[Geany] default keybindings: possible rules

[John Gabriele]

On 9/6/07, Nick Treleaven <nick.treleaven at btinternet.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
> I think it's time for me to write up what I think are the important
> rules for default keybindings, following the Geany Philosophy (TM).
> These are in order of importance.
>
> 1.a) Avoid Window Manager shortcuts, especially Gnome.
>   b) Avoid shortcuts that don't work on most keyboard layouts.
> 2. Make common things easy to do.
> 3. Use F-keys, PgUp, etc. to make more room for alpha-keybindings.
> 4. Add Shift to keybindings to do a related action.
> 5. Prefer Ctrl-Alt-{x} to Shift-Alt-{x].
> 6. Avoid duplicate keys for the same thing.
> 7. Should be reasonably easy to remember.
>
> While these aren't ideal for everyone, they should (hopefully) be a
> good set of rules. IMO functionality should be more important than
> grouping related things together.

Yes, I guess this last comment of yours is where our opinions really
differ. I think that grouping leads to making them easier to get into
your muscle memory. As in, one's fingers automatically reach for
Shift-Alt when you know you're doing a selection operation... or the
Alt key if you know you're going to manually hit a menu or some other
GUI element. Like keybinding namespaces. It sounds like you and Enrico
prefer the bindings to be more of a grouping of most-commonly-used
(Ctrl-<key>, Shift-Ctrl-<key>), to less-commonly-used (Ctrl-Alt-<key>,
F-keys) to least-commonly-used (Shift-Alt-<key>).

Anyhow, if that above list is on target, you may want to enshrine it
in the Keybindings section of the Usage chapter of the manual.

Some possible clarifications:

> 3. Use F-keys, PgUp, etc. to make more room for alpha-keybindings.

3. Use F-keys and navigation keys (PgUp, Home, etc.) to make more room
for alphabetic keybindings.

(btw, I notice that Gnome uses Alt-Fkeys quite a bit.)

> 4. Add Shift to keybindings to do a related action.

4. Add Shift to Ctrl-<x> keybindings to do a related action, or
possibly an opposite action if there is an obvious opposite.

(Geany does this with [Shift-]Ctrl-G ... I think that's the only place
Geany does this though...)

> 5. Prefer Ctrl-Alt-{x} to Shift-Alt-{x].

Maybe also fit the F-keys in that sentence somewhere?

---John