Add dialog to configure keybindings for menu items

[Jaap Karssenberg]

Almost top FAQ is to assign a accelerator to e.g. the equation editor dialog. These can be changed by the user, but apparently the feature is too obscure to discover. Need a dialog or a tab in the preferences to do this.

* Build list of menu actions and current accelerators
* Some way to input new accelerator
* Some way to reset to defaults

[Pablo Angulo (pablo-angulo)]

IMHO, this issue should be addressed at a higher level. The GNOME HIG way to configure keybindings for menu items is fantastic, and I wouldn't trade it for any dialog. I'd even say a dialog is not in the spirit of the GNOME HIG. The way to configure toolbars, for example, is also great, and doesn't use a dialog.

Using a dialog instead of editing in situ in one particular gtk application will only make it worse. Thunar, nautilus, gimp are not planning to add dialogs. It's more important to remain consistent with other GNOME and gtk apps.

However, I agree this feature is not very much publicited. I'd rather suggest we put our brains to increasing awareness than stepping out of the gtk way. But this is a gtk-wise task. Is there a GNOME HIG mailing list?

[Jaap Karssenberg (jaap.karssenberg)]

@pablo: I do not agree. We already support the standard way to assign keybindings, and will keep supporting this. However this method does not follow the design principle of "discoverability". So a new user will hardly ever figure out this feature unless he reads about it somewhere (and if he stumbles upon it, he will likely report it as a bug). Therefore it is good to have an explicit dialog or widget for this which will be easy to find for a user. I know a number of gtk applications that do have this feature and think it is a good addition. E.g. the interface in geany is quite nice.

I agree that ideally this should be addressed for all gtk applications. Probably adding a standard widget to edit keybindings to the gtk toolkit would be a nice addition (similar to e.g. the colorchooser or filechooser standard widgets etc.). (And btw a standard interface to make toolbars customizable would also be appreciated.) If someone does so, I would be happy to adopt it.