On 2007-August-05 , at 00:13 , Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote:

On Sat, 4 Aug 2007 18:51:10 +0200 jiho <jo.irisson@...400...> babbled:

...

First of all, it was not my intention to start a flame war or anything. It is just my personal opinion that what lacks the more cruelly to Linux desktop currently is consistency and keybindings is one particularly clear example. I hoped that mentioning it on this list, where the problem is regularly brought up, would get the ball rolling to the correct people (be they freedesktop or someone else). Anyway, I happily use Mac OS X (where keybindings are quite consistent and can be edited easily anyway) and won't "fight" for linux to get better... I just hope it will, because I like the development model more ;-)

here's the problem. in windows or OSX - you have no CHOICE. you get your "wm" with the bindings it comes with - and that's it. sure - some of these bindings can be changed - and that is no different to x11 and window managers -the difference being there is not just 1 wm. there are many - with many many many different features, ideas and design goals. they will all probably have different needs for bindings based on these features. asking every wm to NOT use some modifier or to all use exactly the same isn't going to happen -

Actually, this is what I hope will happen ;) I don't think everything can work with everything else if there is not at least a little planning done ahead. This kind of planning is done for each program but currently independently because most are managed by different teams. It would be good to have this done at a little higher level, for the purpose of unification. I think this can be compared with document formats: of course every word processing software could work with its own, custom made format but wouldn't it be better if all used odt? I think it would. Of course the point is not to force every WM to do change its keybindings but I think it wouldn't hurt to have a standard defined, for interoperability and best usability, and then projects who care can adopt it. FreeDektop seems to be the right organization to define such a standard and, in my opinion, this standard should be "use META, and combinations of META with other modifiers, for all WM/ desktop level keyboard shortcuts" for the reasons I explained in my previous email.

JiHO --- http://jo.irisson.free.fr/