GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 165716
change keyboard shortcuts
Last modified: 2006-02-18 05:53:41 UTC
I guess there are some issues with keyboard navigation and accessibility, so rhythmbox has to use ctrl+space to play/pause songs, but this is just unintuitive. There should be at least the possibility to change shortcuts when the relative gconf key is activated, so one can have simply <space> to play/pause music. Thanks.
I agree. Can rhythmbox shortcut keys be configured under keyboard shortcuts? I'm still working on my laptop keyboard...volume up/down and my search key are working fine, but I'm still trying to figure out how to get a CD to play, pause, stop, etc. with user-defined keyboard shortcuts.
I seriously doubt that we're make any of the Rhythmbox keybindings changable. However: 1) Rhythmbox listens for "X Audio Keys" - so if you set the "Play", "Stop", "Skip to Next", etc in the Keyboard Shortcuts they will affect Rhythmbox. 2) If you really want to change some of the keybinding for Rhythmbox you can turn on "Editable menu accelerators" in the Menu and Toolbars preferences (or set the gconf key /desktop/gnome/interface/can_change_accels to true) you can change the accelerators for menu items by typing them on the keyboard when the menu item is selected.
I fully agree with the Ctrl-Spacebar problem. I don't think keybindings should be changeable either, but I do think that the Ctrl-Spacebar should be changed into just Spacebar. * A lot of audio/video software use this shortcut, and users are getting used to it. When they realize that rhythmbox doesn't play/pause when they hit Spacebar, I guess they just get a little annoyed. * The current situation is *really* bad : hitting spacebar activates the current selected widget. If this is the "Play" button, then the song plays/pauses, which is great. If this is anything else, unexpected things happen : when it's the song itself in the song list, the song plays again from the beginning (whereas the user probably wanted to pause it). If it's the album name in the album list, the album's first song plays. If it's the volume control, nothing noticeable happens, etc. I believe the fact that the behavior of a so commonly-used shortcut changes depending on which widget is selected is, from an usability point of view, really confusing.
Using Space isn't an option, it's the key GTK uses for activating widgets (as you mention). Changing it to do something else would cause serious accessability problems, so it won't happen.
Making space an option isn't going to happen, because of the mentioned keynav issues. Marking NOTABUG.