Sometimes you hear about mnemonics if you use gnome but sadly there isn’t a very good explanation on the official pages (at least I didn’t find it) even this feature can be really useful.
Let’s begin with what a mnenonic in gnome is:
in gnome you have the principle: “Everything at your fingertips” (quote)
and mnenonics are part of it. They are a function of gnome which allows you to use the interface via keyboard via shortcuts.
This shortcuts are more like hyperlinks. They transfer the focus to the element (like a menu entry) you selected by shortcut or even activate the element.
You can imagine this as a jump through a window via a key combination.
But how it works?
If you press ‘alt’ you will see that each entry (which is configured for) in the active window has an underlined character. The underlined character in combination with ‘alt’ will move your cursor to the entry.
Here an example:
- Open nautilus
- Press F10 (opens topbar)
- press down
- now you see underlined characters
- press for example F (to open a window (disclaimer: I use a German localized version of gnome))
Computer thoughts 