On Thu, May 31, 2018 at 2:54 PM, Jason L Tibbitts III <tibbs(a)math.uh.edu> wrote:
>>>>> "CM" == Chris Murphy
<lists(a)colorremedies.com> writes:
CM> I think it's to avoid ambiguity. F8 on one of my computers tells the
CM> firmware to do a firmware update or some such thing, so I'm going to
CM> press F8 and maybe get a firmware update menu, or maybe I'll get a
CM> GRUB menu, depending on my timing. And I think such ambiguity will
CM> inevitably lead to bad UI/UX.
Unfortunately anything you pick will be ambiguous.
Subjective yes. But not ambiguous.
the "g" key would not be ambiguous. It would be subjective. And I
doubt it conflicts with anything else. But it is a bit obscure decoder
ring. I'm willing to bet the user tries shift, Esc and space bar since
in various eras of GRUB all of those have been trigger keys to reveal
a hidden menu.
The change under
discussion mentions adding F8 to the set of keys checked, so that would
already conflict for you (and already conflicts with Windows, which
suggests to me that this isn't really much of a conflict). I have a
number of machines which use 'Esc' as the key to enter the BIOS, so that
conflicts with grub now but somehow it has never even occurred to me
that any conflict exists.
Plus, there's an upside: if you're hammering F11 or F8 or F12 or Esc or
whatever to try and get into the BIOS, and you miss it, then at least
you stop in grub instead of going straight into the OS.
Ick.
CM> This is one of those areas were Apple's UX is vastly superior, the
CM> keyboard shortcuts for firmware and bootloader have been
CM> standardized for a very long time - at least 20 years, across
CM> multiple archs and hardware generations and development teams.
If you're going to select just a particular hardware/software
combination like that, then you could say the same for a number of
individual laptop or motherboard manufacturers when combined with
Windows. Taken as a whole there is no standardization across the
industry.
It is an imperfect analogy with bias. Nevertheless, even within Dell,
HP or Intel, you get a new product manager, a new firmware OEM, you
eventually get different shortcuts. There's hardly any company in the
tech industry with as much institutional momentum like Apple when it
comes to the user experience - which is one of the reasons why users
of Apple products flip their shit beyond imagination when things
change. And good for them for doing so. These shortcuts as a UI
element have effectively become user domain, even though they are
hidden. They aren't documented within the OS help system, let alone
during boot.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201255
Anyway, I don't really care what gets chosen here, but I sure
would like
the option to actually configure what keys grub watches instead of just
having it be 'Esc' and maybe patched to include 'F8'. Grub seems to be
so flexible so it seems odd that this bit is hardcoded.
That's a good point.
--
Chris Murphy