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Just a wild thought, this might lead to web applications that have different hotkeys for the same task (or behave differently for the same hotkey used) depending on the language they are i18n-ed to ? Just imagine how difficult using the "vi" would become (in terms of documentation, explaining, accidential changes of i18n configuration for a user, etc) if all shortcuts (command "dd" => "delete a line") would turn out to be different in other languages, eg. German (command "lösche eine Zeile" => "lz" ??).
This would be counter-intuitive and work against "habitualization", the natural process of turning "compound" tasks requiring thought (which buttons do I have to press now for removing a line) into routine tasks without requiring thought - somewhat similar to what its like to learn driving a car. Jef Raskin has written the very interesting book "The Humane Interface" (ISBN: 0-201-37937-6) on this topic, well worth reading.
I don't agree here: vi is not i18nized and gives no visual feedback on what its commands are. The purpose of access keys is to provide fast access to fields that are _displayed_ in the page. And as the label of these fields varies with the language, so should vary the access keys. The fact that the access key must be present in the label text also enforces this.
And "habitualization" is related to what you usually need. Switch to another language version of the office applications you usually use, and you'll see that menu shortcuts will change also. An example that comes to mind is MS Word, where "bold" is ctrl-B in english but ctrl-G in french because the french for bold is "gras".
Sylvain
-- Sylvain Wallez Anyware Technologies http://www.apache.org/~sylvain http://www.anyware-tech.com { XML, Java, Cocoon, OpenSource }*{ Training, Consulting, Projects } Orixo, the opensource XML business alliance - http://www.orixo.com
