Comment 4 for bug 878025

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.