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The current shortcut for quicksearch, Ctrl+Alt+Shift+L, is hard to rememberer (4 keys and what does the "L" even stand for?) and even harder to invoke. The dialogue is probably significantly less used because of this. Example of other users complaining about the problem: https://twitter.com/masohn/status/1235232991812734977 According to https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=548518#c33, "trouble is all the good/short ones are pretty much already taken". Is this really true? What about Alt+S (Ctrl+S on macOS)? It's simple two-key shortcut and the S will remind people of "Search". I've got three distributions of Eclipse (the Java, C++ and Web dev ones), all with various additional plugins, this shortcut is not conflicting with anything else on any of them. Alt+Q (letter Q reminding "Quicksearch") also seems to be available. Can it be switched to one of these much more user-friendly shortcuts?
Andrew, any thoughts on this? I'm happy to provide a patch.
+1 for changing the default shortcut for quicksearch, I find myself always finding it in the menu bar to use it. Alt + S would be nice, although when I tried this key combination it opened the "Source" tab in the menu bar while editing a Java file. However when the shortcut is added, I suspect no conflict should arise. Alt + Q also seems good to me, although Alt + S is a bit more intuitive "S for search".
(In reply to Andrew Obuchowicz from comment #2) > Alt + S would be nice, although when I tried this key combination it opened > the "Source" tab in the menu bar while editing a Java file. However when the > shortcut is added, I suspect no conflict should arise. Is this a user shortcut you've overriden or does it come from a third-party plugin? Can you see the key combination in the "Keys" preferences?
Created attachment 283762 [details] existing Alt+S keybindings (In reply to Pierre-Yves B. from comment #3) > (In reply to Andrew Obuchowicz from comment #2) > > Alt + S would be nice, although when I tried this key combination it opened > > the "Source" tab in the menu bar while editing a Java file. However when the > > shortcut is added, I suspect no conflict should arise. > > Is this a user shortcut you've overriden or does it come from a third-party > plugin? Can you see the key combination in the "Keys" preferences? I'm not sure, to me it seemed like mneumonics was getting activated. I checked the existing keybindings on my eclipse install for emacs & default, this is what came up.
You're probably right about the mnemonics, I've tried with an IDE setup that does have the Source menu visible, and it opens it. If ever there is a menu that starts with Q, there will be the same problem as well. This probably defeats my proposals. We should find something else.
I think Alt+<Letter> shortcuts should be avoided in general as OS maps them to mnemonics. Also, the Ctrl+Alt combination should be avoided as they interfere with AltGr on some keyboards. There aren't many 3 keys shortcuts left: * Ctrl+Shift+U * Shift+Alt+E * Shift+Alt+G * Shift+Alt+K One other alternative could be to use a 2 steps shortcut, that would allow to leave room for other shortcuts. Maybe we'd rather make the Quick Search a tab in the Ctrl+H dialog for easier accessibility.
(In reply to Mickael Istria from comment #6) > There aren't many 3 keys shortcuts left: > * Ctrl+Shift+U > * Shift+Alt+E > * Shift+Alt+G > * Shift+Alt+K Out of curiosity, how did you come to this conclusion? Is it just a few examples you came up with by looking at the Keys preferences in your IDE, or is there a slightly more rigorous way to tell? Are all 2 key numbers used? I cannot see Ctrl+5 bound to anything on my IDEs setups for example. > One other alternative could be to use a 2 steps shortcut, that would allow > to leave room for other shortcuts. Those aren't great in my experience. Eclipse does not allow using the M1, M2, M3, M4 keys in isolation for example, so you can't do something like "Ctrl, Ctrl+S" or simply "Shift, Shift" which I believe is what Intellij uses for its default quicksearch-equivalent command.
