On Sun, 2011-01-30 at 12:35 -0500, Christopher Curtis wrote:
> The world would be better if each application domain had a consistent
> set of core accelerators. File->New, File->Save, Cut/Copy/Paste, etc.
> are good for most all applications. For a graphics program, common
> tools like Pencil, Eraser, Move, Crop, etc. should have consistent
> accelerators.
There's no short answer beyond, "GIMP's primary goal is not being a
PhotoShop clone."
Here are some longer notes...
One trouble here is that there is tension between cross-platform
consistency and within-platform consistency.
For example, yes, control-{x, c, v} are supported by gimp for
cut/copy/paste following the lead set by Apple in 1984. GIMP does not
seem to use control-insert or shift-insert for cut/paste, a slightly
older convention set by Microsoft.
On the GNOME platform, the Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) list primary
key bindings so that Gnome applications will work in the same way;
Windows does the same, and so does KDE and so does the Mac. They are not
all the same, however, and there do tend to be conflicts.
When Word Perfect moved from MS-DOS to Windows, they favoured the
Windows-compatible shortcuts over the older DOS ones. It sounded like
the right thing to do, but all Microsoft had to do was add a preference,
"use Word Perfect for DOS keys" and they stole a huge proportion of the
Word Perfect user base, because it was seen as cheaper (less training)
to move to Word than to the new WP. So there is a cost in changing,
which is that you hurt your existing user base (which is quite large for
GIMP).
GIMP does let you set preferences, so you can change the keys, or use a
pre-packaged set, and maybe it would be worth shipping key bindings for
Photoshop and Corel Draw and maybe even PaintShop Pro. Do be aware it
can make it harder to get help and follow tutorials, but maybe if the
status-bar showed when you were using non-default key bindings it'd be
OK? Adding modes to a GUI is always a problem.
Yes, perhaps it might be nice if the key to get the eraser was the same
in inkscape and gimp and blender and gedit and krita and mypaint, but it
could no longer be "E" because that inserts text in gedit, so we'd end
up using conrtol-shift-e or something. But that's already Export in gimp
now, and what if it does something in Blender? I don't know if it'd be
worth having a key binding day at LGM this Spring in Montreal. I think
most of the developers probably would rather be doing more architectural
work together.
Liam
--
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/
Ankh: irc.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org www.advogato.org
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