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Comment by karthink | Hacker News Reader

> Learn Windows' keyboard UI and you can drive the whole OS and all its apps with the speed of a genius Vim user

Do you have a reference for this? I've often needed to control Windows using only a keyboard and failed to do so. I'm aware of most shortcuts in this list[1] but these are for a few very specific things. (As an aside, I also remember controlling the mouse with the numpad using the Mouse Keys accessibility setting but this is worse than both keyboard shortcuts and the mouse.)

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_keyboard_shortcuts

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It's called CUA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access

There are dozens of them out there.

Random example:

https://www.system-overload.org/windows-shortcuts.html

General guide...

Activate menu bar with Alt. Alt + the underlined letter opens that menu or submenu.

Alt+Space opens the control menu for that window. In MDI apps, alt+hyphen opens the document's window control menu.

Then...

Alt+space, x = maXimise Alt+space, n = miNimise Alt+space, s = reSize followed by cursor key to select which edge, then cursors to change.

Hotkeys are Ctrl+letter and do that action now.

Ctrl+... p = print s = save o = open f = find c = copy x = cut (looks like scissors) v = paste (looks like an arrow: paste _V_ HERE )

Shift modifies or reverses many commands, and selects while moving.

In dialogs and forms, Tab moves forwards; Shift+Tab backwards

Ctrl+PgDown = next tab Ctrl+PgUp = previous tab Ctrl+Enter = save and close form

Ctrl+left/right = move by word instead of character Shift+home/end = select to start/end of line

Esc = cancel

Ctrl+Esc = open start menu

Then tab, and you're tabbing through the taskbar, which is a sort of dialog box.

Ctrl+Shift+Esc = open task manager

Maybe this should be on a wiki somewhere so it can be documented collaboratively...

> Do you have a reference for this?

Look for underlined single letters in menus. With apps that use the "classic" style menus instead of ribbons or plain Electron crap, the single letters are the key.

I totally forgot about this until just now. That really was a brilliant feature.

I'm curious to know if this is what lproven meant in their comment above. Alt + a-z to access menu items is available in every OS and all "native" apps, but you can't "drive the OS and all apps" this way.

For example, I would like to set options that are a few menus/button clicks deep in the Windows control panel (either the "classic" or new variant) using keyboard shortcuts/navigation. Or navigate the Windows registry editor. I'm not aware of a way to do this.

None of that is correct.

No, it's not in all OSes. I wish it were.

No, it's not in all native apps. KDE reinvents its own set of keystrokes, for instance, and half the KDE apps have no menu bars any more... And there's no global way to force them either.

Yes, the control panel and RegEdit are totally keyboard controllable.

You can literally just unplug the mouse from a Windows desktop and it remains totally 100% operable.

Some apps may not, because the developers didn't do their jobs right, but the OS is.

How else could blind people use PCs?

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