Bug 82117 - Improve shortcut key list for German keyboard layout
Summary: Improve shortcut key list for German keyboard layout
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: LibreOffice (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
unspecified
Hardware: All All
: high normal
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords: accessibility
: 82570 90464 105267 117292 120608 155068 160165 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks: Shortcuts-Locale
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2014-08-04 05:52 UTC by
Modified: 2024-10-07 07:06 UTC (History)
20 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
Updated list of shortcut proposals (18.33 KB, application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text)
2017-05-08 22:19 UTC, Harald Koester
Details
State of the German keyboard shortcuts recap (870 bytes, text/csv)
2024-06-12 19:08 UTC, yukijoou
Details

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Description 2014-08-04 05:52:41 UTC
For german keyboards (other languages are similar / different) some shortcut keys in the Customize dialog (Tools -> Customize -> Keyboard) are not usable, because they have no direct access over one key, but need a combination of keys.

Not usable keys for german:
- semicolon (;) -> needs Shift+(,)
- apostrophe (') -> needs Shift+(#)
- opening square bracket ([) -> needs AltGr+([)
- closing square bracket (]) -> needs AltGr+(])

Usable (but not implemented) keys for german:
- opening angle bracket (<)
- number sign (#)
- comma (,)
- short dash (-)
- special characters (ä), (ö), (ü), (ß)

This behavior should be corrected in this way, that with german localization the shortcut keys change to german keyboards (most of users using german (other language) localization use german (other language) keyboards too).
Comment 1 Robinson Tryon (qubit) 2014-12-22 03:21:41 UTC
UX Team: Please take a look
Comment 2 Buovjaga 2015-04-10 15:31:50 UTC
*** Bug 90464 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 3 Robinson Tryon (qubit) 2016-08-25 05:38:55 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 4 Heiko Tietze 2017-04-18 12:36:19 UTC
The semicolon is not assigned to a function in 5.3, but square brackets are and that would be in fact not only hard to handle with German keyboards but not accessible at all (ctrl+altgr+8 replaced the selection with [ instead to increase the font size). That's why I would understand the issue as a bug.

I think the fair advice is to not use keys other than A..Z and the numbers. That would be the easy reply and result in some missing default shortcuts (increase/decrease in case of the square brackets). Alternatively we could improve the customization and provide different factory settings dependent on the localization. But I wonder if l10n appreciates this idea.
Comment 5 Yousuf Philips (jay) (retired) 2017-04-18 14:35:33 UTC
Yes the default shortcuts are for the US keyboard but we also have locale based shortcuts, so if there are particular german shortcuts that arent working, please provide the shortcut and what it should be changed to. Would be good to check other office suites to see what shortcuts they use for the particular commands that are being requested to be changed.

See bug 88027 for how we previously fixed similar issues.
Comment 6 Yousuf Philips (jay) (retired) 2017-04-25 15:39:11 UTC
*** Bug 82570 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 7 Yousuf Philips (jay) (retired) 2017-04-25 15:42:19 UTC
Harald has proposed some new German default shortcuts in attachment 132830 [details], so please comment on them.
Comment 8 Heiko Tietze 2017-05-02 16:38:47 UTC
(In reply to Yousuf Philips (jay) from comment #7)
> Harald has proposed some new German default shortcuts in attachment 132830 [details]
> [details], so please comment on them.

Being not a fan of combinations with function keys. For example, it's heavily used in KDE/Plasma (actually Kwin). For increase/decrease a common shortcut is ctrl++/- (Internet browsers, PDF viewers etc). Execute a macro, adding some unusual break etc. shouldn't be assigned to a shortcut at all (free to customize by users). Same for Calc features. So in my opinion we solve one problem but run into another.
Comment 9 Harald Koester 2017-05-08 22:19:32 UTC
Created attachment 133172 [details]
Updated list of shortcut proposals
Comment 10 Harald Koester 2017-05-08 22:23:21 UTC
*** Bug 105267 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 11 Harald Koester 2017-05-22 17:49:06 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #8)
> 
> Being not a fan of combinations with function keys. For example, it's
> heavily used in KDE/Plasma (actually Kwin). For increase/decrease a common
> shortcut is ctrl++/- (Internet browsers, PDF viewers etc). Execute a macro,
> adding some unusual break etc. shouldn't be assigned to a shortcut at all
> (free to customize by users). Same for Calc features. So in my opinion we
> solve one problem but run into another.

The intention of the initial report was it, to have the same possibilities respective shortcuts with a German keyboard compared with a Standard US keyboard. Hence new shortcuts are not added, they already exist and can be used with a US keyboard.

Furthermore I agree with you that there are deficiencies respective shortcuts: Not all functions are described, some shortcuts are defined for functions which are used seldom and the shortcut list of the help and the user guide differs in some points. And also the problem with different keyboards exists not only with German keyboards. But this all needs time and a major revision. If this is intended in short term, it would be good. If not, to my opinion at least the initial problem with German keyboards should be solved first.
Comment 12 Heiko Tietze 2017-05-23 06:59:11 UTC
(In reply to Harald Koester from comment #11)
> .... to my opinion at least the initial problem with German keyboards should
> be solved first.

No objection from my side.
Comment 13 Thomas Lendo 2018-01-16 12:21:59 UTC
I support Harald's proposed shortcut changes and I wish it can be implemented as early as possible.

"Writer" also must include Writer master document editor. Both should always behave identical.

