147513 - alt-A brings up message search window instead of selecting ALL

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 164362

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, defect)

Description

[Greg Onufer]

(I have accelerator key set to 18 so Emacs keybindings work better)

In recent builds on SunOS (SPARC) and Linux (x86) typing ALT-A in the mail
message pane brings up the Search Messages window (same as clicking the Advanced
button above the messages pane) instead of selecting all of the messages.  Same
goes for SHIFT-Alt-A which is supposed to select a thread.

The Edit->Select->{all,thread} menu items work as expected.

Comment 1

[laurel]

The change was for bug 111031.
Our advertised shortcut for Select All is CTRL+A, as shown in current linux menu
Edit|Select All. 

Comment 2

[jglick]

Did ALT-A used to Select All before bug 111031?  Or has Ctrl+A only, always been 
used for Select All?

Comment 3

[laurel]

Alt+A did indeed select all, but so did CTRL+A (our menu advertised shortcut)
before the fix for 111031.   Fix still isn't in the branch, so that's the way
the branch is currently working, ALT+A  and CTRL+A both work.

Comment 4

[jglick]

Are we breaking SunOS conventions with the changes in bug 111031?

Comment 5

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

You are breaking any user who sets the keyboard accelerator to "alt" instead of
"ctrl" (fairly common on Unix).  This is because accesskeys are hardcoded to
fire on "alt".  So if the keyboard accelerator is "alt" and the user does
"alt-f" to open the find dialog, say, an accesskey of "f" will fire instead (and
if said accesskey is defined there is no keyboard access to the find dialog). 
If the keyboard accelerator is "ctrl" (the default) then accesskeys override
access to menus.  In that case an accesskey of "f" would make it impossible to
access the file menu via the keyboard.

This is a general problem with accesskeys everywhere in the product (see eg bug
128452).

Comment 6

[Greg Onufer]

Regarding comment #3: ALT-A is the menu-advertised shortcut when accel=18. 
ctrl-A didn't do anything (except for going to the beginning of the line in a
text field).

Regarding comment #4: Not so much SunOS but rather Emacs users who get
frustrated when ctrl-p brings up a print dialog instead of going to the previous
line (and other basic Emacs CTRL strokes that conflict with Mozilla).  Netscape
4.x on Unix systems used ALT instead of CTRL as the keyboard accelerator.  So
for Emacs and/or Netscape 4.x compatability people will set accel=18.

See also bug 101046 where setting accel=18 doesn't play well with ProfileManager.

Comment 7

[John Levon]

dupe of bug 164362, which is NEW, so I'll leave it to someone
else to decide which way to dupe.

Comment 8

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

dupping to the bug that's further along.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 164362 ***

Comment 9

[laurel]

verified as a duplicate