https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=449648
Bug ID: 449648
Summary: Discussion/proposal: Disable accelerators (&mnemonics)
in the Global Menu applet
Product: plasmashell
Version: master
Platform: Other
OS: Linux
Status: REPORTED
Severity: normal
Priority: NOR
Component: Global Menu
Assignee: k...@privat.broulik.de
Reporter: m...@ratijas.tk
CC: mvourla...@gmail.com, plasma-b...@kde.org
Target Milestone: 1.0
Created attachment 146304
--> https://bugs.kde.org/attachment.cgi?id=146304&action=edit
Global Menu - leaking ampersands
SUMMARY
I'd like to ask opinions on temporary disabling key accelerators (also known as
&mnemonics) in the Global Menu applet.
There several reasons to consider them being not production grade:
- They don't respect theme setting for actually showing them or not.
+ https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=389118
+ https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=249787
+ https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=155791
- Internationalization support is broken. For Cyrillic (ru_RU) it works
(successfully triggers where it shows underlines) about one time out of 8.
- They often leak those utility &ersands into visible text.
- AFAICT sometimes ampersands are put before letters that are already taken —
that would lead to duplicate accelerators, and is likely one of the reason why
ampersands leak into UI.
- Even successfully shown underlines in correct position without any visible
ampersands — they often change text width, and thus the whole applet "jumps",
extends and shrinks all the time if you press Alt repeatedly. This has
something to do with ligatures and how <u> tag breaks them in rich text
formatting.
- They are heavily inconsistent. For example, a «Tools» menu may be assigned
letter «T» in Dolphin (which also breaks «tee-o» ligature) but then a lowercase
«L» in KMail; and after few Alt+Tabs back and forth they may even swap between
apps! Isn't the whole point of accelerators to, well, accelerate your job by
memorizing the keys? What can you memorize if they are constantly changing?
- There's a good alternative to accelerators on top level menu: set a shortcut
on a Global Menu applet instance. Pros:
+ At top level the count of menus is usually not that big that it can't be
navigated with arrows keys.
+ It has the added benefit of single consistent shortcut to open/focus a menu.
Cons:
+ Keyboard navigation could be better. Global shortcut should force focus on
an applet, but don't open/expand the first item (like, usually, «File»).
Instead it should merely highlight the first item and let you either open it
with Down, Enter or Spacebar; or navigate to top-level siblings with Left/Right
arrows or — it's important part — type in first letters of destination (like
ComboBox supports).
Opinions, please?
STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Add «Global Menu» applet onto a panel if you don't have one already.
2. Open various pieces of software that have menus (KDE apps are usually good
at it).
3. Press Alt repeatedly while switching the apps back and forth
4. Try launching apps in different locales, e.g. `LANGUAGE=ru_RU:ru LANG=ru_RU
LC_ALL=ru_RU.UTF-8`
SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Operating System: Arch Linux
KDE Plasma Version: 5.24.80
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.91.0
Qt Version: 5.15.2
Kernel Version: 5.16.5-arch1-1 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
plasma-desktop: 4edfcf42dd6a6ad04ecfc4f30236dd2ad80bd632
plasma-workspace: 2141988c3be9c5ea6d82530baa1d81c6a9dd110c
plasma-framework: 346e0d8a0cac969bb8139129be05f48b6b40fc3a
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