In German Writer 6.0.0.2 I can see that Ctrl+8 and Ctrl+9 already are assigned to decrease and increase text in addition to Ctrl+[ and Ctrl+].

For Calc's "Fill Single Edit / Einzeln füllen & bearbeiten" (engl. Ctrl+') I suggest Ctrl+0 instead of Ctrl+3, because Ctrl+2 and Ctrl+5 are for line spacing (and maybe Ctrl+3 and Ctrl+4 also will be for line spacing in the future).

It's a pity that other keys than from US keyboard aren't available in the Customize dialog. For example I would prefer Ctrl+# as German shortcut keys instead of Ctrl+3/Ctrl+0 as the apostrophe (') in the English pendant Ctrl+' is on the same key as the number sign (#) on a German keyboard. (Is there a bug for that?)
Comment 14 Thomas Lendo 2018-01-19 12:13:34 UTC
(In reply to Thomas Lendo from comment #13)
> In German Writer 6.0.0.2 I can see that Ctrl+8 and Ctrl+9 already are
> assigned to decrease and increase text in addition to Ctrl+[ and Ctrl+].
See bug 95635

> It's a pity that other keys than from US keyboard aren't available in the
> Customize dialog. For example I would prefer Ctrl+# as German shortcut keys
> instead of Ctrl+3/Ctrl+0 as the apostrophe (') in the English pendant Ctrl+'
> is on the same key as the number sign (#) on a German keyboard.
See bug 115052
Comment 15 Harald Koester 2018-04-30 19:13:29 UTC
*** Bug 117292 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 16 Thomas Lendo 2018-10-15 19:35:22 UTC
*** Bug 120608 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 17 Regina Henschel 2018-10-15 22:28:14 UTC
I suggest to extend the solution which was made for other languages in bug 88027 to German. See https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/#/c/22792/. That would be an easy hack.
Comment 18 Heiko Tietze 2018-10-16 06:53:38 UTC
Another example would be what I've done with MOD3 for macOS in https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/#/c/52964/. But we are restricted to what is defined in https://opengrok.libreoffice.org/xref/core/include/vcl/keycodes.hxx and neither umlauts nor the other characters are.
Comment 19 QA Administrators 2021-03-18 04:18:58 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete, spam)
Comment 20 Justin L 2023-06-16 12:20:16 UTC
bug 129547 attempted to "add Excel shortcuts insert time/date in Calc for German UI" but failed (perhaps because they used COLON_SHIFT_MOD1 instead of POINT_SHIFT_MOD1?)

The patch referred to
German layout keyboard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_keyboard_layout)
Comment 21 Stéphane Guillou (stragu) 2023-12-06 16:52:38 UTC
*** Bug 155068 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 22 Stéphane Guillou (stragu) 2023-12-06 16:56:23 UTC
Increasing priority, seeing we have 6 duplicates.
Comment 23 Xisco Faulí 2023-12-14 15:22:12 UTC
In comment 17 and comment 18 there a few code pointers to other patches. Turning this into an easyhack
Comment 24 Gökay ŞATIR 2023-12-18 08:39:26 UTC
I made several improvements for German shortcuts recently. Also # number sign handler is added.

Below is the list of changes, fyi:

* https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/159687
* https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/158776
* https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/157959
Comment 25 Stéphane Guillou (stragu) 2024-03-28 14:04:18 UTC
*** Bug 160165 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 26 yukijoou 2024-06-12 19:07:36 UTC
Hi, just took a look at this and made a simple table to show what we currently have in LO, what MSO does, and what users have suggested, mostly based on the existing shortcuts proposal file.
The file uses the terminology from officecfg/registry/data/org/openoffice/Office/Accelerators.xcu, which is where the keyboard shortcuts are defined.

Looking at this list, I think it's best to follow whatever MS is doing when they have an equivalent function, as that's what most users will be familiar with.

As such, I propose:

Grow (increase font size) -> add Strg + > (in other words, Strg + Umschalt + <), on top of the existing german-specific shortcut Strg + 8
Shrink (decrease font size) -> add Strg + <, on top of the existing german-specific shortcut Strg + 9

Insert current date & time already have similar shortcuts to what MSO has (Strg [ + Umschalt ] + , instead of MSO's Strg [ + Umschalt ] + .) so I think it's best not to move it to avoid breaking user's habits.

For the ones that don't seem to have an equivalent in MSO, here are the suggestions that made the most sense to me:

Execute macro field: Strg + 6
Insert zero-width space: Strg + 7
Fill single edit: Strg + 3
Mark precedents: Strg + Umschalt + 7
Mark dependents Strg + Umschalt + 6
Select data: Strg + 6 (only in Calc, and Execute macro field is only in Writer, so no overlap)
Select array formula: Strg + 7 (only in Calc, and Insert zero-width space is only in Writer, so no overlap)

Does this look sensible to German users? I can implement this, but would like feedback before doing this so the implementation is sane.
Comment 27 yukijoou 2024-06-12 19:08:34 UTC
Created attachment 194688 [details]
State of the German keyboard shortcuts recap
Comment 28 Lenge 2024-06-14 20:41:01 UTC
For inserting the current date & time, I suggest to use the same shortcuts that MS Excel uses:

Date: Strg + .
Time: Strg + Shift + . (= Strg + ;)

However, the most important thing is that the shortcuts actually work on a German keyboard. As of now, they don't (at least for me).
Comment 29 Buovjaga 2024-10-07 07:06:19 UTC
This is too sprawling and confusing now to be an easy hack, so removing the relevant meta data.