F1 opens Gnome Terminal Help, which might not be what the user wants
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
GNOME Terminal |
Fix Released
|
Medium
|
|||
gnome-terminal (Ubuntu) |
Fix Released
|
Wishlist
|
Ubuntu Desktop Bugs |
Bug Description
Some terminal applications such as mutt, mc, and multiview have very helpful screens that appear at the press of F1. Newbies and power users alike have the need to refer to these screens from time to time. Sometimes you cannot remember a command and the only way to proceed with your work is to look it up.
This key is widely known to produce a context-sensitive help screen on many platforms. While it is accurate to have a Gnome Terminal help screen appear for F1, Gnome Terminal is already quite a self-explanatory application, and IMHO the user is more likely to want help on the application inside the terminal rather than the terminal emulator itself.
Altering the keybindings allows a user to send an F1 to the running program, but this is too many clicks for the long term solution, and encourages two states (default Help=F1 keybinding; or Help redefined) which is annoying when you cannot remember which state you left the application in.
Altering the help keybindings in all your terminal-based programs is also an option but far too much work for such a simple issue.
Suggestions for improvement:
1. Leave keybindings as-is, but add "Send F1 to terminal" option on the right-click menu.
2. If you want to be fancier, run through all the set keybindings and add "Send xxx to terminal" for keys that are likely to conflict (at least F1...F12).
3. If you want to cover all the special keys at once but don't want it dynamic, just add a submenu to the right-click menu that says "Send Special Character" and lets you choose F1...F12, Home, End, etc. which are all preselected and static.
4. Leave keybindings as-is, but add "Send raw key to terminal" option on the right-click menu, which when selected, disables keybindings for the next key pressed only.
5. Change default F1 keybinding so that it brings up a choice: Send F1 to Application or View Gnome Terminal Help. This adds an extra, unusal step, but has the advantage of being completely self-explanatory.
Changed in gnome-terminal: | |
assignee: | nobody → dholbach |
Changed in gnome-terminal: | |
assignee: | dholbach → nobody |
Changed in gnome-terminal: | |
assignee: | nobody → desktop-bugs |
status: | Confirmed → Triaged |
summary: |
- F1 opens Gnome Terminal Help which is no always what you want + F1 opens Gnome Terminal Help, which might not be what the user wants |
Changed in gnome-terminal: | |
importance: | Unknown → Medium |
Changed in gnome-terminal: | |
status: | New → Fix Released |
Thanks for your bug report. I'm inclined to close this bug report. As were not going to divert much from upstream in this decision, I tried to get their opinion and found this bug report: http:// bugzilla. gnome.org/ show_bug. cgi?id= 329827
Isn't "Edit-> Shortcuts- >Disable menu shortcut key." a wortwhile solution, as well?