Should we change the behavior of the arrow keys in the "Add Partition" window to immediately cycle vertically instead of horizontally?

[jeffythedragonslayer]

See the third image under this section: https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/bsdinstall/#bsdinstall-part-manual

You need to use the Tab key in order to "activate" cycling through the following fields:

• Type
• Size
• Mountpoint
• Label

The installer will not let you continue if you do not set a mountpoint of / for the root partition, so you have to set one. But, the installer doesn't tell that you need to use Tab to enable selecting the Mountpoint field; you have to guess Tab or read the documentation or ask someone who's been through it before. Tab also cycles through <OK>, <Options>, and <Cancel> before it gets to those other four options, so it's not immediately obvious that Tab will eventually give focus to the four vertical options.

But the up/down arrow keys cycle through only <OK>, <Options>, <Cancel> and don't cycle through Type/Size/Mountpoint/Label at all! Not until you tab over to vertical options, anyway.

Don't you guys think it makes more sense to have the up and down arrow keys immediately cycle through Type/Size/Mountpoint/Label instead, so Tab isn't required? These four options are arranged vertically, after all. I definitely feel that pressing up/down on the arrow keys not immediately resulting in vertical cycling violates the principle of least astonishment. For someone trying out FreeBSD for the first time, that can be a pretty big deal.

Or if you disagree, why?

 

[msplsh]

Tab is usually for cycling through UI elements in many GUIs, so going top to bottom and then L -> R seems normal. The arrows are kind of like a shortcut to "do stuff." There may be some other kind of Curses input element that uses the up/down arrow so maybe that's why you can't cycle all the input elements with them and changing it would break POLA with other stuff, despite it making sense in this specific context.

A note to use tab might help.

 

[elgrande]

Pressing tab is like this…