F1 opens Gnome Terminal Help, which might not be what the user wants

[Martin Flack]

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.

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

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?

[Martin Flack (martin-martinflack)]

Nah, that disables F10, not F1. :-)

Even the more liberally labeled "Disable all menu access keys" still does not disable F1.

Seems like F1 is masked by Gnome Help unless you find it in the list and reconfigure it.

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

The have a look down the short cuts list. For me it lists Help F1

[Martin Flack (martin-martinflack)]

Yes, it can be done. I guess I'm trying to convince you that having to reconfigure one's primary terminal application just to get a help screen from a terminal-based program is overkill and a disservice to users. For example, if a user trying to learn mutt needs help, under Ubuntu's default configuration you can't access the help screen. (Without first doing as you say.)

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

The problem is: "it can be done". Of course we could patch and change the way it works, but with every patch where we divert from upstream the worldload for every new release gets higher.

I can see your point, but I think that coherence with the rest of the desktop is as valid (for new users, who rarely use the terminal).

I suggest to take the decision upstream. Sébastien: what do you think? Do you think this is important enough to divert?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Daniel, that bug should be simply forwarded to get upstream opinion

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

I forwarded your suggestion to: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=331878

[mezhaka (mezhaka)]

Hey thank you guys -- the disabling of F1 in the terminal Edit->Keyboard Shortcuts... works just fine. I've found this page googling by
ubuntu terminal F1

Personally I don't think the proposed chages are worth implementing. It might be easier to mention that it is possible to disable GNOME F1 behavior in the default terminal help, i.e. if i want help from some app wich works in terminal, but get the terminal help when pressing F1, the default help page which will show up can mention that it is possible to disable this behavior in the aforementioned fashion.

Thanks for the tip again.

[Mathias Burén (mathias-buren)]

I came here after a Google search, it's the top result. Please fix this.

[JoE (joehillen)]

Geez this is annoying. There are so many terminal applications that use F1: vim, screen, htop, etc.

It really seems like the simplest solution would be to change the default to Alt+F1.

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

F1 keybinding now disabled as per related upstream bug #413145
Marking "Fix Released" to close