I agree with Doug that the reasonable solution here is to have both: 
to have esc bring up the local context menu, as per Daniel, *and* to 
have a variant -- control-esc is what I propose -- that always 
directly brings up the world menu.

Daniel's update plus one other are now in the internal 3.2a update 
stream that now do that.  If anyone knows a reason why using the 
control-esc combination is a bad idea on some platform, please let me 
know right away so I can rescind this before it escapes captivity.

   -- Scott


PS:  It is also rather tempting to extend this mechanism beyond 
windows, to the community of morphs generally.  Supposing that when 
nobody has the keyboard focus but the cursor is over some morph, the 
hitting of esc would bring up the halo menu for that morph, ready for 
your further keyboard directives, thus providing a one-touch way to 
start directly conversing with any object you can place the cursor 
over.  Hmm.


At 6:41 PM -0500 12/7/01, Doug Way wrote:
>Dan Ingalls wrote:
>>
>>  4585MenuFromKeyboard-di-sw -- Dan Ingalls and Scott Wallace -- 2 
>>December 2001
>>  This changeSet introduces keyboard control of menus in morphic.
>>  First of all, there is now the ability to move the selection up 
>>and down using arrow keys in any menu, and to confirm with CR or 
>>cancel with ESC, and to pass control into a sub-menu with right- or 
>>left- arrow (and to return back with ESC).
>>  That's not all.  If you type in a menu, it builds a pattern 
>>string, which appears at the bottom of the menu.  Whenever the 
>>pattern is not empty, only items that match are presented.  If only 
>>one item matches the pattern (or in any menu with only one item), 
>>the option is given to confirm with CR or cancel with ESC.
>>  But wait, there's more...  In most contexts, hitting ESC now 
>>brings up the world menu, (and, of course, hitting ESC again will 
>>make it go away again).  This enables all sorts of TECO-like 
>>incantations such as
>>          '<ESC>d q<CR>' which would, of course, invoke 'save and quit', or
>>          '<ESC>he<CR>spa<CR>' to show the amount of free space.
>>  [A free bottle of Ripple will be awarded to the first Squeaker to 
>>successfully perform majorShrink on a computer with no pointing 
>>device].
>>  Finally, two cosmetic tweaks are also included:
>>          1.  The selection in a menu is now shown slightly darker 
>>than before, and
>>          2.  Menus indicate keyboard focus with a thin green border 
>>(useful with arrow control).
>
>Cool stuff!
>
>We're almost all the way to supporting keyboard-only operation of 
>the UI. (at least the traditional SystemWindow/menu portion of the 
>UI)
>
>Not that I'd willingly give up using the mouse, but it'd be nice to 
>be able to support mouseless operation.
>
>About the only other things we'd need would be to be able to bring 
>different windows to the fore with the keyboard (someone wrote a 
>goodie to do this long ago), and to be able to switch keyboard focus 
>between different panes within a SystemWindow.  Perhaps ctrl-tab or 
>ctrl-arrow or similar could do this pane switching.
>
>(Although I guess we'd also need a stronger form of sticky keyboard 
>focus to support this, similar to what Steve Swerling submitted.)
>
>Also, I tend to agree with Daniel Vainsencher that it would be more 
>useful for the ESC key to bring up the local list/editor pop-up menu 
>inside a list/text morph, rather than the World menu.  Maybe 
>Shift-ESC or something else could bring up a World menu everywhere.
>
>- Doug Way
>   dway at riskmetrics.com