Navigating the GIMP documentation

pwabrahams · 01-26-2010, 08:09 PM

I'm getting frustrated trying to navigate the GIMP documentation using just the keyboard. (I've had similar problems with KDE help.) I asked about this a couple of years ago, but there was a lot of confusion about which version of the docs I was referring to. In this case I'm specifically referring to the version at http://docs.gimp.org/2.6/en/index.html.

Most of the help pages have an orange bar across the top and another across the bottom. On each orange bar there's an arrow on the left, for going to the next page, and an arrow on the right, for going to the previous page. On the lower bar there are two more symbols in the center: an up arrow for going up one level and a "home" symbol for going to the very first page of the manual.

It's clear enough how to navigate using the mouse to click on these symbols. But I can't find a way of achieving the same effects using just the keyboard.

I'm not mouse-phobic, but I find that the constant shifts of focus between mouse and keyboard are very irritating. For scrolling down with the mouse, you have to move over to the scrollbar and click on the correct part of the scrollbar. It's far easier to use the down arrow on the keyboard. But I haven't found a way to move to the next/previous page using the keyboard. I'm using Firefox, but I'd have the same question for any other browser such as Konqueror.

A necessary point of clarification: by the previous page I mean the logicallyprevious page, not the most recently accessed page. Alt-left will get me to the most recently accessed page, but that's not what I want.

neonsignal · 01-26-2010, 08:40 PM

To use the html access keys in Firefox/Iceweasel, you press <shift-alt> with the key to select it, then <enter>. For example, on the Gimp documentation,

Code:

<shift-alt>p<enter>      # previous page
<shift-alt>n<enter>      # next page
<shift-alt>u<enter>      # level up
<shift-alt>h<enter>      # home page

In Opera, you press <shift-esc> to pop up a navigation menu, then the key. For example, on the Gimp documentation:

Code:

<shift-esc>p             # previous page
<shift-esc>n             # next page
<shift-esc>u             # level up
<shift-esc>h             # home page

Not sure how to do it from the built-in gimp help browser

You can use the <tab> and <shift-tab> to select links (including the arrows), but that is a bit clumsy.