RE: standard key mappings

>There is a cost to unification of two systems as well as a gain.

Although I see your point, I must say that in this context I can't really
see the problem with some degree of unification or how that would conflict
with your 'pluggable' approach. Ok, there may be one set of mappings for MS
systems and another for Mac OSs, and at another level there may even be
app-level map 'sheets'. But at least some of the key mappings are consistent
between systems, so why not have a baseline map, which could fork if
necessary depending on OS or whatever.

I don't think the comparison with phones etc holds very well, as it would be
difficult & not a little confusing to change the mapping between the '1' key
and the corresponding tone pattern (although it could be argued that this is
what accountants do with their calculators). For a programmer the choice
between using Ctrl-c and Ctrl-Alt-!  for 'copy' behaviour is pretty
arbitrary, yet can make a lot of difference for the end user. Ok, so the
letter 'c' might not map very well outside of latin languages to 'copy', but
at least it's a level of standardisation.

Putting it back in terms of my original example, how *should* the developer
answer a question like "what key do I use to make a window full screen?". If
the answer is 'take your pick', then I think something's lacking.

Incidentally, I recently got the release version of the Eclipse IDE after
using the beta for months. It did have an f key mapped to the compile & run
operation, alas no more, the only accelerator key mappings the seem to have
continued are the really common edit ones and emacs.
So I keep hitting this key and feel foolish a few minutes later, after
nothing's happened... (of course I can't consciously remember which key it
was, but my hand sure knows).

Now how do I send this mail...

Cheers,
Danny.

Received on Monday, 29 July 2002 11:26:18 UTC