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Re: [Gzz] A preliminary quasimode-based interface for Fenfire and Loom
From: |
Benja Fallenstein |
Subject: |
Re: [Gzz] A preliminary quasimode-based interface for Fenfire and Loom |
Date: |
Fri, 28 Mar 2003 13:52:51 +0100 |
User-agent: |
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030319 Debian/1.3-3 |
Tuomas Lukka wrote:
On Sun, Mar 23, 2003 at 02:11:27PM +0100, Benja Fallenstein wrote:
Tuomas Lukka wrote:
Pressing Shift while Alt is held down enters a special
command quasimode.
Why not 'Ctrl'? Or one of the other modifiers that microsoft
has excreted on our keyboards?
Right, should've said that.
Mainly ergonomical reasons. Shift is easiest to type, Alt is next on
most keyboards today-- a nice big key left of the spacebar, which you
can easily reach with the thumb.
But alt-shift is really bad...
Really? Of all the combinations of two modifiers while typing letters, I
find Alt-Shift easiest. Alt because of the thumb thing, Shift because I
use it while typing letters anyway.
Control, OTOH, can be mapped to be on caps lock.
What?
Perhaps we should speak of "MODIFIER1" etc and let the user assign them?
I don't see the value in that. Of course the users can reassign the
modifier keys used for each quasimode-- as well as the individual
bindings-- but when talking about the default assignment, we should
think about the ergonomics of each modifier, and saying MODIFIER1
doesn't help evaluate that...
Using the thumb is especially nice as
it may be held down for long periods of time as you navigate the
structure, and the thumb is a) a strong finger and b) easy to use
independently of the other fingers, which you may need for typing the
arrow keys.
The position of the hand is not nice though...
Hm, I don't change my hand position for that.
As for the MS keys, they have preprogrammed functions in Win which we
cannot control, plus do you really think we can trap them reliably among
Javas? I somehow cannot imagine they all use the same name for them :-)
This should not preclude their use on platforms where you *CAN* catch them...
But it does preclude there use in a default mapping.
- Benja