On Sep 19, 2012, at 2:23 AM, Martin Hewitson wrote:

> I distribute a LaTeX typesetting and project manager app and one of the main 
> feature requests is the ability to assign keyboard shortcuts (or rather 
> modify the ones I ship).

> But during my reading I also started to wonder if offering such a feature is 
> frowned upon. I'm finding it hard to find an example desktop app which offers 
> changing the keyboard shortcut bindings.

Xcode.  TextWrangler and, presumably, its big brother BBEdit.  It's pretty 
common in programming editors/IDEs.  It seems reasonable for your LaTeX app.

> Also, with these solutions, it's not clear to me if the actual keyboard 
> shortcut associated with a menu item can be changed, and whether that will be 
> reflected in the UI. That's really what the users want to do. 

If you set the key equivalent and the key equivalent modifier mask of the menu 
item, then that is reflected in the UI.


> Does anyone have any advice, opinions, or suggestions as to how to implement 
> the ability of the user to modify menu item keyboard shortcuts, and whether 
> this is a good idea or not?

Usually, I would suggest that you try to set good shortcuts yourself.  You can 
build in a feature to let your users customize the keyboard shortcuts.  It's 
not a horrible idea.  But, sometimes, offering customization is just an excuse 
to avoid making the hard choices that design demands.

Also, note that the system already comes with a mechanism to allow the user to 
customize the keyboard shortcuts for the menu items in any application.  System 
Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Application Shortcuts > plus 
('+') button.

Regards,
Ken


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