Make shortcut keys discoverable in context menu

[eljefuri]

[I know that this issue probably should be placed in some higher-level design repository since it is an Elementary-wide concern, but I want to underline how particularly painful it is to not see shortcut keys listed next to their respective contextual menu items in Files.]

There are things that I do on a daily basis in file management which are an absolute chore if a mouse or trackpad is needed to do them: Renaming files, trashing files, getting file properties. In order to discover a shortcut key of a given function, I am presently reduced to mashing out likely key combinations or rolling the dice with Google. This seems more than a bit silly, and the former is perhaps even a bit dangerous. Is there a help menu for things like this?

Perhaps it is needless to point out, but the earliest MacOS revisions had figured out the utility of showing keyboard shortcuts in pull-down menus, and it is typically found in context menus outside of Elementary. What is the justification for not including them here, when they could be so helpful?

I have already mentioned how certain aspects of navigation would be greatly improved by more consideration given to semi-professional file-slingers, so consider this one in the sequence.

Thanks for your time and consideration.

---

Want to back this issue? Post a bounty on it! We accept bounties via Bountysource.

[jeremypw]

This is something that has been on the backburner for a while. We need to implement this - probably with a shortcut overlay window like the one that Gala uses to show window related shortcuts when the 'Super' key is pressed.

[jeremypw]

In the meanwhile a wiki page could be added to GitHub repository.

[peteruithoven]

I've opened the following issue shortcut overlay issue on including app shortcuts: elementary/shortcut-overlay#53
(I still think it's a good idea to also include shortcuts in the context menu.)

[eljefuri]

(I still think it's a good idea to also include shortcuts in the context menu.)

Me too. Meanwhile thank you for opening those other issues.

[peteruithoven]

For the curious; here's the code that handles keyboard shortcuts: https://github.com/elementary/files/blob/master/src/View/AbstractDirectoryView.vala#L2730-L2946
(I discovered you can do shift+←/→ to navigate between sidebar and files)

[jeremypw]

The Window class also implements a large number of keyboard accelerators for actions and there are specific keyboard handlers in some other classes that take precedence over the base class handler.

[jeremypw]

Shift +← and Shift + → multi-selects in icon view but it does switch the keyboard focus in ListView, which is a bit inconsistent. There is a pending PR that uses the Tab key to toggle focus in all views (#585)

[peteruithoven]

Relevant proposal for GTK: https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GTK/Menus.