Keyboard Shortcuts in Menus

[Graham Samuel]

Thanks Richard - great explanation as usual!

By the way, I am using some Unicode characters in menu items in Windows 7 (actually running on a Mac under Parallels) and sometimes I’ve noticed that they don’t “stick”, in that one can paste a Unicode character like the square root symbol into a menu item, looks OK in the IDE, but then turns into a ‘?’ at some point. OTOH, sometimes it works. This is (so far) too elusive for a bug report, but I mention it in case anyone else is seeing it (LC 7.0.1 rc-2 on Windows 7).

Graham

> On 13 Nov 2014, at 15:29, Richard Gaskin <ambassador at fourthworld.com> wrote:
> 
> Graham Samuel wrote:
> 
> > In the whole toolbar, all keyboard shortcuts must of course be
> > distinct, and are presumably not case sensitive. That was my silly
> > mistake. I made it because PC programs often have an underlined 'x'
> > in the 'Exit' menu item: this is not a keyboard shortcut but some
> > other PC-only thing which sadly I don't understand.
> 
> There are two sets of keyboard shortcuts on Windows and some Linux systems:
> 
> Control+<letter> is widely used these days on most OSes, and is the only shortcut method used on Mac (though of course on Mac we call it the "Command key" or "Apple key").  This most commonly allows one key combination to invoke an action, so once learned it's usually the one people use.
> 
> Alt+<key> is a multi-step way to invoke menu commands, in which the first Alt combo drops down the menu which has the corresponding underline, and once dropped items within the menu can be triggered using Alt+ the underlined letter marked in that item.
> 
> The Alt key combos predate the now-nearly-universal adoption of Control key combos, and among new users aren't used as often.
> 
> But because an underlined letter need only be unique within a single menu, you'll find some devs who still like that multi-step method because it allows shortcuts to be added with less risk of conflicting with another menu's shortcuts.
> 
> And some users like them because they don't require memorization: everything needed is visibly apparent in first the menu title itself, and then by having the menu made visible you can see the items directly.
> 
> One glitch in LiveCode:
> 
> Since XP forward, Microsoft has tastefully chosen to show the underlined characters only when the Alt key is down.  After all, they're only useful when the Alt key is pressed, and the rest of the time this change makes for a much cleaner appearance.
> 
> I've submitted an enhancement request to adopt this more modern convention in LC's menu bar:
> <http://quality.runrev.com/show_bug.cgi?id=3015>
> 
> -- 
> Richard Gaskin
> Fourth World Systems
> Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
> ____________________________________________________________________
> Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com
> 
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