[Bf-committers] Proposal about headers menu shortcuts

mindrones mindrones at gmail.com
Fri Jul 30 17:39:30 CEST 2010


Hi,

sorry for the very long mail, it's not easy to explain this stuff in a 
single word :)


Introduction
=================================================

What bugs me about 2.5x series is that we don't expose shortcuts in the 
headers menu anymore.

This makes it difficult to find a shortcut when you forget, especially 
for newcomers.

Example
----------------------------------

To know the shortcut of the pivot point menu in the 3d view, one simply 
doesn't know.

Problems
----------------------------------

One has to:
- look at the 2.49 toolptip of that menu, and hope it isn't changed, OR
- lookup in the super slow keymap editor and go crazy if he doesn't find 
the exact name soon
- ask friends/forums/IRC -> stupid, and time sink for a sigle command
- a newcomer might not know about 2.4, or keymap editor
- even if he finds out, it is difficult to find again, hence to fix in mind.

- the bad thing also for experienced users is that we have one shortcut 
for each command to remember.


Worse example: finally you find out but the shortcuts are a mess
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Lately I've been doing a bug report and tried many windows types to see 
differences in the bug behaviour, pressing shift-F2, shift-F3, shift-F4, 
lots of times.

I realized it was pretty much a mess, this is what we have now:

http://www.mindrones.com/blender/ideas/windowtype_shortcuts.jpg

...which IMHO is really bad for memorization.

New problems
----------------------------------

- Ok, once you know it, eh... you know it, but it's not easy to build a 
mental scheme of that.



Proposal
=================================================

These are some solutions that came to my mind.

1)

Sort them numerically (3Dview = shift-F1, shift-F2 = timeline, etc).

Problem is that many aren't numeric (example, the pivot point use ".", 
"," etc)

2)

Another approach could be showing this shortcuts in the menu, but again 
I think many would be against for eye-candy.


3) THE ACTUAL PROPOSAL

I propose to use a unique shortcut to open the headers menu, followed by 
a number.

For example for the window type it would be good "<" because it's free 
and it is in a similar position of the button itself (bottom-left).

(exception: in the text editor we need to use "<" but could override 
this as we have for the ctrl-arrows global command which is overridden 
by the text command "skip words")

But we have 16 views, more then 10, so?

With layers we do

- layer 1  = M,1
- layer 2  = M,2
- ....
- layer 10 = M,0

and after 10,

- layer 11 = M -> ALT,1
- layer 12 = M -> ALT,2
- etc...

For the Window type menu we could do:

- option 1  = <  -> 1
- option 2  = <  -> 2

and after 10,

- option 11  = <  -> alt,2
- option 12  = <  -> alt,2
- etc....

For easier situations like pivots, we can do:

- option 1  = .  -> 1
- option 2  = .  -> 2
- etc.... (no need to use alt)

Easy.



Benefits
=================================================

Consistency with popup menus
----------------------------------

If this egst accepted, this could be applied to all menus in the headers 
everywhere, it would be consistent with the popup menus and would be 
flexible because if a new option appears or get removed, this is easy to 
find and rebuild in mind.

Think about Remove double in 2.4x: it was "W, 6" and now it is "W,4": it 
has been quite easy to learn again because there was a simple rule, we 
only had to remember the new number.


Save a lot of shortcuts
----------------------------------

And also, this would save a lot of shortcuts, that could be reused 
elsewhere.

If for example we use "." to open the pivot menu, we are free to use "," 
and the remaining ones to do something else.

In the window type example: if we use "<" we free all the "shift-Fx 
"commands for something else.


Easy to memorize
----------------------------------

First off, we would have just one shortcut to remember for pivots, 
window types, etc...

If you're going answer "numbers are cold", or so, if the choice is 
non-destructive then if one remembers the number wrong he can just keep 
the fingers on the keyboard and try a new number.

This helps a lot memorizing, because usually you learn by mistakes.

Examples:

- I want the cursor to be the pivot
   - press ".", followed by 1
   - ack, it's not what I wanted
   - easy,  press 2

- I want the window type to be "timeline"
   - press "<", followed by 1
   - ack, it's not what I wanted
   - easy,  press 2

=================================================




Many thanks for your time reading this :)

Regards,
Luca

_____________________________

http://www.mindrones.com


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