"Alt" button will not trigger Inkscape menu bar

[rickmastfan67]

0.48.2 r9819
Windows 7 x64 RTM

Steps to reproduce:
1. Open Inkscape.
2. Hit the "Alt" button on your keyboard.

What happens:
Absolutely nothing.

What should happen:
The Inkscape UI Menu bar should be triggered so you can use the arrow keys to move around in it (so you don't always have to use the mouse).

Every other program I use on my W7 system can do this correctly (like in Firefox and LibreOffice), I don't know why Inkscape can't. Also, this is reproducible in 0.48.1-2 100% of the time.

[su_v (suv-lp)]

> Every other program I use on my W7 system can do this correctly

Did you actually compare it with other applications using the GTK+ toolkit (e.g. GIMP) on Windows?

In Inkscape (like e.g. in GIMP), the standard keyboard shortcut <F10> [1] activates the main menu: this keyboard shortcut is also listed in the 'Inkscape keyboard and mouse reference':
<http://inkscape.org/doc/keys048.html#d0e1244>

Individual menus are accessed with 'Alt' + access key (underline character in the menu name) [2].

[1] <http://developer.gnome.org/hig-book/2.32/input-keyboard.html.en#widget-navigation>
[2] <http://library.gnome.org/users/user-guide/2.32/shortcuts-access.html.en>

[su_v (suv-lp)]

AFAIU - unless this report is actually a request to port Inkscape to a Windows-native toolkit - this should be discussed upstream (for the Windows backend of GTK+-2), not for a specific application using the toolkit.

[rickmastfan67 (rickmastfan67)]

Hmm, thanks for in-lighting me on this. I didn't know that GTK+ programs used just "F10" to trigger the menu.

Where is the discussion for the new Windows backend of GTK+-2 happening? Because to be honest, "Alt" should also trigger the menu bar in Windows as programs that don't use GTK+ can use "Alt" (like IE and Notepad as examples). But I do also notice that Windows programs also can use "F10" to trigger the menu bar (heck, I didn't know F10 did this till now, you learn something new everyday!). Still, I'm personally use to "Alt", as are probably millions of other Windows users (of programs other than Inkscape).

[su_v (suv-lp)]

The key to activate the menu bar can be changed in the user (or system) gtkrc file:

Default:
gtk-menu-bar-accel = "F10"
<http://developer.gnome.org/gtk/stable/GtkSettings.html#GtkSettings--gtk-menu-bar-accel>

With the X11 and Quartz backend this gtk-setting allows to redefine the keyboard shortcut to activate the menu bar (opens the first menu at the same time, and allows to navigate to other menus with the arrow keys). Apparently overrides Inkscape's own keymap file. I haven't figured out how to specify modifiers with this syntax ('Alt' by itself for example does not work - it seems that a modifier by itself is not supported as keyboard accelerator).

Details for the win32 backend of GTK+ (possibly depends on the theme engine Inkscape uses by default) need to figured out by someone with access to Inkscape on Windows.

AFAICT this is at most a packaging issue (provide setting in Inkscape's system gtkrc file), but not something that ought to be hardcoded in Inkscape's code itself.