This (very long) thread has taken on a couple of distinct themes that work well together.
1) What I want to do with note-taking software
2) How do I want to interface with my note-taking software
Back in the old days, there were very few rules governing key combinations. F1 was generally reserved for Help and Esc was generally used to back up or exit. Everything else was up for grabs and every application used a different scheme. I well remember the days of WordPerfect keyboard overlays, that would have to be switched out for 1-2-3 overlays when you changed applications.
The interesting part is that you really only used the overlays for a day or two. By then you had learned 90% of what you wanted to do and you found the menu display key to help you find the other 10%. And it was fast.
The brain process worked something like this:
0) What do I need to do now?
1) Print
1.5) unconscious brain process: set context = Word Perfect
2) Print = Shift F7, P
Now the mouse oriented process goes something like this:
0) What do I need to do now?
1) Print
1.5)Brain process: Print is always the same on the file menu
2) Grab mouse
3) Navigate to file
3.5)Brain process: should I use file|Print or the Printer Icon?
4) Click File
5) navigate down
6) click Print
6.5) No I don't need to change any options
7) click OK
I only mention this to say I think part of the frustration we all feel with our software comes from the mouse-centric interface. We
Look for things on the menu instead of knowing what we want and allowing learned associations to take over.
THAT is the power of something like InfoSelect. I never used the program myself, but I watched a guy who was in love with it show off a bit. He talked about finding a topic quickly pressed a couple of search keys and started typing his word. (He knew where the cursor would be and that he could type right away; he didn't even look at the screen. He was a keyboard watching typist.) Yes the interface is old and ugly, and may not have the features we all want/need, but the concept is great. I used to know Word Perfect this well.
I'm all for having some standard shortcuts across the OS. Alt-F4, Ctrl-C, etc. are great examples. I do think the common look and feel has gone too far. Your brain reacts visually and functionally to different applications. Let it use that context the map tasks to keystrokes.
Maybe we should start a UI thread?
$0.02.