[Bf-funboard] Keys

[Ton Roosendaal]

Hi Thorsten,

Thanks for the analysis. When we finalize the general GUI makeover  
discussion (I want to speed up that next week again) we can use that to  
review and redesign the hotkey structure as well. That will solve a  
couple of the problems you noticed:

> Problems I see:
> - Modes using the same keys for different things.

Should not happen!

> - The number of different modes.
> - Lack of visibilty: you have to know about much functionality waiting
> behind some keystrokes with no visual hint.

The UI should (and will) communicate that much better.

> - Menu-bar and Space-Menu require mouse-action. Or have I missed some
> keyboard-functionality?

Only ENTER works in spacebar-menu, all pup-up menus (like WKEY) are  
fully controllable with keys (arrows). Check the NKEY menu or other  
buttonpanels, these even do arrowkeys.

> I would like to suggest the creation of a table, showing all modes and
> shortcuts with the asociated functionality. Is there a possibility of
> generating a rough version of it out of the sourcecode? Or could such
> a table be created wiki-style?

Too bad our projects site is still down. Best is to find a volunteer to  
do the first work, providing a good overview of how hotkeys are  
structured now.
For users several hotkey maps have been made:
http://blender.excellentwhale.com/
http://pasila.lib.hel.fi/~basse/blender/doc/hotkeys/

> The table should help to clean up keyboard-functionality. Removing
> redundancy and making things more consistent by making shure  
> compareable
> actions in different modes use the same keys.

You're cordially invited to do it. :)

> One thing that could be eliminated right away is Shift-Leftclick for
> buttons. A simple click would be sufficient. For the increase/decrease
> functionality buttons would have to have three clickzones.

Is being worked on. Part of the UI proposals.


> _Visibility:_
>
> It would be of great value for learning (and relearning after some  
> time of
> abstinence) if you could see which buttons/functionality is accesible  
> at
> some point. For exanple G, R and S if an object is selected.

Also part of the UI proposals, to make a true context sensitive  
spacebar toolbox.

> Therefore, another possibility would be statusba / new window-type for
> displaying short help messages. In Photoshop ypu can read about  
> modifier-
> keys for the actualy selected tool in the statusbar.

To be put on the list... its a tedious complex thing to do. Compare it  
with the UI-translation project, which took off enthousiast but  
completely died out when people realized how much work it is to  
maintain.

> Another approach would be auto-completion (inspired by Houdini):
> Press Space for the menu. At the top of the menu you can see your
> keyboard input. A soon as you start entering letters, the menu changes
> to show possible completions.

Thats a cool idea to keep in mind!

-Ton-

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Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation ton@blender.org  
http://www.blender.org