Arch Linux

physicsshark

Member

Registered: 2014-04-19

Posts: 44

Context aware keyboard shortcut hints?

Is there any utility for Linux that allows you to see the available keyboard shortcuts for the current application you're running?  Chrome OS has this, and you can also get this feature for Mac through a utility called KeyCue.
http://www.ergonis.com/products/keycue/
Would love to have something like this for desktop Linux.  Any suggestions?

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"The Guide says that there is an art to flying," said Ford, "or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss."  - Life, the Universe, and Everything

drcouzelis

Member

From: Connecticut, USA

Registered: 2009-11-09

Posts: 4,092

Website

Re: Context aware keyboard shortcut hints?

I can kind of see why this would be useful, but I'm also a little confused... Aren't all of the keyboard shortcuts listed in the application menus themselves?

physicsshark

Member

Registered: 2014-04-19

Posts: 44

Re: Context aware keyboard shortcut hints?

Most applications, yes.  Some keyboard shortcuts (like the ones for the toolbox in GIMP), can only be viewed by mousing over to object and revealing the tooltip.  To users who aren't experienced with every piece of software on the planet but still want to be able to enjoy the efficiency of keyboard shortcuts, a hotkey to reveal keyboard shortcut hints (in an overlay) would be extremely useful.  The point of keyboard shortcuts is to save time, but when I have to navigate through menus to find the shortcut I want, I'm losing time.

Such an application seems feasible though, because the keybinding systems on Linux are pretty standardized.  Also, Ubuntu's Unity desktop (which I'm not personally a fan of), can rip the menus right of the application and make them searchable through a feature called HUD.  This makes me think that some utility could be written that would just dynamically create keyboard shortcut cheatsheets for your applications that could be triggered by a universal keyboard shortcut.

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"The Guide says that there is an art to flying," said Ford, "or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss."  - Life, the Universe, and Everything

Pse

Member

Registered: 2008-03-15

Posts: 415

Re: Context aware keyboard shortcut hints?

This would certainly be useful. I believe each GUI toolkit would need to provide some kind of support for this, though. I believe Ubuntu patches Gtk and Qt to support its Unity HUD.

Last edited by Pse (2014-09-05 04:28:59)

physicsshark

Member

Registered: 2014-04-19

Posts: 44

Re: Context aware keyboard shortcut hints?

Gtk+ 3 does keybindings through CSS files(https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable … dings.html.  It seems to me that a utility could be written to read these CSS files (or additionally, provide a front-end to modify them as well).  I don't know what Qt or GTK+ 2 has in this area, but both toolkits have standard keyboard shortcuts that work across applications.  This would be less useful because myself and others are probably fairly familiar with many of these (Ctrl + N, Ctrl + C, etc.).

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"The Guide says that there is an art to flying," said Ford, "or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss."  - Life, the Universe, and Everything