> On 12-02-2017, at 3:58 PM, Chris Muller <asqueaker at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> The only alternative to a global hot-key is the mouse.
> 
> For example, to open the Monticello browser:
> 
>  1) grab the mouse, start moving it upward and to the left
>  2) locate the ascending hand on the screen, aim for the "Tools" menu
>  3) click Tools
>  4) click Monticello

Or menu button over the desktop, -> open -> Monticello Browser
a) this, like almost all our menus could be improved if all the multiple menu setups were properly changed to hierarchical menus
b) I argued with Jef Raskin for a couple of years about why I thought Smalltalk’s 'menu where I clicked’ approach was better than the original Mac notion of the global menu bar - his point was largely that he used Fitt’s Law to make the target very large and easy to hit. My point was that making the distance to move very small made it even easier to hit your target. On a small original Mac screen the distance was never huge but once you got to >1024 pixels high screens it all seemed a bit less excellent. He did eventually agree with me. 
c) an important issue with hotkeys is the lack of ‘address space’ combined somewhat paradoxically with there being too many to be easily familiar.
d) c is even more muddied by different platforms having a lot of different ideas about it; so we need to fit in or really piss off users, leaving even fewer clean options. Or, platform specific choices correctly done.


Of course, with keyboard menu navigation some of these problems could possibly be handled by having a small set of hot keys that open menus that can be easily  navigated with cursor keys or the search-by-char stuff. We do have Esc-> focus menu right now; I don’t know if cmd/ctl/opt/meta/whatever-Esc is available to  get the World menu? Knowing the way of the world it is probably ok for all except one platform...



tim
--
tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Oxymorons: Soft rock