[Lazarus] Cool IDE add-on idea

[Graeme Geldenhuys]

On 2018-04-23 16:53, Santiago A. via Lazarus wrote:
> These studies show that the most efficient is toolbar; second, keyboard
> shortcuts; third, second level menu option. With the objection that
> shortcuts needs a lot of practice to be better than menu.

Maybe for other programs, but for programming IDE's the rules tend to be
slightly different - they are not "normal" programs, and the user of an
IDE mostly have there hands on the keyboard. My personal experience is
that I absolutely fly when doing editing actions, searching, debugging
etc with only the keyboard. Using the mouse will slow me down
considerably. I primarily use 3 different editors. I made it my mission
to know their shortcuts well, and when possible configure them that the
same action as the same shortcut in all three editors - that makes my
life a bit easier.

Saying that, designing a UI in Lazarus or Delphi is obviously faster
with a mouse. ;-) But I also know of layout managers in Java where
visual designers are not needed, and you can knock-up a well designed
and scalable UI in no time using only code (eg: MiG Layout).

Back to Lazarus - there are some dialogs that totally annoying me
because they were not designed with keyboard users in mind. ie: Wrong
default actions, or no default actions, wrong default focus item,
incorrect tab order etc. The "Source -> Enclose in IFDEF" dialog comes
to mind. The Package windows too. Some of these I have tweaked locally
to suite my needs better - that goodness for open source projects. Hell,
you can't even configure/customise shortcuts in Delphi IDE!!!

Regards,
  Graeme

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