The left alt+shift key is the modifier combination which switches in 
default windows the keyboard to another layout ( e.g. american ). Most 
people don't know this, and they don't stumble accidently over it, 
because they mostly use the ctrl-key. But then they meet Squeak and 
suddenly their Squeak is not accepting umlauts anymore.... 

The win-vm clipboard converts characters from iso to mac roman, but 
the filesystem does not. The help text for the keyboard is not precise 
for other platforms than Mac. This switching might result in serious 
confusion for beginners. The first thought for them then might be: 
Squeak is not stable. Perhaps it is their last thought about Squeak 
too. 

So having the alt-key with other modifiers together in use is a 
barrier of entry, and a help text which is not precise, adds to that 
( 'Shift-Alt on other platforms; sometimes Ctrl works too' ). 

Having copy, cut and paste not where they used to be, is of course 
problematic in itself. In Germany took a long debate place about 
Windows vs Opensource in government offices. At one point Opensource 
was rejected mainly because the copy/cut/paste-problem! 

My suggestion would be a preference to switch all hotkeys, i.e. to 
simply switch the modifiers, and to somehow have under windows this 
preference enabled. This would simplify an updated help text too.

If single keybindings could be rearranged, my suggestion would be: 
1.modifier key ( ctrl for windows ) for real text operations 
2.modifier key ( alt for windows ) for popping up browsers etc

regards
Martin


"Lex Spoon" <lex at cc.gatech.edu> wrote on 24.10.2003 21:48:27:
>
>Hmm, thinking about this some more, how about this approach?
>
>Both alt and control keys do what "alt" does currently.  To get what
>"control" does currently, you must use some other set combination of
>keys, e.g. ctrl+alt, or ctrl+shift, or alt+shift.  Possibly we could
>allow all three possibilities.
>
>I have tinkered a little with it but don't have a complete
>implementation yet.  Anyway, what is wrong with this scheme?  It makes
>the current control keys harder to access, but hopefully this isn't a
>serious problem.  We can designate 26 different hotkeys to be easy to
>access; surely with a little rearranging that will be enough?
>
>This scheme will be comfortable to both Windows and Mac users, and it
>won't remove any functionality -- only make some functionality 
>slightly harder to access.  Most written material will continue to be 
>correct, since alt-based hotkeys get a lot more press than control-
>based hotkeys. 
>
>-Lex