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RE: Help with Win32 keyboard shortcuts

To: kamm at sky-software dot com, REALbasic NUG <realbasic-nug at lists dot realsoftware dot com>
Subject: RE: Help with Win32 keyboard shortcuts
From: Aaron Ballman <aaron at realsoftware dot com>
Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 17:14:42 -0500
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As a Windows developer of many years and a person who's only income comes
from the applications that he sells. I'm telling you that Ctrl+V, Ctrl+X and
Ctrl+C should *always* work in a Windows application. Tell me one time that
you've ever wanted to cut or paste something in a text box and not expected
it to work? I don't care if it is Mac or Windows. It should *always* work.
PERIOD.

I disagree. Even Microsoft's best practices say that you should have a menu for the shortcut.

<http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnwue/html/ch05c.asp>

The key point that I see in this says, "By definition, a shortcut key is the keyboard equivalent of functionality that is supported adequately elsewhere in the interface. Therefore, avoid using a shortcut key as the only way to access a particular operation."

Without a menu, you're not defining a shortcut to anything the user can see, which is bad.

That being said, I am still uncertain which version of RB contains the bug. It may be that I haven't seen the part in MS' docs that say all edit fields must support cut, copy and paste (I must admit that I haven't read the spec from cover to cover, so I may have missed something). But from what I can read currently, it looks like 5.5 is behaving correct.

I can't believe there is even a question about this. We can argue about
semantics and specifications all we want. That just doesn't matter. I'm
talking about the *real* world. And from my previous example, even Apple
developers agree with me.

Apple developers may agree, but it doesn't much matter -- you're talking about Windows user experience, and MS has documentation on what that experience should be.

~Aaron
--
In response to a stupid question I once asked: "My brain uses patterns to format responses to your inputs, but I don't have one for that. Do you speak German?" ~ Zola
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