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A mouseless tale: trying for a keyboard-driven desktop

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Re: A mouseless tale: trying for a keyboard-driven desktop

#61

Post by slightwinder »

NBJack wrote: post #25

This is one of the things that pisses me off about MacOS. Every other majot OS out there at least offers a good failsafe keyboard navigation built in to each UI component. In a pinch, the keyboard is your friend, at least until your pointing device is back up. MacOS: lol, sorry, bluetooth settings require a pointing device to add a new one. Keyboard navigation? Sure. It worked up until this part, but we didn't bother…

Interesting. Did this change in the last decade? I remember MacOS as being very keyboard-friendly out-of-the-box and awesome for automating GUI. But then again, the last MacOS I used was 10.6, around 15 years ago. And I heard automating GUI suffered in recent versions. So they lost on the keyboard-abilities too, I guess.

Re: A mouseless tale: trying for a keyboard-driven desktop

#62

Post by dfc »

liendolucas wrote: post #46
gal_anonym wrote: post #2

PaperVM is really neat. Much simpler to setup, learn and understand than for example i3.

I have been using i3 for years now. Rock solid, extremely lightweight and very simple to use. Once configured I never found myself looking back at it. Documentation is superb, and didn't take me more than a week to get used to it. Never tried PaperWM, nor other WM as nothing has been simpler nor more effective than i3. Probably dwm but I think is for those that like to have some hands on and tweaking.

Of course nothing will ever be simpler than i3 if you never try anything else. I am happy with sway and have resisted the urge to try hyprland/paperwm. But I'm not going to delude myself and say it's because sway is better. It's just that I don't want to endure the switching costs.

Re: A mouseless tale: trying for a keyboard-driven desktop

#63

Post by kps »

perdomon wrote: post #27
NBJack wrote: post #25

This is one of the things that pisses me off about MacOS. Every other majot OS out there at least offers a good failsafe keyboard navigation built in to each UI component. In a pinch, the keyboard is your friend, at least until your pointing device is back up. MacOS: lol, sorry, bluetooth settings require a pointing device to add a new one. Keyboard navigation? Sure. It worked up until this part, but we didn't bother…

The worst for me is being able to select the non-default option in an alert window. Sometimes CMD + 'the first letter of the word in the button' works, but that's like a 30% chance. How is there not a standard for that? I'd even accept the arrow keys + Enter at this point.

> How is there not a standard for that?

There was, long ago, in the Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines.

Re: A mouseless tale: trying for a keyboard-driven desktop

#64

Post by NBJack »

mvanbaak wrote: post #42
NBJack wrote: post #25

This is one of the things that pisses me off about MacOS. Every other majot OS out there at least offers a good failsafe keyboard navigation built in to each UI component. In a pinch, the keyboard is your friend, at least until your pointing device is back up. MacOS: lol, sorry, bluetooth settings require a pointing device to add a new one. Keyboard navigation? Sure. It worked up until this part, but we didn't bother…

I just tried, and if you hit 'Tab' a couple of times, it will select the 'Connect' button that shows up after the name of the discovered devices. From time to time I need this to re-pair with my, very old, logitech wireless mouse, that's why I knew it is totally possible with just the keyboard.

This issue was with 'Add'. My Mini is still hampered by this flaw.

Re: A mouseless tale: trying for a keyboard-driven desktop

#65

Post by liendolucas »

dfc wrote: post #62
liendolucas wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been using i3 for years now. Rock solid, extremely lightweight and very simple to use. Once configured I never found myself looking back at it. Documentation is superb, and didn't take me more than a week to get used to it. Never tried PaperWM, nor other WM as nothing has been simpler nor more effective than i3. Probably dwm but I think is for those that like to have some hands on and tweaking.

Of course nothing will ever be simpler than i3 if you never try anything else. I am happy with sway and have resisted the urge to try hyprland/paperwm. But I'm not going to delude myself and say it's because sway is better. It's just that I don't want to endure the switching costs.

