The Problem

When developers create their applications, they carry over the experiences they have had on their former platform. One stubborn area for a lot of developers is their prefered choice of key bindings for actions. This is understandable because key bindings are arbitrary, and one develops a habit to a particular binding set over time. A Mac developer/user could naturally create a text editor where the Home key goes to the top of the document. A windows developer/user would probably more naturally create such an editor where the Home key goes to the start of the line.

This creates a mess on BeOS from the user perspective. Which applications are messed up depends on where the user came from. A mac user using a text editor developed by a mac developer will probably expect that the Home key goes to the top of the document, and be fine. Using the other editor, the mac user could be frustrated and annoyed. Vice versa for a windows user/developer.

Obviously, having multiple applications with multiple conventions is not optimal, especially since multiple applications will likely not offer interchangeable functionality. Some applications, like the excellent Eddie have approached this problem by incorporating key bindings menus. However, this only "solves" the problem for one application. It also requires the user to "fix" the bindings on each individual application. (and also to fix bindings for each install)

One possible solution would be SystemKeyBindingsPreferences.