On 9/4/07, Enrico Tröger enrico.troeger@uvena.de wrote:
On Tue, 04 Sep 2007 12:17:07 +0100, Nick Treleaven nick.treleaven@btinternet.com wrote:
[...] Currently, the F-keys are used the way I'm proposing Shift-Alt be used. This is fine, and some users who really want certain F-key commands really at their fingertips may want to re-assign them to
I can't understand why you have such a big antipathy against the F-keys ;-). Seriously, I don't believe I'm the only one who likes to use the F-keys. One reason should be that many(or even most [besides Emacs ;-)]) apps use the F-keys by default.
I probably use my editor more than all the other apps on my system combined. And most of that time, my fingers on on the home row. I can hit Ctrl, Shift-Ctrl, Alt, Shift-Alt, and Ctrl-Alt just fine and zoom around the editor and text files with those keys without removing my hands from the home row. Having to resort to using an F-key throws a monkeywrench into the works and I've got to remove my hands *and* look down to find those F-keys.
I'm not saying don't use F-keys, I'm just saying that users who are using Geany as a programmer's editor may want to remap certain commands from F-keys to Shift-Alt keys, to make them easier to reach while working. So it's good to have that option available (which Geany provides). Using Shift-Alt (or Alt) specifically for dealing with GUI-related elements not only makes it easier to memorize the Geany key combos (since we can group them mentally a little better, ie: "Shift-Alt has to do either with selecting text or dealing with a GUI feature"), but it also means that there's probably going to be a fair number of Shift-Alt combos available (with no default mapping), so that gives users a place to move some of those F-key mappings to, if they wish.
For example, after thinking about this discussion, I'd probably change F7 --> Shift-Alt-F ("incremental *f*ind"), and maybe F2 --> Shift-Alt-E ("back to *e*ditor").
---John