In the scheme of things, matching the MC shortcuts is a nit. There's a bit of an extra learning curve for those who actually use the MC shortcut, but it's rather short.
There are some important considerations for shortcuts, and MC' doesn't measure up very well. Most important is that the shortcuts should be complete. It should be possible (and reasonable, not just a theoretical possibility) to operate the product with the mouse at all. This is really just a Windows standard (although many products don't actually follow it completely),
Keyboard shortcuts must be easy to find. Every button and menu item must present the equivalent keystroke, when used. There are many exceptions to this in MC', MC is much better in this regard.
Keystrokes should be mmnemonic enough that they can be learned and remembered. MC is only so-so in this regard. Many of the keystrokes have clear mmnemonic value, either as standard usages (+, -) or common computer usages (*, ^) or visual puns (#, $). But a lot of them seem purely arbitrary, being just what was left available. MC' does not seem to be any improvement in this regard, in general. The two character sequences are a bit of a help, but not all that much, and there aren't all that many of them.
Another aspect is general principles. MC has a fairly generaly principle, with only a few exceptions, that letters and numbers stand for themselves (parts of text strings) while special characters represent operators, functions to be inserted. And there is the general escape of cntrl-shft-k to allow special characters to be included as part of a name. MC' loses that, with a seemingly random choice of special characters representing operators or themselves. With no escape clause. It's hard to say how important this particular aspect is -- MC' has so many flaws that render it unusable that it's impossible to tell how much each particular flaw contributes to the general unusability.
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� � � � Tom Gutman
