Expressing Keyboard Shortcuts

[oeed]

It might be good to adopt a universal standard way of expressing keyboard shortcuts.

For example, how do you express control/command + C? OS X has a good way... if you actually know what the symbols mean.

If all programs use the same format there might be one less headache.

[viluon]

Why not just write the whole key shortcut? Such as Control + C, Control + Alt + Delete or Alt + F4. Try the last one if you disagree with me. If it doesn't work, use Control + Shift + W or simply Ctrl + W.

[oeed]

@viluon because they're 23 characters long and take up half your screen.

[SquidDev]

I'd agree with @viluon That Ctrl+W is the best way of doing it: everyone is used to it, whilst many people will be confused about ^C or M-w.

[viluon]

And as you can see, @SquidDev used the right way to display them, which is using the HTML <kbd> tag!

[SquidDev]

I just don't feel that the average user needs to read a spec, you go for what people are used to/expect. Not everyone knows what the "meta" key is, but everyone knows where to find Alt.

[oeed]

You can't use ridiculously large strings though that'll use up most of the screen. I put the shortcuts in menus like OS X does and if you did that the menus would look ridiculous.

[viluon]

Agreed @oeed, but we are talking docs, not GUI here. I don't think that abbreviations are necessary, best-case scenario you don't even use contracted forms (i.e. don't instead of do not) in the Markdown document, so why should you do that with keyboard shortcuts? They aren't that long anyway.

[oeed]

@demhydraz those are pretty unintuitive, even compared to the Mac system.

[viluon]

Oh you don't have a real butterfly @demhydraz? Really have to use the terrible emacs butterfly emulator? Poor you!

In other words, pros of using (normal) long keyboard shortucts:

• Clear on first sight
• Used by Wikipedia (link, talking about how the shortcuts are displayed)
• Directly represent keys on the keyboard, do not use a dynamic mapping (which helps a great lot to keep user confusion to a minimum)
• Doesn't require users to read specifications and doesn't require collaborators to write the specifications to determine what key is meant by M, for example
• Guys let's just adopt this, it's the principle of least astonishment

pros of using @demhydraz - suggested shortcuts

• They are faster to type

[lyqyd]

Full key names is absolutely the way to go on this one.

[oeed]

The issue I'm referring to is this. I'm obviously the first one to want to use the easiest system for the user, but I'm not sure key names is the greatest way.

As you can see, whenever you want to display a keyboard shortcut is consumes half the screen, and that's a pretty small shortcut. I might try to make a smaller font for it, but it's something to keep in mind; regular CC doesn't have that option. I do agree though, the OS X characters are confusing as hell.

[viluon]

I don't really see the issue here @oeed, nobody says you should use full key shortcuts in your UI. We are talking about the keyboard shortcut notation in the docs for the standard (or at least that's what I thought we were discussing).

[oeed]

@viluon I made this issue to discuss a UI keyboard shortcut standard. Hence, why I didn't include the meta tag ;)

[viluon]

@oeed Sorry for my misunderstanding then, but I think that the UI of a program is so specific there's no point in standardizing it... Also, I added the meta tag 3 days ago, you should have told me :stuck_out_tongue:

Also,

Agreed @oeed, but we are talking docs, not GUI here.

Why didn't you tell me? :stuck_out_tongue:

[oeed]

@viluon well the main thought behind this was seeing whether it was worth developing a universal way of expressing them for programs. Although given that 99% of the users won't read the spec there isn't really any point.