Re: [MiNT] Hotkeys (Was: Re: Background)

[Peter Slegg <p.slegg@scubadivers.co.uk>]

On Mon, 19 Sep 2011 23:28:09 , Jo Even Skarstein <joska@online.no> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 2011-09-19 at 21:09 +0200, Jean-François Lemaire wrote:
>
> > Why are you sure? Do you know me so well? What I meant is you can't switc
> h
> > between "applications" only with the keyboard. You must go through the wh
> ole
> > list of accessories and XaAES itself. In my use case, this means at least
>  10
> > CTRL+ALT+TABs to switch between qed and Toswin. Do you really find this t
> o be
> > a great feature?
>
> You're right, this is terribly user-UNfriendly. Not only is application
> switching next to useless (due to the reasons you mention), but the idea
> of combining two modifier keys is not good in itself. And Ctrl+Alt+Tab
> especially is an ergonomic failure. So this is a feature I never use.
>
> Some ten years ago I wrote my own Alt-Tab-handler for N.AES, because
> N.AES suffers from the exact same problem. It was a copy of Windows'
> Alt-Tab handler and copied it's most useful feature of always keeping
> the previous top application at the top of the stack. It also displayed
> a form with a list of running apps so you could see how many keypresses
> where required to switch to an app. It didn't switch until you released
> Ctrl+Alt, so no meaningless topping of X apps until you reach the one
> you looked for. A lot more userfriendly I thought, but I ended up not
> using it because Ctrl+Alt+Tab is a painful combination ;)
>
> Anyway, enough ranting. What I intended to say is that there's a lot of
> things that could be improved in how XaAES handle the keyboard.
>
> 1. I wish it could be possible to applications to "subscribe" to
> key-combinations. So if I for example wants to re-enable the
> task-switcher mentioned above *cleanly* in Taskbar, Taskbar would ask
> XaAES to always receive the Ctrl+Alt+Tab combination even when Taskbar
> doesn't have keyboard focus. It could optionally ask for this
> combination to not be sent to any other apps - or even the XaAES
> internal hotkey handler - while Taskbar is running.
> 2. Allow other hotkeys than Ctrl+Alt-combination. Alt-Tab is a good
> example of a useful and familiar combination. Another one is the Windows
> key, which both the Milan and Eiffel (and maybe ARAnyM, I don't know)
> supports. This could substitute the Ctrl+Alt+Space as well as be treated
> as a modifier. Using the Windows-key to access features is much simpler
> than Ctrl+Alt, just take a look at how it's done in Unity.
> 3. Not in XaAES but in the kernel: It would be good with better
> Eiffel-support on computers with IKBD keyboards. The Eiffel (and future
> clones, I have an AVR-based clone on my desktop now) supports stuff like
> temperature monitoring and fan control, this currently requires a
> special driver. It would be better to have a clean way of subscribing to
> certain IKBD packets so stuff like this can be done properly.
>
> Jo Even
>
>
>
I never use the ctrl-alt-tab combo because it is too awkward on the Milan
PC keyboard and because it goes through every app and acc.

The NAES was much better but I think that was handled by something else
outside NAES itself.

I like the idea of Taskbar handling switching since it would not go through
the "hidden" apps.

Peter