On Wed, 16 Jul 2003, Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:

> Bijan Parsia <bparsia at email.unc.edu> wrote:
> 	Strawman. Can you imagine if people hacked keycommands in ResEdit or
> 	bought macro packages like QuickKeys, OneClick, KeySequencer, etc.? Oh
> 	wait, they like it.
>
> Speaking as someone who *has* hacked Macintosh applications using ResEdit
> to add/change/remove key bindings for menu items,
> the only reason I've ever done it is to fix *@#%!$#$! applications
> that didn't follow the Apple guidelines (like the program where
> Cmd-Q meant "query", not "quit", or the program where Cmd-W meant
> save (=write) file, not close window, or ...).

Or Cmd-H meant "Do something I have even bothered to figure out what it
is", not "hide app". :)

>  The number of times
> I've typed Cmd-Q at Squeak and been seriously annoyed at it not meaning
> what it usually means...

I believe that. So, we might have a "Classic mac" keymap, along with a
"classic Squeak" one...

> On the other hand, I use an Emacs clone all the time, and some of my
> keybindings would puzzle the average Emacser.
>
> If I can't even agree with myself about key customisation, we're not going
> to get any general consensus any time soon.

Perhaps not.

> I'd just like to make two points about key (or menu) customisation:
>
> (1) whatever is the easiest way for someone to customise keys and/or
> menus, it should ensure that the on-line help is customised to match.
> On-line help that's wrong is worse than no on-line help.
>
> (2) there should be any easy way to switch back to "standard" bindings
> and it should be as easy as possible to find out what that way is.

Well taken, and, I think, already well appreciated by customiztion
proponents, although we've not always clearly articulated them. Note that
the current mechanism for keybindings is fairly hostile to both of these
goals.

Cheers,
Bijan Parsia.