Rene Rask wrote: > On Thu, 2002-10-10 at 02:00, Havoc Pennington wrote: >>I don't think either of those are reasonable. It should all work >>out-of-the-box, and there should definitely be window navigation >>shortcuts out-of-the-box. > > When you say "window navigation shortcuts" do you mean stuff like > alt+mouse1 that moves the window? That and one you mention, Alt+Fx to switch workspaces, or Alt+Tab to cycle windows. Many others. > These particular shortcuts that are only found on linux (xfree?) systems > are not making any sense to me. To me they go into the category: "edit > your shortcuts to enable". The functionality is already there. They exist in many window managers. olvwm, dtwm, and fvwm have many shortcuts that aren't in windows. I would imaging Irix's default WM (was it a CDE system too?) has functions not in MacOS or Windows, probably some not even Enlightenment or sawfish. But, I could build and install E on an Irix box. I even had a different WM for M$ once, afterstep I think, with multiple desktops and suck. Didn't get along with a lot of apps, so I removed it. The fun of *nix, and linux in particular, is I can change almost anything. > I can partly agree with the idea of not changing options to suit apps. > But workflows are very important to me. Slowing my workflow means > slowing my productivity. My problem is that you cannot possibly foresee > how the future is going to be. By locking hardcoding shortcuts you > effectively make some programs unuseable. Consider (I'm sure you have) > that people work in applications, not WM's. If a good workflow in an > application can be to use some shortcuts. If these shortcuts are eaten > by the WM then you have to design around it and most likely end up with > a workflow which is not optimal. Perhaps the app should have configurable shourtcuts? Why pick on the WM? But seriously, I agree any shortcut, especially the WM ones, should be configurable. I remember fvwm allowed me to set up just about anything. 3 buttons + Ctrl, Alt, and Meta in any combinations could be set to do the action I wanted. And the defined action changed depending on where the mouse was. So over the root window was different that the title bar, which was different than the edges and on and on and ... > I'm talking about huge apps like Maya and its likes. > Almost every key you can reach with your left hand has a shortcut which > uses a combination of alt, ctrl, shift and mouse buttons. That a very unusual situation though. Most apps have a few shortcuts, not enough though, and expect most work to be done with the mouse and menus. If you cannot do it with a mouse+menu, it's considered a bug today. I disagree, but that the current design trend. > On a different note: > > Is there any particular reason why alt-f2 doesn't move me to workspace 2 > anymore (as with sawfish). I think the multiple workspace dropped > greatly in workability because of that. Now I have to move my hand from > the pen to the keyboard to change workspaces. > I can live with it, but I prefer it the other way where I could just do > it with the hand already on the keyboard. O look, here's a unix thing he likes. I have sawfish and E configured to use Alt+ F1-F8 to switch to different Workspaces/desktops. Imaging the poor windows user that expect Alt+F4 to close the app. And didn't Windows use Atl+F1 for something? And doesn't Maya use Alt+F1-F4 for something? >>Since UNIX has historically had no standards at all here, and does not >>fully map to windows (e.g. we have shortcuts to deal with workspaces), >>I consider it unavoidable that some apps will need to change in order >>to fix things that I consider bugs. > > > I entirely do not agree, as stated above. Some group like Xopen or GNOME+KDE needs to decide. I favor 1: Meta different than Alt in configurations. Most PCs have that key with a flag on it (mine's a penguin:) that M$ wanted. 2: The WM gets conmbos with one. The apps get the other modifiers. Say Meta for WM, and Ctrl, and ALt for apps. 3: When the pointer is over a window decoration, borde, titlebar, the buttons in the corners, the WM gets all the modifiers. 4: When the pointer is inside the window, the app gets it's keys, but the WM key (meta?) is still for the WM. -Thomas
