Re: [Pan-users] user interface problem

[Duncan]

Dave posted on Sat, 23 Sep 2017 11:13:12 +0000 as excerpted:

> On Fri, 22 Sep 2017 11:04:30 +0000, David Melik wrote:
> 
>> When you select something with the mouse and a menu comes up, you're
>> supposed to have different keys do different things.  It's wrong design
>> that in the menu for a newsgroup, 'h' is three options, which makes 'h'
>> not do one of the options, just cycle through the list.  The other two
>> need different keystrokes.  Come on, don't force people to use the
>> mouse so much!
> 
> I see your point.  I'd not noticed that the same hothey had more than
> one function on that menu.  On the other hand, to get that menu I
> already have the mouse in my ha nd so a slight twitch of the wrist and a
> left click is far quicker than reaching for the keyboard :-)
> 
> On the other hand, if you want to use the keyboard for that, try "a" to
> get headers in current group or "A" (shift-A) to get headers in all
> subscribed groups, no mouse or menu required.

That's probably why the three "h" menu accelerator keys in that menu has 
been overlooked for so long -- people using the mouse for everything 
ignore the menu accelerators, and people that favor the keyboard already 
have hotkeys for the functionality, so never encountered the duplicated 
accelerators.


BTW, note that pan's hotkeys (as opposed to menu accelerator keys) are 
fully configurable.  If you don't like the existing hotkey setup, edit 
the ones that don't work well for you to something else, or simply design 
an entire hotkey scheme that works better for you.

I did the latter here, making things a bit more consistent, tho I kept a 
few hotkeys (like f/followup) that I had already ingrained, and actually 
reconfigured other apps (kmail back when I used it, now claws-mail) to 
use f/followup for the primary reply hotkey as well.


But hotkey reconfiguration can be a rather large topic in itself and I 
don't know that you (OP) are that interested in the details yet, so I'll 
skip describing it in detail here.  If you are interested and run into 
problems, start a new thread on that, and we can go from there.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman