[haiku-development] Re: Key roles vs. key label in menus
- From: John Scipione <jscipione@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2011 14:31:41 -0500
On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 9:05 PM, Mike Smith <scgtrp@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Personally, I think it would be best to have the on-screen text match
> what's written on the keyboard when possible.
Sounds like a vote for key labels to me. I am squarely on the key
label side of the debate myself, but have so far been out-voted.
> Re Mac-style symbols: As a fairly experienced Windows and Linux user
> with maybe 3 hours total spent using Macs in my life, I read ⌘ as
> "that symbol Apple uses for one of the modifier keys, I think maybe
> ctrl or alt?" and had no idea ⌥ was used for anything at all until
> now. I don't think expecting others to know what keys those symbols
> correspond to is reasonable.
The key roles idea is to replace the bitmaps in the menu with the
"roles" of the keys instead of trying to use the label printed on the
key. So the roles are B_SHIFT_KEY, B_CONTROL_KEY, B_OPTION_KEY, and
B_COMMAND_KEY. The symbols serve to internationalize the role names in
the menu. If you have no experience with Macs then the symbols are
quite foreign, but, the ⌥ symbol corresponds to B_OPTION_KEY which
corresponds to the Windows key on a PC keyboard and ⌘ corresponds to
B_COMMAND_KEY which is the Alt key on a PC keyboard.
Axel brought up that these symbols have a strong association with Macs
as a negative, that it makes us look like we want to "be" a Mac, I see
where he is coming from, however, I see it as simply copying something
that is "kinda-sorta" well known. We don't have to use the symbols
used by Mac OS X, we could come up with our own symbols instead, but,
we'd have to choose symbols that would produce the association with
the roles mentioned above.
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