Bug 91782

Summary: alsamixer should show alternatives to function key bindings, at least F1/Help
Product: PulseAudio Reporter: Frederick Eaton <frederik-freedesktop>
Component: alsaAssignee: pulseaudio-bugs
Status: RESOLVED NOTOURBUG QA Contact: pulseaudio-bugs
Severity: enhancement    
Priority: medium CC: lennart
Version: unspecified   
Hardware: Other   
OS: All   
Whiteboard:
i915 platform: i915 features:

Description Frederick Eaton 2015-08-27 21:41:52 UTC
In alsamixer, many options are bound to function keys. These are used by my window manager, so I cannot use them in my terminal. The alsamixer man page mentions that 'gnome-terminal' cannot use function keys either.

I noticed from the "Help" screen that many function keys have non-function-key alternatives, for instance instead of F6 I can press "s". This is great, but there is one remaining problem: The legend (at the top of the alsamixer screen) labels commands preferentially with their function-key bindings. This includes "Help" which is labelled with "F1". Seeing this, users are likely to assume that "F1" is the only binding for "Help". But it turns out that one can also access "Help" with "?" and "H". This can be learned by reading the man page or pressing keys experimentally, but it would be nice if "Help" was just labeled with either "?" or "H", as that allows people who are unable to use function keys to easily access the help screen and then see that alternate (non-function-key) bindings exist for other commands as well.

As an aside, it seems odd to map "q" to "increase left volume".
Comment 1 Rex Dieter 2015-08-28 12:58:32 UTC
NOTOURBUG

alsamixer is provided by alsa-utils from http://www.alsa-project.org/ and is not a pulseaudio project.
Comment 2 Frederick Eaton 2015-08-28 16:59:45 UTC
Oops! Sorry about that, I got here by searching for "alsamixer bugs". Guess I have to wait for https://bugtrack.alsa-project.org/alsa-bug to come online...

Use of freedesktop.org services, including Bugzilla, is subject to our Code of Conduct. How we collect and use information is described in our Privacy Policy.