GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 118115
Delete Key should Clear/Delete
Last modified: 2006-02-08 17:07:32 UTC
this was prompted by bug 118083 It makes sense for the Delete key by default to actually delete stuff. This would be consistant with Adobe Photoshop, and KDE and Gnome, which I think covers most of the GIMPs target users. I dont want to make things too difficult for exisintings users. To keep previous users of the GIMP relatively happy it would be helpful if the GIMP shipped a gimp12menurc that retained the old keybindings as used by Gimp 1.2.0, I'll file another bug report for that if necessary. (Producing a menurc it is so trivial I think even I could do it). [Historically Delete was used to clear any dynamically assigned GTK menu keybindings, which meant that it was unavailable for use as the Delete shortcut Backspace also cleared the keybinding In GTK2 only Backspace is available for clearing menu keybindings, Delete is available for deleting things.]
I think this will make a big differnce to user satisfaction. Existing users are smart enough to be able to adapt and we can provide a menurc for those who dont want to change (but the really serious users will already have their own custom menurc). set as a blocker for the keybinding change in the ImageMap plugin.
Changing target milestone to future (for several of my bugs at once) as requested by the developers. Most of my reports are things that would be nice but non-essentail and certainly are not blockers for 2.0.
Putting this on 2.2. It shoul be a 30 second change to add this as a default shortcut. Cheers, Dave.
*** Bug 137512 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
By the way, I don't think this would be a "30 second change": there is already a shortcut (Ctrl-K), which should not be removed. If we add a new one (with the current system that allows only one shortcut per menu entry) we would have to hardcode it. That would not be a good solution because this shortcut could not be changed easily by the user. So I doubt that this bug report is really trivial, unfortunately.
Oh for fucks sake Raphael, it is blindingly obvious that the Delete key should delete things, and I'm pissed off that this change wasn't included in GIMP 2.0. The only reason this change didn't get into 2.0 is because you and others care more about not inconveniencing existing users (who are easily smart enough and well able to adapt) than you do about bringing in a wider userbase. Providing keybinding for both is all well and good but it shouldn't hold up this long overdue change to bring the GIMP into line with the rest of of Gnome and the Gnome Human interface Guidelines. And besides Gimp 2.2 is a long way away and if keeping both is important then someone should be able to do it in plenty of time without blocking this change. --- Comment from bug report marked as a duplicate included below: Why is Delete Selection Ctrl+k and not the Delete key, as well as the Backspace key? There doesn't seem to be a binding to them, so why not use them? If it really is necessary, you can keep Ctrl+k for backwards compatibility or if any keyboards don't have Delete. They should have Backspace at least. Windows XP Professional Gimp 2.0pre4 GTK+ 2.2.4
Can we please stick to a polite tone? Thanks. I think there are very good reasons for not suddenly changing widely documented keyboard shortcuts. And yes, annoying lots of existing users is worse than not adapting to potential-maybe-future-users. I wonder why existing users allegedly are more flexible to adapt than future users. I don't see why. The change has not been included, because - as outlined by Raphaël - we care about our existing users and it would be a gross hack to have a special case for that thing with the current codebase. Mitch wants to redo the shortcut/menu handling anyway after 2.0 and this change IMHO can very well wait until then.
I just looked at the Gnome-HIG and I don't see a reference to Backspace for deleting stuff in the section about User Input (with the exception of CTRL-Backspace deleting the last word - does not apply). Also I firmly believe that it is not really "blindingly obvious" what backspace should do. When assigning the semantics "deletes things" to it it is absolutely not clear that this maps to "clear pixels" - when the vectors tool is active you might want to use backspace to delete the currently active anchor, which is very much not the same as CTRL-K.
Backspace != Delete Backspace would remain as the key used to clear a keybinding association in the menus. I specified the Delete key not the backspace key. (The iMac didn't have seperate Delete and backspace for a while but Apple regretted it and now even they have both Backspace and delete keys). The Delete key, located below the Insert key and beside the End and Home keys is what I was suggesting, not the backspace key. The HIG previously specified Ctrl+K to clear something (usually text) because in GTK1.4 the Delete key was unavailable however the Delete key is available in GTK2 and if the CVS version of the HIG doesn't already recommend the Delete key for Deletion that is merely an oversight that I'm confident can be quickly fixed.
You are right, I missed that. I was confused by the behaviour when trying to bind the keys to a menu item. And it seems that in gtk+ 2.3.something Backspace and Delete both are a) assignable and b) can be used to delete an existing binding by typing them multiple times. However, I still believe that the "Delete thing" action probably should be made available to the tools instead of clearing pixels (similiar to the cursor keys).
I'm really not interested anymore. Seeing as I cannot remove myself as reporter on this bug I'm closing it.
Reopening this bug report. There is really not much point in sticking to Ctrl-K when we can as well use Delete. Let's do this for GIMP 2.4. Our users will have to adopt to some changes anyway and this particular one seems to make a lot of sense.
Actually in the meantime we do use the Delete key for e.g. the vectors tool. Please make sure that these don't conflict.
Hmm, I've committed the change so that we can play with it. But I will leave the bug report open until we figured out how to deal with the vectors tools. Are there any other tools using the Delete key?
Probably unrelated, but the implementation of gimp_vector_tool_key_press() doesn't seem to do the right thing. The function is supposed to return TRUE if it handled the key-press.
*** Bug 330398 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***