Keyboard plug uses weird symbols to display shortcuts
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Switchboard Keyboard Plug |
Confirmed
|
Medium
|
Unassigned |
Bug Description
When looking at the shortcut list the only modifier key which is obvious to me is the "Ctrl" key.
Symbols which I can't find on my keyboard:
⌘ I know this is a mac symbol, but i'm running a pc like majority of elementary users. I don't know what key it represents.
⎇ Maybe this is "alt"? could be easily mistaken for a "shift" as both have an arrow going upwards
Other symbols which exist on my keyboard but still confuse me because I have not seen them used before in text:
↹ I couldn't figure this out without looking at the keyboard
⇧ This is probably the easiest to figure out, but still a bit weird to see it as a symbol
Proposed solutions for this usability problem:
a) Replace symbols with textual versions (like "alt", "shift", "tab", etc)
b) Show a legend in all the shortcut views which tells what the symbols mean
I'd personally like (a) as there is no ambiguity.
description: | updated |
Changed in switchboard-plug-keyboard: | |
importance: | Undecided → Medium |
Changed in switchboard-plug-keyboard: | |
status: | Confirmed → In Progress |
assignee: | nobody → Fabian Thoma (fabianthoma) |
Changed in switchboard-plug-keyboard: | |
status: | In Progress → Confirmed |
assignee: | Fabian Thoma (fabianthoma) → nobody |
Changed in switchboard-plug-keyboard: | |
milestone: | loki-beta1 → loki-rc1 |
Changed in switchboard-plug-keyboard: | |
milestone: | loki-rc1 → none |
I'm going to confirm this but only partially. We legally cannot use the windows symbol as it is a registered trademark. We can however use the saint john's arms (⌘) since it is not a trademarked symbol. This represents the Command, Super, Meta, etc key. The naming is not consistent across all platforms, but it should be pretty apparent that this is *the* special key.
However I agree that the alt/option, tab, and shift symbols probably aren't as immediately recognizable as just writing "Alt" "Tab" "Shift"