Comment by Telaneo
15 hours ago
Devil's advocate: showing the relevant keyboard shortcuts in the UI can be overwhelming (or at least one of many parts that all together become overwhelming) to new users, while not having them shown at all makes them undiscoverable.
I think this is a bad reason. Even MS Office has made this work. But I've seen people act on this type of argument. If nothing else, it should be possible to have a settings menu where you can define your own. Even if no shortcuts are set by default and they aren't shown anywhere else in the UI, it will still be possible for a power user to make the best use of the program.
> showing the relevant keyboard shortcuts in the UI can be overwhelming
Underlining the accelerator key is subtle and shouldn't be overwelming. Keyboard navigation unaware users probably won't even notice.
This works poorly if you intend to localise your application. Great if you don't though.
(Speaking of menu/drop-downs with underlined characters for alt commands.)
> This works poorly if you intend to localise your application. Great if you don't though.
Sure that's true. But remember M$ allowed you to fairly easily edit those underlined-characters in, oh, for example Office 2002 and 2003. Even if you didn't have a lot of default underlines in your current language settings, it is still possible for someone to add their own underline-shortcuts.
Back in those days, the first thing I did on any personal new install of Outlook, was to disable the shortcut that marked all email as being read. (That's cause I hit that button by accident too many times.)
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Windows did both successfully.
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It sounds like your complaint might be that it works poorly if you half-ass the localization process and assume that literal translation of strings is most or all of what localization means.
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> showing the relevant keyboard shortcuts in the UI can be overwhelming
Every application did it for decades after the first Xerox guidelines up until Microsoft and Apple decided to retire the concept of usability some time around 2010.
At least Apple still shows them when you hold option. At least they did when I still used a Mac.
something something smartphones
> Devil's advocate: showing the relevant keyboard shortcuts in the UI can be overwhelming
That is not a requirement, having access to menus, a master help shortcut ir fuzzy search actions shorcut are other options.