Designing a coherent set of keyboard shortcuts
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Designing a coherent set of keyboard shortcuts
1–10 of 29 posts
Re: Designing a coherent set of keyboard shortcuts
#2forget coherent, i want consistent.
using a mac for work and a windows machine for personal use messes with me. add in editors having inconsistent emacs keybindings, and some macos apps respecting some subset of emacs keybindings while others don't...and then a kinesis advantage to make some of the solutions non-viable
Re: Designing a coherent set of keyboard shortcuts
#3forget coherent, i want consistent. using a mac for work and a windows machine for personal use messes with me. add in editors having inconsistent emacs keybindings, and some macos apps respecting some subset of emacs keybindings while others don't...and then a kinesis advantage to make some of the solutions non-viable
One reason I’ve developed such a dependency on mousing and not short cuts. Now it’s just windows and macos but before it was windows, macos, unity, and gnome 3. Using the mouse is sane. 2-4 sets of shortcuts is not.
Re: Designing a coherent set of keyboard shortcuts
#4forget coherent, i want consistent. using a mac for work and a windows machine for personal use messes with me. add in editors having inconsistent emacs keybindings, and some macos apps respecting some subset of emacs keybindings while others don't...and then a kinesis advantage to make some of the solutions non-viable
The first step of consistency is determining and agreeing on what you want the computer to do. I don't see this happening, and it kind of removes the point of having multiple DEs, etc, for experimentation. Though perhaps after investigating in this direction, one might understand how users want to interact with the system key bindings, if at all, and be able to break down user interaction into digestible chunks.
Everyone has heard (or... most people) about a lot of the clever Apple shortcuts, but they are intensely not discoverable. People still need to go out of their way to learn them. It's just it's Apple, so no one cares.
Re: Designing a coherent set of keyboard shortcuts
#5Coherent and consistent keyboard shortcuts can be incredibly helpful. We spent a ton of time on the choices for GitAlias https://github.com/gitalias/gitalias
I fully agree with the article saying "your users might not even agree on what constitutes a typical workflow". And it's painful to cut shortcuts that people like for their workflows, but that don't cohere well, or can't be consistent.
Re: Designing a coherent set of keyboard shortcuts
#6forget coherent, i want consistent. using a mac for work and a windows machine for personal use messes with me. add in editors having inconsistent emacs keybindings, and some macos apps respecting some subset of emacs keybindings while others don't...and then a kinesis advantage to make some of the solutions non-viable
As a long time Windows user who switched to a Mac at work at one point, I was pleasantly surprised by the extent to which I was able to make the Mac conform to my muscle memory. If I remember correctly, I basically swapped the software mapping command and control. On top of this, I had to finagle with a system shortcut or two. In the end, everything just worked as if it was a Windows machine.
Concerning Emacs, I've found that a combination of QMK and AHK allow me to make everything work more or less like Emacs. Ultimately I think I might be lucky to have a decent memory for this sort of thing, but I've found that I can use the keyboard for everything everywhere.
Re: Designing a coherent set of keyboard shortcuts
#7forget coherent, i want consistent. using a mac for work and a windows machine for personal use messes with me. add in editors having inconsistent emacs keybindings, and some macos apps respecting some subset of emacs keybindings while others don't...and then a kinesis advantage to make some of the solutions non-viable
Even on Windows alone some shortcuts are terribly inconsistent.
Redo (Ctrl-Y or Ctrl-Shift-Z)
Replace (Ctrl-H, Ctrl-R or Ctrl-Shift-F)
Save As (F12 or Ctrl-Alt-S)
"Move current paragraph up" is inconsistent even between Microsoft's own programs: Alt-Shift-Up in Word, Alt-Up in VS Code and Visual Studio. Notepad++ adds to the pain with Ctrl-Shift-Up.
Ctrl-F doesn't open a Find dialog box in Outlook, I could go on.
Re: Designing a coherent set of keyboard shortcuts
#8forget coherent, i want consistent. using a mac for work and a windows machine for personal use messes with me. add in editors having inconsistent emacs keybindings, and some macos apps respecting some subset of emacs keybindings while others don't...and then a kinesis advantage to make some of the solutions non-viable
Even on Windows alone some shortcuts are terribly inconsistent. Redo (Ctrl-Y or Ctrl-Shift-Z) Replace (Ctrl-H, Ctrl-R or Ctrl-Shift-F) Save As (F12 or Ctrl-Alt-S) "Move current paragraph up" is inconsistent even between Microsoft's own programs: Alt-Shift-Up in Word, Alt-Up in VS Code and Visual Studio. Notepad++ adds to the pain with Ctrl-Shift-Up. Ctrl-F doesn't open a Find dialog box in Outlook, I could go on.
>"Ctrl-F doesn't open a Find dialog box in Outlook, I could go on."
You would think, at some point, they would add this in as an optional feature. I wonder how many people submit this as a piece of feedback.
Re: Designing a coherent set of keyboard shortcuts
#9On the subject of consistent keyboard shortcuts, does anyone here have a copy of the complete Common User Access documents? What I can find online (linked to from Wikipedia below) is incomplete.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access
Alternatively, I'm also interested in a comprehensive listing of Common User Access keyboard shortcuts. Without the original documents themselves, I'm not sure how comprehensive (or accurate) what I'm seeing online is.
Re: Designing a coherent set of keyboard shortcuts
#10forget coherent, i want consistent. using a mac for work and a windows machine for personal use messes with me. add in editors having inconsistent emacs keybindings, and some macos apps respecting some subset of emacs keybindings while others don't...and then a kinesis advantage to make some of the solutions non-viable
One reason I’ve developed such a dependency on mousing and not short cuts. Now it’s just windows and macos but before it was windows, macos, unity, and gnome 3. Using the mouse is sane. 2-4 sets of shortcuts is not.
for a while i was exclusively using gnome3...without getting into a gnome2 vs gnome3 debate (gnome has been my default since 1.4, I found the gnome2 introduction just as jarring as the gnome3 introduction) --
Using soley gnome3, I feel like I was able to reach peak productivity. I was able to easily switch between tasks by allowing them all to be fullscreen, and just scrolling through the desktops with barely moving my thumbs. Great emacs keybinding support. Especially in emacs.
I've been fighting tooth and nail with macos, because they use both option & command with their keybindings. There's no winning no matter how I rebind.
Windows I mostly don't try. jetbrains has a good enough emacs keybinding that doesn't seem to get clobbered by the OS.