[haiku-development] Key roles vs. key label in menus
- From: John Scipione <jscipione@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2011 17:13:55 -0500
https://dev.haiku-os.org/ticket/7967 has turned into a full blown
discussion, so reposting here.
bonefish:
Taking the discussion to the haiku-development list is a good idea. A
ticket's comment section isn't really the best place. Also note that
we do have a voting procedure that can be invoked by any developer
with commit access (though I believe we still haven't managed to
describe it on the website or the wiki). It is used very rarely, since
mostly discussions are finished with consensus or it becomes obvious
that a significant majority of the developers favors one approach.
There are 30 posts on that ticket now so it will take a bit of reading
to get up to speed on everything that has been said but let me try to
summarize the debate as impartially as possible:
The debate is about whether the bitmaps in the menus should correspond
to the functions of the keys (aka key roles) or the label on the keys;
should the bitmaps for B_CONTROL, B_OPTION, and B_COMMAND correspond
to "CTRL", "OPT", and "CMD" or "CTRL", "WIN", and "ALT".
Furthermore, should the menu items change based on if you have a Mac
keyboard or a different keymap or when you change your keymap.
The pros of key roles is that it is simpler to implement and is
independent of localized keyboard variations, consistantly reporting
the function of the key.
The cons are that the labels of the bitmaps in the menu no longer
correspond to the button that you push on the keyboard so could be
confusing to new users.
The pros of the key labels approach is that the bitmap in the menu
would correspond to the label on the key at least for the most common
cases.
The cons are that the approach is more complex, and won't always work
for any given keyboard. Each keyboard variant would have to be treated
specially and the bitmap will not always match the label on the key
for any given keyboard.
bonefish, axel, pulkomandy, and humdinger all have expressed their
opinion that they consider the key roles to be the better approach. I
am on the opposite side but am willing to go along with whatever the
majority decides.
John Scipione
Other related posts:
