kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 8/3/2015 1:02 PM, Chris Pavlina wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> The keyboard mnemonics (underlined letters) in the eeschema and libedit 
> config boxes are a bit messy. There is at least one conflict (two items 
> sharing L), and many items missing mnemonics.
> 
> I could easily patch this, but I'd rather discuss: perhaps they should 
> be removed? It is not usual to have mnemonics in large, complicated 
> dialogs like this - they're not particularly useful there, and they are 
> error-prone as the current state demonstrates. People forget to add 
> them, or miss conflicts. Mnemonics are much more useful in dialogs that 
> are used frequently like text edit dialogs, where a user might want, for 
> example, to jump quickly to the "text size" field. With so many options, 
> nobody is going to remember the mnemonics anyway (note what "mnemonic" 
> means: it's a memory aid!), and it doesn't save any time when one has to 
> squint at all the options to find the underlined letter.
> 
> Of course the possibility for inconsistency goes even farther: I haven't 
> even checked the localizations to see how they behave.
> 
> Anybody else in favor of just removing them from these two dialogs? The 
> pcbnew and modedit dialogs already do not use them, and most other GUI 
> applications that I checked now also do not use them in their 
> Preferences boxes.
> 
> 
> --
> Chris
> 

While your logic make sense, my preference is to keep the mnemonics, fix
any duplicates, and add the missing ones in any offending dialogs.  I
realize on some complex dialogs, it can be difficult to set unique
mnemonics but that's pretty rare.  There are still a lot of us old
timers around who prefer our keyboards over reaching for the mouse
whenever possible.  I know it's passe and quaint but I'm not ready to
give it up just yet :)