From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 20:16:48 -0400 From: serge@euler.Berkeley.EDU serge@euler.Berkeley.EDU Subject: keyboard accelerators Topicbox-Message-UUID: 0e053974-eac8-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 Message-ID: <19950426001648.YKnaQj_LmzEoQes6QL_lQR3nPhDlnPYcIg0o5p5MlH4@z> (Gee, the fire seems to be dying down. Now, where did I put that gasoline? Oh, yeah ... WHOSH! :-) Some random thoughts: + Apple, which was mouse based from day one (TM) (R) (C) (:-), has keyboard accelerators ... + so does Windows (although you could say that it's because they were trying to introduce mice into predominantly keyboard based environment; also, Windows95 appears to have [much?] less keyboard accelerators); still ... (both they and Apple must have done some user interface studies; mustn't they? :-) + you can't do mouse ahead the same way you can do typeahead, e.g. the mouse (pointer) can be in an arbitrary position, so the motions needed to get it to the ``menu button'' (which can also be in an arbitrary position, and move as well) differ each time, unlike the keyboard (e.g. Ctrl+Esc,p,Return to get to the Program Manager in W ... er, but I digress :-) + anyone remember piewm (X based window manager with circular instead of drop down menus)? it was trying to address some of these problems, e.g. you could memory train your hand much easier: just click, pull the mouse to the east and release + we are still talking about predominantly keyboard based input methods (until voice recognition becomes commonplace :-), so most of the time you are typing, rather than clicking with the mouse; even Pike (who had to quit his Help paper because he was about to have to start using the keyboard :-)