écrit :
> On Thu, 2008-02-21 at 20:22 +0100, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:

> > Is there any way out of this dilemma? Is it worth filing a bug? If yes:
> > in Fedora or Gnome ?
> 
> There's already a bug (which I filed) and a patch :)
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=494210

Since you suddenly seem to have suffered amnesia, may I remind the
earlier

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=373934 ?

IMHO your insistence that the shortcut dialog must only expose one
shortcut, and this shortcut must be limited to the keyboard, is totally
artificial and hostile from a user POW. Users are drowning under input
devices. Those devices are not 100% standardized and never will be (chap
plastic). The user just wants a shortcut center when he can set
shortcuts for actions without worrying about input device type, or the
number of shortcuts associated with a particular action. When you ask
them to manage different device shortcuts in different applets, or do
deep-vodoo remapping so the shortcut applet only sees standard events,
you're not simplifying the UI you're pushing the problem somewhere else.

Anyway if you want a simple UI here is one

A. first section :

[shortcut field] [capture button] [action dropdown] [set] [remove]

1. User presses the capture button, presses a shortcut (on any input
device, or even using a multiple-input device combo) and the shortcut
field is filled

2. then he choses in the dropdown one of the available actions to
associate with the new shortcut (if dropdown is too long have any other
sort of selector you feel most appropriated)

3. the set button validates the shortcut creation, the remove button
blanks shortcut field and action dropdown

B. Second section is just a list or a tree of the existing configured
shortcuts, you can sort it by shortcut or action, selecting a line puts
its content in the first section for modification

To create multiple shortcuts for the same action users only need to
associate the same action with different shortcuts. Actions with no
associated shortcuts do not pollute the B section list. Users that do
not want multiple mappings are not bothered with any multiple mapping
list. It's future proof and does not presume of any future evolution in
input hardware.

Ideally apps with shortcut needs would reuse the same UI for their own
prefs.

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot

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