SUMMARY The alternative characters palette may benefit from other keyboard-based shortcuts. The current "type the number" shortcut may be cumbersome on some keyboard layouts (e.g. French). CONTEXT The newly announced palette was featured in a "This week in KDE" article, this led to a discussion about palette keyboard shortcuts here: https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/k71i6n/this_week_in_kde_big_new_accentedalternative/gep8j35/?context=1 One worry about typing a digit to select a character is that on some keyboards, the digits are accessed in combination with the Shift key. Alternatively, they may be input using the keypad, for those who still have one. In both cases, significant hand movement is required, which may break fast typing, as is generally not ergonomic. WISH Implement other keyboard shortcuts to make it easier to select a character with minimal hand movement. A few ideas: * Use the F1..F9 keys to select the corresponding characters, this solves the Shift issue of some layouts. * Repeatedly press the triggering letter key to select an alternative character, then the Space bar to confirm the choice. * Repeatedly press the triggering letter key to select an alternative character, which becomes confirmed after a short timeout. As a practical example in the last two ideas: * The user would keep the E key pressed * The palette would appear with the É È Ê characters * The user would press E key two times, selecting the Ê character * The user would wait a bit (or press Space) to confirm
A possibly relevant merge request was started @ https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-integration/-/merge_requests/20
Git commit 23a1490b2ff82d890cc1277ffe2e2e544381c718 by Jan Blackquill. Committed on 05/03/2021 at 00:47. Pushed by cblack into branch 'master'. platforminputcontextplugin: Make F1-F10 valid for selecting keys Some keyboards don't have digits readily accessible; adding F1-F10 as valid alternatives can help cover these keys. M +18 -6 src/platforminputcontextplugin/plasmaimcontext.cpp https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-integration/commit/23a1490b2ff82d890cc1277ffe2e2e544381c718