Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: [PATCH] new SDL keyboard shortcuts to start and stop VM

[Kevin Wolf]

Am 23.10.2009 15:59, schrieb Anthony Liguori:
> Kevin Wolf wrote:
>> Well, the whole point of a keyboard shortcut was for me to make things
>> easier.
> 
> This is something of a classic debate between providing power users 
> every possible knob and function verses overwhelming non-power users 
> with so many features/options that they cannot even get started.

You mean the additional monitor commands would overwhelm the non-power
users who can cope with the existing commands? This is a subjective
thing, so I can't contradict, but I'm not sure if I come to the same
conclusion. Do non-power users even use the monitor?

> 
> My big problem with keyboard shortcuts is that they are a really awful 
> user interface for anything because they are not discoverable (without 
> consulting documentation) and they provide no obvious feedback as to 
> what state they are in.

Right, with our interface they are not discoverable. I didn't know about
Ctrl-Alt-U, for example. But if I can list them in the monitor and even
more if I'm defining the shortcuts myself I'm pretty confident that I
can remember them.

> For instance, imagine creating a shortcut based on a monitor macro of 
> 'migrate "exec:dd of=snapshot.img"' and you tie it to ctrl-alt-e.
> 
> What feedback do you get that the command has completed?  What happens 
> if you try to run the command again while another is running?  Does it 
> get queued, does it get dropped?  I can imagine a user sitting there 
> hitting ctrl-alt-e repeatedly not realizing anything is happening.  I 
> know I find myself doing this sometimes with ctrl-a when using -nographic.

The user has created that ctrl-alt-e mapping himself, so he should know
how to use the monitor. He even knows the syntax of migrate, so chances
are that he also knows what it's doing.

> Your answer may be, this is for a developer and they'll be aware of all 
> the short comings/gotchas but this ends up being a rather user-hostile 
> interface.  People are never as aware of short comings/gotchas as we'd 
> like them to be.  If there was no other way for a developer to do this, 
> I'd be more inclined to find a way to support this but it's just a 
> matter of writing a script or if you really need a short cut, you can do 
> it with standard gnome short cuts or write a very simple vnc client 
> based on gvncviewer (we're talking a dozen lines of added code) to do 
> this for you.

No, sorry, before I start writing a VNC viewer I'd rather keep a local
patch around. ;-)

But I really don't feel like continuing this discussion as I don't see
anyone who could be convinced to change his opinion. I have one opinion,
you have a different one, maintainer wins. Let's move on to more
productive things.

Kevin