(Speaking of menu/drop-downs with underlined characters for alt commands.)
> This works poorly if you intend to localise your application. Great if you don't though.
Sure that's true. But remember M$ allowed you to fairly easily edit those underlined-characters in, oh, for example Office 2002 and 2003. Even if you didn't have a lot of default underlines in your current language settings, it is still possible for someone to add their own underline-shortcuts.
Back in those days, the first thing I did on any personal new install of Outlook, was to disable the shortcut that marked all email as being read. (That's cause I hit that button by accident too many times.)
> Sure that's true. But remember M$ allowed you to fairly easily edit those underlined-characters in, oh, for example Office 2002 and 2003. Even if you didn't have a lot of default underlines in your current language settings, it is still possible for someone to add their own underline-shortcuts.
That's a feature that was hidden from me at least, but honestly, this is a good-ish solution to that problem.
I remember Office having the underlines, but they were inconsistent between the original English and my localised version (and I used both depending on the machine), which made them useless. That wasn't that big of an issue when all the normal keyboard shortcuts are also written out, but it would have been even less of a problem if I knew how to edit them.
Fair. I just remember them being inconsistent between the English and localised versions of Windows, and given I used both, that turned into a nothing-feature. Another comment mentioned you could edit the underlines in Office 2003, but I never knew that back in the day (or until today for that matter...).
It's pretty hard for the shortcuts to be consistent and localized. Especially if you also use different keyboard layouts when you're using different languages...
Even for keys that aren't mnemonic, do you want undo to be ctrl + z or ctrl + the key closest to left shift?
> It's pretty hard for the shortcuts to be consistent and localized. Especially if you also use different keyboard layouts when you're using different languages...
Hence my original comment. I haven't had a problem with different keyboard layouts, since most of the keys that change are on the outer edge, nowhere near where the most common shortcuts are located (then again, I rarely type using QWERTZ).
> Even for keys that aren't mnemonic, do you want undo to be ctrl + z or ctrl + the key closest to left shift?
CTRL+Z, since that's what it's been since time immemorial, even on ISO keyboards. Consistency is king.
It sounds like your complaint might be that it works poorly if you half-ass the localization process and assume that literal translation of strings is most or all of what localization means.
(Speaking of menu/drop-downs with underlined characters for alt commands.)
> This works poorly if you intend to localise your application. Great if you don't though.
Sure that's true. But remember M$ allowed you to fairly easily edit those underlined-characters in, oh, for example Office 2002 and 2003. Even if you didn't have a lot of default underlines in your current language settings, it is still possible for someone to add their own underline-shortcuts.
Back in those days, the first thing I did on any personal new install of Outlook, was to disable the shortcut that marked all email as being read. (That's cause I hit that button by accident too many times.)
> Sure that's true. But remember M$ allowed you to fairly easily edit those underlined-characters in, oh, for example Office 2002 and 2003. Even if you didn't have a lot of default underlines in your current language settings, it is still possible for someone to add their own underline-shortcuts.
That's a feature that was hidden from me at least, but honestly, this is a good-ish solution to that problem.
I remember Office having the underlines, but they were inconsistent between the original English and my localised version (and I used both depending on the machine), which made them useless. That wasn't that big of an issue when all the normal keyboard shortcuts are also written out, but it would have been even less of a problem if I knew how to edit them.
Windows did both successfully.
I can't remember an example that didn't also include the shortcut written in full, but I might just be drawing a blank here. Care to give an example?
Wasn't easy to find!
https://www.augenbit.de/wiki/images/5/57/Arbeitsplatz.png
Fair. I just remember them being inconsistent between the English and localised versions of Windows, and given I used both, that turned into a nothing-feature. Another comment mentioned you could edit the underlines in Office 2003, but I never knew that back in the day (or until today for that matter...).
It's pretty hard for the shortcuts to be consistent and localized. Especially if you also use different keyboard layouts when you're using different languages...
Even for keys that aren't mnemonic, do you want undo to be ctrl + z or ctrl + the key closest to left shift?
> It's pretty hard for the shortcuts to be consistent and localized. Especially if you also use different keyboard layouts when you're using different languages...
Hence my original comment. I haven't had a problem with different keyboard layouts, since most of the keys that change are on the outer edge, nowhere near where the most common shortcuts are located (then again, I rarely type using QWERTZ).
> Even for keys that aren't mnemonic, do you want undo to be ctrl + z or ctrl + the key closest to left shift?
CTRL+Z, since that's what it's been since time immemorial, even on ISO keyboards. Consistency is king.
Yup, pretty sure I've seen the same sorts of things using Asian characters.
It sounds like your complaint might be that it works poorly if you half-ass the localization process and assume that literal translation of strings is most or all of what localization means.
I'm not sure how you read that from my comment.
To be fair to your point though, that's what most localisation of programs are these days.