keyboard accelerators

[Don Ellis donls@michelob.wustl.edu]

 [Apologies for joining into the middle of a discussion - I just started
lurking the list 4/18, so the earliest msg I see is dated 4/11, in the
digest dated 4/19! So far, not near the traffic that DrWho gets! :-) ]

By keyboard accelerators, I assume you mean keyboard shortcuts for common
operations, such as "go to end of line" or "select the next word". I have
used such shortcuts so heavily in MSWord that I have watched for them in
any system level editor I use, and missed them sorely when absent. Using
MSW on the Mac gives me a complete WintelPC numeric keypad with lots of
neat actions. Most editors I have used only support the arrow keys, maybe
(rarely) PgUp/PgDwn.

Well-done Mac applications support the mouse, since it is totally assumed
to be present. It may have become "standard" on the Wintel systems, but
after using one for a few minutes, I begin to understand people's
scepticism about mice! In applications I use often, I use mouse or keyboard
depending on where my hand is when I want to perform a command. In those I
use rarely, I like to have the expected keyboard shortcuts (Win3 seems to
have not achieved much standardization yet, at least not within offerings
from MicroSoft) and I do get brought up short when one of the really
standard ones is not present, or is used in strange ways. I just started
Quicken, for example, and the standard print command prints checks, not the
report I just brought up on the screen, and it is not context-sensitive. I
will definitely complain about that one, if it is not fixed in Q5!

This reflects the main difference I see between Mac and Other: consistency.
When I want to quit from the UNIX mailer I use at the office, an "x" is the
normal save/quit and a "q" quits without saving. At home, with /bin/mail,
the senses are reversed. If one of these is asserted to be a standard, why
hasn't the other been fixed? (well, the system here at work WAS obsolete
when it was procured by DOD in 1987!) The extended keyboard on the Mac has
a delete-forward key which I have never had before - works great! MacOS
hardware & software have a much shorter history than others, and standards
have been rigidly enforced by the user community to an unprecedented level

Don Ellis
donls@michelob.wustl.edu

Newbie/lurker extrordinaire![sp?]