keyboard accelerators

[David Lukes davel@morgan.com]

> >keyboard accelerators are indicative of a broken user interface.

Boyd is, as usual, right.

> Not everybody is coordinated enough to use a mouse efficiently.

Ditto keyboards.

Let's not be restrictive:
many of the people here use trackballs instead of mice,
because they don't have the desk space to conveniently move a mouse around.

The input *device* isn't under discussion here:
it's what you expect it to do with it:
either to indicate geometric information,
or to input things which are commonly interpreted as characters,
but might be used for other event-like stuff.

> My mother has difficulty, for example.  Even worse, some people
> have genuine physical handicaps who *cannot* use a mouse, but who
> can use some form of keyboard.  Or vice versa, for that matter.

This says more about the inadequacy of input devices than about input
paradigms.

Even though I'm, fairly able bodied,
I've wanted one of those neat eye movement things,
so I can just look where I want to,
instead of having to move the mose/spin the ball/waggle the joystick/whatever.

> Recently my mouse broke.  It was a weekend.  Under X, I was completely
> paralyzed.  I rebooted my PC to Windows (blech!) and was able to get
> some useful work done in a multi-window environment.  It was painful,
> but better than the complete paralysis under X.

So you window manager sucks:
what has that got to do with the price of mice?

To be fair to X (not that it deserves it),
there's nothing that I am aware of that forces you to use a mouse:
some window managers (olvwm, for one),
can (theoretically) have a mouseless interface,
parts of which I occasionally use (when I'm forced to use a trackball).

> (Argh, mice are expensive.)

(And they nearly all suck!)

> Supporting multiple styles of input strikes me as generally useful.

Well I'm afraid I disagree:
supporting multiple input *devices* may be useful.
but if you have a good input style, why clutter things with an inferior one?

> I don't think it necessarily implies software bloat.

(All together now children):
 OH YES IT DOES!!!!

	Dave.