A More Mac-aware Way Of Achieving: Advance Lab in J701 JGTK

At present (Tue 22 Feb 2011) the way to advance a lab in J701 JGTK is: Ctrl-J. Not: ⌘J as in j602.

This looks to the Mac-savvy user (who is a J novice) like the rough edges of a hasty port from Windows.

The original use of the Command Key (⌘) on the Macintosh was to enable a shortcut to a menu item, nothing else.

Consequently Windows-style shortcuts which are not attached to any menu item are a violation of the Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines.

Fortunately it's easy to hack the JGTK code to furnish ⌘J as a shortcut and associated menu item.

NOTE: Apple Human Interface Guidelines: Keyboard Shortcuts Quick Reference reserves ⌘J for the function: "Scroll to a selection". However this reservation is not a strong one (which would be marked with an "Apple symbol") and is only recommended where the app provides this function.

Of course the menu item may be considered far less important than the modifier/keystroke ⌘J -- and indeed only serves to as a reminder for the complete novice, who will know from Mac usage that all such shortcuts correspond with menu items (or are supposed to), and that any shortcut can be looked up in the menus.

So we arbitrarily place the new menu item in the Run menu.

Here's my suggested fix:

The Run menu now takes on this appearance:

runadvancemenu.jpg

Interfaces/GTK/AdvanceLabMac (last edited 2011-02-23 02:40:32 by IanClark)