Bug 170879

Summary:	reduce the number of default shortcuts
Product:	[Applications] konsole	Reporter:	Andreas Pakulat <apaku>
Component:	general	Assignee:	Konsole Developer <konsole-devel>
Status:	RESOLVED NOT A BUG
Severity:	wishlist	CC:	robertknight
Priority:	NOR
Version:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Unlisted Binaries
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Andreas Pakulat 2008-09-11 21:23:26 UTC

Posting this as a wishlist for consideration. I think konsole has too many shortcuts by default. Its a terminal application and terminal apps are usually not written with X11 in mind, hence they assume they can use all kind of shortcuts as they wish. This leads to a problem, konsole captures the shortcuts and thinks its their own instead of posting to the application - now the application seems to be broken.

I've just been bitten by this because Ctrl+B is bound to Bookmark - not sure thats used so often to warrant a default shortcut, but then again I'm no usability expert and have no data either - and also bound to an action in mutt here. It took me a bit to realize that konsole might be eating the shortcut, I doubt that "joe average" can make that connection and hence will file a bugreport against whatever app doesn't work on konsole - or if he tries another terminal emulator against konsole.

So it would be good to reduce the number of default shortcuts to the bare minimum. Or always forward the key events to the application and only handle them in konsole when its not handled in the app - dunno if thats possible.

Comment 1 Robert Knight 2008-09-11 21:41:37 UTC

Hi Andreas,

The Ctrl+B shortcut for bookmarks is a bug.  All the others have two modifiers (usually Ctrl+Shift) so they shouldn't conflict with terminal applications.  The reason for having a generous number of shortcuts by default is because I assume this is convenient for keyboard-orientated people who are using the terminal.

Comment 2 Robert Knight 2008-09-11 21:42:19 UTC

Since the Ctrl+B thing is already reported elsewhere I suggest I mark this INVALID?

Comment 3 Andreas Pakulat 2008-09-11 21:55:53 UTC

I'm not sure I understand why Ctrl+Shift+B would be any better than Ctrl+B? I could still have that used in my terminal app. I guess though its a lot less likely, so I don't mind if you close the wishlist report as wontfix.

Comment 4 Robert Knight 2008-09-12 01:00:24 UTC

> I'm not sure I understand why Ctrl+Shift+B would be any better than Ctrl+B? 

Terminal programs tend not to use multi-modifier shortcuts, so there should be few conflicts with that.  Where possible the pattern used for shortcuts is Shift+<Normal Shortcut for Action>.  eg.  Find is Ctrl+Shift+F instead of Ctrl+F.

Bookmarks are a feature that were introduced back in KDE 3 (or maybe even before) which I didn't take out because there are sufficient users who find it useful and it wasn't taking up much space in the UI.

The reason for having lots of shortcuts generally is so that you don't need to assign them yourself or navigate the menu (via mouse or keyboard) for common actions like clearing the screen, searching the history etc.