Re: How to localize keyEquivalent="q"?

[Nicola Pero]

> > Maybe that's wrong - I'm not sure.  Do people change the
> > keyEquivalents from one language to the other ?  My feeling/ 
> > experience
> > was that keyboard shortcut are usually the same across languages.
>
> If they don't do, they should, but everyone should make a decision
> whether she/he want or want not. I would because I think that that
> everyone like (or know) it's native (first) language much better than
> other languages, so if in English for 'Quit' stand a shortcut 'q' then
> why don't is there in Hungarian for 'Kilép' a shortcut 'k'?!

I'm not sure, but our of interest I looked at the Apple Human  
Interface Guidelines
and they seem to require 'Command-q' for 'Quit' regardless of the  
language. ;-)

I actually happen to agree with you that 'Command-q' is not a  
particularly good
choice for quit in most languages since there is no relationship  
between 'q' and
the word for quit in most languages ... On the other hand, even in  
English, there
doesn't seem to be a particular logic in the choice of Command-v for  
Paste (other
than x, c, v are in a row in the keyboard), Command-z for Undo and  
Command-w for
close (other than it's near q).  There seem to be some logic in some  
other choices,
such as Command-s for Save.

But a reasonable point of view is that the key equivalents are  
actually semi-random
letters ... in all languages, including English ;-)

If we want to change them when using a different language, we need to  
make sure we
use the same letter in all applications.  Eg, all programs, when you  
run in Hungarian,
should use the same letter for 'Quit'.  Consistency is much more  
important
than translating the key! ;-)

So, it may be easier to stick with 'Command-q' for 'quit' regardless  
of the language, or if
we do want to translate it, we need to agree on what letter to use for  
each standard action
in each language.

We could presumably setup and publish a list of the standard key  
equivalents in all the standard
languages.  I'm not too convinced by this idea as it could easily turn  
into a nightmare, particularly
when applications, as they often are, are not entirely translated into  
your language, or are only
partially translated.  Then you may get into the problem that some key  
equivalents are the English
ones, some of them are the Hungarian ones, and it would be very  
confusing; when you open up
a new application and press 'Command-q', you'd have no idea of what  
action you'd be triggering. :-(

So ... all in all, I wouldn't translate them ;-)

Thanks