Ken, thanks for your thoughts. That helps me a lot. You say that providing good 
keyboard shortcuts in the first place is the best approach, and that's what I 
think I did, at least for people using a US keyboard.  It's hard to predict 
what others find comfortable and it certainly depends on the keyboard they are 
using. 

I'll take a look at the mechanism the system provides, that might save me a lot 
of work!

Thanks,

Martin


On 19, Sep, 2012, at 03:21 PM, Ken Thomases <k...@codeweavers.com> wrote:

> 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
> 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Martin Hewitson
Albert-Einstein-Institut
Max-Planck-Institut fuer 
    Gravitationsphysik und Universitaet Hannover
Callinstr. 38, 30167 Hannover, Germany
Tel: +49-511-762-17121, Fax: +49-511-762-5861
E-Mail: martin.hewit...@aei.mpg.de
WWW: http://www.aei.mpg.de/~hewitson
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~






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