GUI Window short cut preferences

[Daniel J Sebald]

I'm looking for feedback on the behavior of the GUI Window drop-down 
menu and short cuts for manipulating the various major widgets of the 
GUI.  This question is motivated by the desire to have a shortcut that 
will dock/undock a window from the main GUI window.  The issue was that 
in some circumstances (that hopefully rarely, if ever, arise as we get a 
better handle on Qt window-decoration rules) in which the undocked 
widget doesn't have decorations to control the docking of the widget.  See

https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?54078#comment21

for some background.

So, the goal would be to add such shortcuts but at the same time address 
ways to make the manipulation of the windows much more fluent in terms 
of options and shortcuts workflow.

Attached is a screenshot of the current Window drop-down menu.  There 
are a couple things that I don't like about it.

1) The use of 0, 1, 2, 3, etc. to represent the various windows as far 
as a memory aid.  Secondarily, the use of numbers constrains the list in 
to remain exactly in the order it currently is.  I tend to think more 
along the lines of associating a letter with a feature.  For example

Command Window -> C
Command History -> H
File Browser -> F
Workspace -> W
Editor -> E
Documentation -> D
Variable Editor -> V

Some key combination with that letter would be easier for me to remember 
than numbers.

2) There is a secondary list Show, Show, Show, ...., Command Window, 
Command History, File Browser, etc.  To me, that seems redundant and 
just obfuscates my understanding of what these actions represent (i.e., 
feature overload).  At the same time, it doesn't add much functionality. 
 The first group controls show/hide.  The second group brings the 
widget in question front and visible (which inherently does a show if 
necessary).  The difference between those is so subtle that I would 
actually just prefer making the show/hide action also bring the widget 
in question to the front and visible.  That is, I don't like that if I 
have a visible window which I then hide and successively show again that 
that window goes to the back and is obscured so is not visible.  (Try it 
in the current build.)  What percentage of the time is a user going to 
want to do that?  Typically what motivates a user to take action is that 
she wants to see the window.

3) Sometimes the full memorization of all the windows is too much, so it 
would be nice to have shortcuts that act just on the current (focused) 
window.

So, how to manage all this?  I'll start by proposing a layout something 
like the following:

---------------------------------
E A Command Window
E A Command History               >  ----------------------
E A File Browser                     Show      Ctrl-Shift-H
  A Workspace                        Undock    Ctrl-Alt-H
E   Editor                           ----------------------
  A Documentation
    Variable Editor
---------------------------------
    Hide Current Window    Ctrl-H
    Dock Current Window    Ctrl-D
    Undock Current Window  Ctrl-U
---------------------------------
    Reset Default Window Layout
---------------------------------

In the above, the side context menu takes the actual action.  The 
Ctrl-Shift-? will toggle the Show/Hide.  The Ctrl-Alt-? will toggle the 
Dock/Undock.  And the action listed in the context menu will display 
either "Show"/"Hide" depending on the state and either "Undock"/"Dock" 
depending on the state.

Down near the bottom of the Window menu are the shortcuts for 
controlling these settings for the current window.  There's no "Show" of 
course since there is no way of a hidden widget having focus.

Then, for showing the state I put in place an "E", which maybe could be 
an eyeball icon (visible/hidden), and an "A", which maybe could be an 
anchor icon (docked/undocked).

Is this getting to be too much info?  Does it create a bind for future 
expansion (say minimize/maximize shortcuts...although I don't see those 
abilities having the status of hide/show and dock/undock)?  Is there a 
better approach?  Any feedback is welcome.

Dan

Window_drop_down_menu_Screenshot_from_2018-06-27_13-56-11.png
Description: PNG image