[Pkg-audacious-maintainers] Bug#499435: audacious: Unfriendly keyboard shortcuts for playback control

[jaalto]

Package: audacious
Version: 1.5.1-4
Severity: normal


The keyboard controls for playback are listed as:

	play 	      	x
	pause		c
	stop		v
	previous	z
	next 		b

There are severe difficulties in using this "UI". It doesn't
seem to support average QWERTY keyboard layout in coherent manner.

Let me share the experiences:

    Press "z" for previous and "b" for next.

    Really, "b" for next?

    Hm, what "c" has to do with word "pause"?

Considering the shuffle command, which is bound to"S" key; can hardly
be one that is used often that would entitle it to reserve "S"
keybinding more than e.g. "stop" command.

SUGGESTION

For ease of use from keyboard consider either method (a) or (b). The
current one is not something that can be remembered how the shortcuts
are suppoed to be bound.

(A) Use mnemonics:

	(p)lay
	p(a)ause
	(s)top
	(p)revious	OR better (b)ackward as in Editors
	(n)next 	OR better (f)orward as in Editors

This requires remapping all current bindings that are occupied by
P, A, S, [P,N | B, F]. But the result is usable mnemonic UI.

(B) Arrange keys according to easy access to keyboard layout (Vi-style).
    	    	
	    skip backward
            | skip forward
	    | | play
	    | | |
Top row   : a s d
Bottom row: z x c
	    | | |
            | | pause
	 back forward

Problem with this is, although potentially extremely convenient, that
this would work only in QWERTY, not DVORAK. The solution is to
offer similar for left-corner keys for DVORAK and make the feature
configurable.

(C) Let user define keybindings through configuration file

This would be ultimate solution to accomodate all users.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-1-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_DK.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_DK.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages audacious depends on:
ii  audacious-plugins             1.5.1-2    Base plugins for audacious
ii  dbus                          1.2.1-3    simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  gtk2-engines-pixbuf           2.12.11-3  Pixbuf-based theme for GTK+ 2.x
ii  libatk1.0-0                   1.22.0-1   The ATK accessibility toolkit
ii  libaudclient1                 1.5.1-4    audacious dbus remote control libr
ii  libaudid3tag1                 1.5.1-4    audacious id3 tag manipulation lib
ii  libc6                         2.7-13     GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libcairo2                     1.6.4-6    The Cairo 2D vector graphics libra
ii  libdbus-1-3                   1.2.1-3    simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libdbus-glib-1-2              0.76-1     simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libglib2.0-0                  2.16.5-1   The GLib library of C routines
ii  libgtk2.0-0                   2.12.11-3  The GTK+ graphical user interface 
ii  libice6                       2:1.0.4-1  X11 Inter-Client Exchange library
ii  libmcs1                       0.7.1-1    Abstraction library to store confi
ii  libmowgli1                    0.6.1-1    a high performance development fra
ii  libpango1.0-0                 1.20.5-2   Layout and rendering of internatio
ii  libsamplerate0                0.1.4-1    audio rate conversion library
ii  libsm6                        2:1.0.3-2  X11 Session Management library
ii  libx11-6                      2:1.1.4-2  X11 client-side library

Versions of packages audacious recommends:
ii  audacious-plugins-extra       1.5.1-2    Various extra plugins for audaciou
ii  unzip                         5.52-12    De-archiver for .zip files

audacious suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information