Re: Keyboard use (was Re: A few questions about using Denemo on Windows)

[Petr Pařízek]

Richard wrote:

> This is a widely used system and was operational at one time in Denemo
> - I think it could be re-instated, though quite why it was discontinued
> I don't recall. But as any command within a menu can have its own
> keyboard shortcut it isn't needed to get access to the commands.

Hmm, not really. There are situations where some programs do offer menu
items for which there are no pre-defined keyboard shortcuts. If this
happens, then the idea of navigating through the menus via the keyboard
is essentially the only choice to reach and activate that item. For
example, I've witnessed some programs having a Ctrl+s for "Save" but not
having anything for "Save as". But because I knew it was in the "File"
menu, I pressed Alt+f for "File" and then pressed either the upper or
the lower curser key repeatedly until I reached "Save as" and pressed
Enter. And then there's one more reason why this facility is useful,
which I'll discuss later in my reply.

> But, from what you are saying, blind people can cope
> with pop-up dialogs?

Yes, they can, provided that the standard keyboard commands usually used
for navigation are available -- i.e. in standard Windows dialogs, it's
Tab or Shift+Tab for moving forwards or backwards through controls,
Space Bar for checking or unchecking a checkbox, upper or lower cursor
key for moving through the list of files or for changing the value of
the currently selected item, Enter for pressing a button.

> The documentation doesn't, unfortunately, contain a list of the default
> keyboard shortcuts, because they are available from the Shortcuts
> command in the Help menu.

This is the second reason why it's often useful to be able to reach the
menus using the "Alt-style" navigation I mentioned earlier. If I open
the menu using the steps I described and I keep moving inside it with
the up and down arrow keys, I can usually read the relevant keyboard
shortcut if it's on the same line as the description itself, so that
instead of hearing just "Save", I'll then hear "Save Ctrl+s", for example.

> The crucial step needed would be to design the set of shortcuts that a
> particular blind user would want.

I think the dialog for defining them could actually be made accessible
to a "speech user", provided that something like Ctrl+Tab or
Ctrl+Shift+Tab could be used (i.e. Windows usually use these for
navigating from page to page in multipage dialogs). But anyway, I'm
convinced pretty much that a lot of usual score-writing needs could be
met with some shortcuts which, even though they wouldn't help every
single blind user, might still help something like 90% of them or so. I
mean, it would definitely be possible to make keyboard shortcuts that
would allow me to write a piece for, let's say, flute and piano (i.e. a
pair of staves for the piano and a single staff for the flute), with
things like adding markings for dynamics or for tempo changes or even
adding the title and the composer's name. Even if this was just the
starting point, it would still be tremendously helpful. If the user then
decides to notate something else, like a piece for a choir and a chamber
orchestra or whatever, he would then have the possibility to customize
the keyboard shortcuts so that he could, for example, enter lyrics
faster or just do faster whatever he likes.

> Attached is the result of clicking on that
> command on my program - the shortcuts are not the default ones, because
> I have customised them for my own use of Denemo.

Thanks. I tried to test it. The results were, to put it frankly, both
positive and negative.
The good news is that I was indeed able to hear the pitches coming via
my MIDI device while I was typing and I was able to use the Ctrl+q
keystroke to exit denemo.
But surprisingly, when I launched it for the very first time, one of the
two windows (I think it was the one with the print view) suddenly gave
me something like: "Denemo.exe has terminated unexpectedly." After a
while, however, it reopened automatically again.

But that's still not all. No matter if I ran it for the first or second
or maybe fifth time, I always got a lot of error messages, both from my
original command prompt window and from inside Denemo itself.

Just for you to know, I've attached three text files to this message.
The one called "denemo0" contains the messages popping up right in my
terminal window, "denemo1" contains the messages Denemo gave me when run
for the first time, "denemo2" contains messages that Denemo gave me when
run for subsequent times.

Petr



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denemo0.txt
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denemo1.txt
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denemo2.txt
Description: Text document