My system setup

* Fedora 27 Workstation x86_64
* GNOME Shell 3.26.2 in an Xorg session with proprietary Nvidia drivers
* Krita 3.3.2

The problem

I have Alt + A set to Select Opaque, a carry over from GIMP's equivalent "Alpha To Selection", where the shortcut was more obviously mnemonic. When I created the shortcut, Krita did not report any problem. But when I try to actually use the shortcut, it says this:

The key sequence 'Alt+A' is ambiguous. Use 'Configure Shortcuts' from the 'Settings' menu to solve the ambiguity. No action will be triggered.

When searching in Settings > Configure Krita > Keyboard Shortcuts, "alt+a" only shows Select Opaque.
https://i.imgur.com/bvnrbUJ.png

And I'm pretty sure nothing in the Canvas Input Settings uses Alt + A.

I've run into this problem a lot in the past, and I have several other shortcuts which present this problem now. Most of the problematic shortcuts are for a command you could pick from the menu bar, rather than selecting a tool, if that makes a difference.

My question

Is there somewhere else I should look for shortcut conflicts...? It's frustrating to see this message about ambiguous shortcuts, but not be able to find where the conflict is.

I see that there are a bunch of open bugs about keyboard shortcuts, so I can accept that this is just an area where the code needs some cleanup. But are there any workarounds, other than just trying to think of other shortcuts and hope that they aren't also "ambiguous"?

Bump. Any ideas of how to track down the issue? Thanks.

Alt + a letter means you are trying to access the UI from a keyboard . For example just hold down alt. You are going to see a bunch of letter light up that correspond to menus.

Traditionally that is what that combination means. Are there shortcut issues if you use a different combination like Ctrl+Shift+A?

There is something more fundamental about Alt+A and similar shortcuts.

If I do Alt+A then the Animation docker tab is selected (if I have that docker on-screen), Alt+G selects the Grids and Guides docker tab. Alt+L doesn't select the Layers docker but it does select the Layer menu item. Alt+O selects the Overview docker, Alt+T selects the Tools menu item, etc.

These are not in the Keyboard Shortcuts settings or the Canvas Input settings.

Yes... The toolkit automatically creates those shortcuts from the titles of the dockers and menus. As far as I know, we cannot prevent that -- that's why alt-letter shortcuts are very tricky.

Ah! Okay yeah, that makes sense. I didn't even think of checking the UI menu bars. I guess that's the third place to look when checking for potential shortcut conflicts.

Thanks everyone for your helpful comments!