My comment was a little bit short. I have used plenty of window manages in the past: window maker, blackbox (now dead I guess?), gnome (from the era of RedHat 6.2 onwards), KDE, Ubuntu desktops (I don't know if is Gnome tweaked or something else). Perhaps I stay loyal to i3 because it was the first tiling manager that I tried and seemed pretty straightforward to be productive with it. Have to try other ones as well but never find time to do so. Same story happened to me with Vim. I still need to give Emacs a shot.

Re: A mouseless tale: trying for a keyboard-driven desktop

#66

Post by dizhn »

eimrine wrote: post #55
PeeMcGee wrote: post #35

It's really humbling and everyone should do it every now and then. An old coworker coined "mouseless monday mornings" where we'd unplug our mice(?) until lunch to start each week. We all learned a lot about how to be more efficient in our IDE's, learned tons of useful OS and browser shortcuts, observed tons of accessibility flaws in our product, and all of that during the dullest hours of the week.

One is so stupid, to learn some "useful shorcuts" which are existing only until some megacorp is going to change anything in their software (OS, IDE, browser has almost none of them). I am a huge proponent of learning touchtyping, then vim and... nothing more.

Set up your own shortcuts for the software that matters to you. Terminal emulator and text editor/IDE will pay for the effort spent very quickly.

Re: A mouseless tale: trying for a keyboard-driven desktop

#67

Post by pyth0 »

aarond0623 wrote: post #49
j16sdiz wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you enable this setting? If yes, can you tell me more what's missing? https://support.apple.com/en-us/guide/mac-help/mchlc06d1059/...

Doesn't this require foresight that your mouse may fail? It isn't enabled by default. Any other OS, you'll be able to at least tab around without the mouse.

It wasn't on the page linked above but on this page [1] at the bottom it reads:

> To quickly turn Full Keyboard Access, Sticky Keys, Slow Keys, or the Accessibility Keyboard on or off using the Accessibility Shortcuts panel, press Option-Command-F5 (or if your Mac or Magic Keyboard has Touch ID, quickly press Touch ID three times).

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/mac-help/mchlae61a6de/...

Re: A mouseless tale: trying for a keyboard-driven desktop

#68

Post by NBJack »

j16sdiz wrote: post #38
NBJack wrote: post #25

This is one of the things that pisses me off about MacOS. Every other majot OS out there at least offers a good failsafe keyboard navigation built in to each UI component. In a pinch, the keyboard is your friend, at least until your pointing device is back up. MacOS: lol, sorry, bluetooth settings require a pointing device to add a new one. Keyboard navigation? Sure. It worked up until this part, but we didn't bother…

Did you enable this setting? If yes, can you tell me more what's missing? https://support.apple.com/en-us/guide/mac-help/mchlc06d1059/...

To your credit, this does indeed work, but I won't retract my point. It's super-kludgy to go through everything like this, and I definitely can't leave it on all the time. I'm spoiled by the innate tab, shift-tab options of other operating systems. Ironically, when I tried to turn on the accessibility feature just through keyboard nav of Settings, I failed to get to the checkbox (there is at least a global Accessibility shortcut...if it's switched on).

I'm at a loss to explain why this particular navigation issue shows up in the Settings app. Other, less critical parts of the OS actually work fine.

Re: A mouseless tale: trying for a keyboard-driven desktop

#70

Post by Henchman21 »

eimrine wrote: post #55
PeeMcGee wrote: post #35

It's really humbling and everyone should do it every now and then. An old coworker coined "mouseless monday mornings" where we'd unplug our mice(?) until lunch to start each week. We all learned a lot about how to be more efficient in our IDE's, learned tons of useful OS and browser shortcuts, observed tons of accessibility flaws in our product, and all of that during the dullest hours of the week.

One is so stupid, to learn some "useful shorcuts" which are existing only until some megacorp is going to change anything in their software (OS, IDE, browser has almost none of them). I am a huge proponent of learning touchtyping, then vim and... nothing more.

Do you also flog yourself when you make mistakes? Or is that just something you think others should do?
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