I'm gradually starting a Win 2000 -> Linux migration, for general reasons and because I was impressed by a bisexual Linux LiveCD.
I'm not yet sure about what distribution I'll use, but I feel I should figure out that myself. Instead, I'm going to ask about keyboard controls.
I like the way I can do almost anything in the Windows GUI with the keyboard (don't laugh, Windows keyboard controls are pretty good).
Now, from what I've seen the graphical side of OSS programs tends to be quite lacking in keyboard controls - this could or could not be a consequence of windows conversions. This is why I'm wondering if anyone can recommend programs or even window managers and other stuff that do this stuff well before I start migrating for real. Please note that none of this discussion has anything to do with any kind of CLI.
So, what stuff is good friends with the keyboard?
I don't think your main problem will be the window managers (or even desktop environments). All of the ones I've worked with support numerous keyboard shortcuts, and some are considerably more extensive than what windows sports.
Your problem will be the applications. Some are good, some are bad, and many are nightmares. Even with things like the HIG many applications have shortcuts that are inconsistent, and some have no shortcuts at all.
In fact, the trend seems to be getting worse: a lot of the applications are trying to be all mousey, and forgetting about keyboard users. Witness the open file dialog for Gimp 2.2, or Xfce's file manager, or image viewers that are actually keyboard-friendly (xzgv is about the only one, and not by much).
A major problem is that although a lot of OSS advocates scream "choice, choice, choice!", quite often there is no choice, since there's only one semi-decent program, and all the alternatives are incomplete alpha-level software. So you're stuck with whatever keybindings they have.
>A major problem is that although a lot of OSS advocates scream "choice, choice, choice!", quite often there is no choice, since there's only one semi-decent program, and all the alternatives are incomplete alpha-level software. So you're stuck with whatever keybindings they have.
Actually, I suspect the main problem is the "mousey" aspect you mentioned. I can very well imagine people living on the command line suddenly trying to make stuff "mouse-friendly". Keyboard control and command line control could probably easily be confused in such an environment - especially since "power user who uses the GUI" or whatever term one sees as appropriate might not even "register" properly for many Linux developers.
This could be just my predjudice, but I suspect that there is a too common mode of thought which states that you can divide users into two distinct groups: CLI users and n00bs..
>>1
From what I've seen, KDE apps don't have much in the way of default shortcut keys (a default installation of the Gwenview image viewer has only 33 keyboard shortcuts defined), but the ability for users to define their own shortcut keys is extensive.
Thanks to the way the underlying toolkit is designed, pretty much anything that has a menu entry or a toolbutton (and some that have neither, like Konqueror's Ctrl+E shortcut for stopping gif animations) can be assigned a shortcut.
> a lot of the applications are trying to be all mousey, and forgetting about keyboard users. Witness the open file dialog for Gimp 2.2, or Xfce's file manager
Ugh. I can't stand the new save file dialog either. They do the thing where you can't type in the name of a specific directory (+autocompletion) without deleting the filename. What's with that? I don't want to slowly navigate all my folder hiarchies with the mouse.
So if I'm likely to use keyboard shortcuts heavily and "like a hacker", you'd recommend doing KDE? Or is there still not enough of a Gnome <-> KDE <-> Other difference to matter?
>>6
I don't use GTK/GNOME apps enough to comment on their support for shortcuts, but inferring from what >>2 said:
> So you're stuck with whatever keybindings they have.
It seems that the presence and configurability of keyboard shortcuts isn't as consistent in GTK apps as it is in KDE. There are exceptions, like extremely simple programs with no menubar and no config dialogs, but a lot of the KDE stuff I use have more functions that can be given keyboard shortcuts than I have keys.
For anything that can't be reached with direct keyboard shortcuts, there's always Tab and Shift+Tab.
Having to configure keyboard shortcuts yourself is nearly as bad as not having them at all. Configurability is no excuse for the programmer not to do his work. Linux users in particular are stuck in this mindset where you just offload a whole lot of work on the user in the name of "configurability" or "choice", even when there's a simple and obvious single best solution that would satisfy everyone, and yet you still put in lots of different options, and don't even bother to pick a good default behaviour.
>>8
Because of all the choice, a program's designer can't be certain what other programs or desktop environmnets or window managers may be paired with the stuff they write. Not predefining too many program-specific keyboard shortcuts is a courtesy to users and other developers: it avoids conflicts.
I happen to like configurability. The only time I see the defaults is when I deliberately nuke my config files out of curiosity. How do you determine whether a default is sane? Is it sane not to include any hint of a tabbed-browsing capability in a tabbed browser (Firefox hides the tab bar and has no New Tab toolbutton by default)? Is it sane to drop MP3 support by default to protect users from licensing issues (Red Hat, SuSE)? Is it sane to conceal options that change highly controversial defaults in a registry-editor-like thing (toggling Nautilus between spatial and navigator mode)? Is it sane to have a different menu layout in every single distro and window manager so I have to relearn where to find everything whenever I sit down at a different box?
No thanks, I'll take configurability over sanity. A few minutes of user-customisation is worth the added efficiency it brings.
So essentially you're saying that you prefer to have to clean up after people who design interfaces badly?
My point is that an ability to customize quickly turns into a requirement to customize as program authors are too lazy to design their programs and instead leave the work to the user. Firefox is a very nice exception to this - it strikes a very good balance between these things, being configurable without overwhelming the user. The novice user is very well served by the default setup, the power user can with very few customizations get the features they want, and the obsessive configurator can dig through about:config to their heart's delight.
No. No. Absolutely not.
Never program or think the "for the whole family" way.
WAHa's Firefox example is good: people, n00bs and even half-savvy users like me can use the well-working default. Others can "open the hood" without a problem, since they have all the knowledge in the world anyway. I strongly doubt you have to "herd" any person who uses multiple keyboard controls in every application. Configurability is good, which is why configurability must be configurable too.
>Is it sane to have a different menu layout in every single distro and window manager so I have to relearn where to find everything whenever I sit down at a different box?
...not to mention that the notion that it's bad to have to learn an interface layout but good to have to build it from scratch every time strikes me as rather strange.
> My point is that an ability to customize quickly turns into a requirement to customize as program authors are too lazy to design their programs and instead leave the work to the user.
Sorry, my earlier comments were something of a knee-jerk reaction. I fear that having less need for configurability often translates to less possibility for configuration. I see it all the time on kde-usability... People want to unclutter the UI by removing options, which in turn forces the developers to come up with sane defaults. Having sane defaults then becomes a side-effect, not a primary design decision.
In cases where sane defaults and configurability are mutually exclusive, I prefer configurability. It doesn't help if configurability comes in the form of hidden options that can only be tweaked by editing undocumented text files or digging many levels deep into GConf. Firefox's about:config is indeed an acceptable compromise in that it lists everything that can be configured instead of requiring me to google for options that may or may not exist.
> the notion that it's bad to have to learn an interface layout but good to have to build it from scratch every time strikes me as rather strange.
Being able to rebuild an interface layout from scratch the first time I use it is a benefit that applies across all subsequent uses of that interface.
Having to learn many different defaults and deal with the fact that it isn't easy or possible to change them doesn't benefit me at all.