[Bf-funboard] Toolbox design

[Thorsten Wilms]

On Fri, Oct 03, 2003 at 03:49:41AM +1000, Luke Wenke wrote:
> At the moment, if you're maximized, you can use ctrl-downarrow to stop it
> being maximized. And if you're on a screen with no buttons window, you can
> use ctrl-rightarrow. Then you can use F10 or click the display icon, then
> click 16 and OSA if necessary. If someone is going to change the osa a lot,
> they can just make sure they have the buttons there (or on a nearby screen),
> ready to click.

I know of these possibilities. But every keystroke adds to the time needed 
for the action. It's just that you can type quite some letters in the time 
needed to operate something on a different part of the screen. In all ways 
you just mentioned you have to use both keystrokes and mouse. Depending on 
your habits and the placement of the needed keys you could well have to move 
on hand from keyboard to mouse. Whereas with the semi-commandline the whole 
operation can be handled from keyboard.

It's about quick access to everything while using most of the screen as actual 
working space (buttons window is good for seeing what blender offers, 
moderateley fast to operate, but takes quite some space).

Not to forget that this feature will scale quite well with growing number of 
features (well, several names starting with same letters will have to be 
avoided, but that's already the case fore memorizable shortcuts or real 
mnemonics in the menu).

> If the spacebar menu just mainly had hotkey items (and also let you created
> meshes, etc) this would be a quick way of accessing blender's
> functionality... and you wouldn't even have to know how to spell the words.
> And it would constantly be reminding you of the hotkey so that you could
> avoid using the toolbox in the future. Your method doesn't teach people what
> the hotkeys are so that they can avoid having to type out the name of
> things.

The main menubar will provide for learning shortcuts. The toolbox could still 
display and allow shortcuts with modifier keys.

You don't will have to know the exact spelling of the words, because 
forgoing display of possible completions will help.

A last option would be to connect the commandline functionality to a different 
key / shortcut or access it through 2 times spacebar. But that would take out 
much of the imediatelity (spacebar is a large physical target area, think 
Fitt's Law in real world). No forget that one.

> It could have some speed advantages in some cases (e.g. the osa16 thing) but
> I think there are quite a few problems with it. It means that every single
> present function in blender would need to be added in, as well as every
> future function...

I'm no developer, but I guess it could be organized in a way that every 
feature of blender gets included automaticaly (once some kind of framework is 
established).

> I guess that feature (a little text field in the spacebar toolbox) wouldn't
> affect how the toolbox menus work (by making the menus less accessible,
> etc) - but perhaps the text field causes unnecessary clutter.... well if you
> and others like that idea then it wouldn't be clutter as far as you're
> concerned, but I doubt I'd find it very useful.
> - Luke.

Please don't put away with this idea so quickly.


---
Thorsten