Re: describe-bindings: ^L, bad order, naming

[Lennart Borgman <lennart.borgman.073@student.lu.se>]

Stefan Monnier wrote:

>>It is the sum of all newbie unfriendliness that counts.  At least for
>>the newbie.
>>    
>>
>
>If they want Notepad, they know where to find it,
>  
>
I would say that one of the challenges when making software is making 
complex functionality available in a way that is at the same time both 
simple and flexible. Making things behave similar at the surface is a 
tool for this. It makes the complexity less for the beginners.

Maybe I think this is more important since I am (still) using Emacs on 
w32 and that is a bit more complex than using it in a *nix style 
environment I believe. The learning curve is heavier and often you run 
into small things that stops you from what you want to do. (For example 
tools that does not accept w32 line style.) Those small things together 
takes an awful lot of time.

>PS: By the way, AFAIK, keyboard shortcuts are the things displayed in menus
>saying how you can use the keyboard to get the same result.  Key bindings
>are slightly different since they exist completely independently from menus.
>The two are related but not identical.
>  
>
Probably that is the history. But I believe that has changed because 
software UI has become more flexible. In some common applications (MS 
Office) you can decide what to have in the menus without changing what 
they call keyboard shortcuts.

Looking at the documentation for OpenOffice.org they seem to use 
"keyboard shortcuts" the same way. They also use the term "shortcut 
keys" for the same thing.