[Qt-interest] Cross Platform Shortcut Conventions

[Andrew Hodgkinson]

On 25/06/2010 14:53, Josh wrote:

> Thanks ;). I've read this, and it indeed helps, but doesn't really answer
> my question [...]

It seems to me that the only way to be *truly* portable is to restrict 
yourself to the named shortcuts supported by QKeySequence. If you wanted 
to have other shortcuts, I suspect the only robust approach would be to 
supply some kind of editor dialogue box and maybe offer OS-specific 
default sets if you're feeling ambitious.

Mac OS X in particular has a large range of shortcuts, particularly using 
the function keys with various modifier combinations. You probably have 
to count those out. It may well be reasonably 'safe' to use a Ctrl+<foo> 
shortcut (Command+<foo> on OS X) for alphabetic keys - not numeric, OS X 
uses those globally too, for rapid access to windows or spaces - and use 
the QKeySequence table of shortcuts to deduce alphabetic values of <foo> 
which are unused across the operating systems listed, at least in their 
default configurations.

It would be next to impossible to provide a concrete list of "all used 
key shortcuts" or "all safe key shortcuts". The global allocations on Mac 
OS X (and probably many other OSs) are very easily edited via the 
standard system preferences GUI so many users are likely to have made 
individual tweaks. Internationalisation issues change the available 
shortcuts and the list of shortcuts it makes sense to use; the 
QKeySequence documentation touches upon this. Linux varies with desktop 
environment and probably between versions of the same environment too.

As I say, I reckon you need to stick to just the named supported 
shortcuts and make anything else editable. Extra shortcuts would need to 
be disabled by default, or disabled by default unless the OS and desktop 
environment type and version precisely matches that required for one or 
more default shortcut sets you construct and ship with your application.

-- 
Andrew Hodgkinson, Endurance Technology
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