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Saturday, May 6th 2006, 11:16am

Key navigation problem in the kmenu (Bug or Feature)

I'm used to the following behaviour in a usual application menu, let's choose "File".
When a user presses ALT, the character "F" will be underlined, to show which key will open this menu.
The user presses "F". The menu opens. In the command "Save" the character "S" is underlined.
He presses "S" and the command will be executed. Immediately.

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And the last thing is my point: "Immediately".


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Let's look how the kmenu behaves.
Let's assume it contains entries, where each first character exists only one single time as first charater.
Example:
Kate
Firefox
Openoffice
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When a user presses "F" for example, the entry "Firefox" will be highlighted. But it will not be executed. ENTER is necessary.
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The startmenu in windows behaves IMHO more consistently. It executes the entry immediately in our testcase. There is no need to confirm with ENTER.
There is only one single entry which begins with "K".
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I hope you understand what I meant. Please ask, if the point is not clear yet.
My question:
How could I force the kmenu to execute an entry like in our testcase immediately, without the need of ENTER.
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Do you regard the actual behaviour as a feature or as a bug?
Kubuntu 5.10 | KDE 3.5.2
Tipps in deutscher Sprache zu: Kubuntu | Firefox | Thunderbird

bram85

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Location: Eindhoven

Occupation: Software Engineer

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Saturday, May 6th 2006, 12:01pm

RE: Key navigation problem in the kmenu (Bug or Feature)

I'm not sure about the bug-or-feature part, but I'd suggest you post this to http://bugs.kde.org . Maybe there's a reason to not immediately execute applications from the K Menu, but I'm not aware of that.
Bram Schoenmakers
KDE Netherlands (www.kde.nl)

3

Saturday, May 6th 2006, 12:45pm

RE: Key navigation problem in the kmenu (Bug or Feature)

Thank you for your assessment of that problem.
My english is quite poor and I'm sure there is some special jargon to talk precisely and correctly about "key navigation".
Therefore I would be glad, if anyone of you who is more experienced and whose english is good, could write the bugreport. If you wish I could post it and be responsible, when there are further inquiries of developers.
Kubuntu 5.10 | KDE 3.5.2
Tipps in deutscher Sprache zu: Kubuntu | Firefox | Thunderbird

anda_skoa

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Saturday, May 6th 2006, 6:01pm

A reason could be that the association of key with menu item can not be determined before pressing it, because differently to an application menu there is no visual hint which key activated which entry.

Cheers,
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Qt/KDE Developer
Debian User

5

Saturday, May 6th 2006, 6:57pm

Well, in the startmenu of windows xp the manually created entries do not have a visual hint neither (no underlined character). But they are executed immediately - when only one single entry begins with that character.
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May be you are interested in a way of using the kmenu, which is my favorit?
I do not assign shortcuts to kmenu entries in the kontrolcenter of three reasons:
1 It needs more time to assign them than my method (see below)
2 it "steals" shortscuts for other usage. Shortcuts are are rare goods.


3 it shows no shortcuts on the right of the entry (like it is usual in menu commands)


Under windows xp I used a startmenu like that:

Source code

1
2
3
U  Ultraedit
F  Firefox
O  Opera

I use each character as the first one once.
The three advantages of assigning shortcuts this way:
1 very fast to assign, it is typing two more characters while giving an entrie a name
2 it steals no shortcuts
3 it shows the shortcut next to the entry - in my humble opinion this way is even faster to read than the classical way

Source code

1
2
Open          Ctrl+O
Save          Ctrl+S

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In other words: this behaviour is for me not something of the category "nice to have". It is important for me.
I hope there is a "hack" to realize it.
Kubuntu 5.10 | KDE 3.5.2
Tipps in deutscher Sprache zu: Kubuntu | Firefox | Thunderbird

This post has been edited 1 times, last edit by "ibu" (May 6th 2006, 6:58pm)