[Bf-funboard] On hotkeys

[Alberto Torres]

Blender used to have *everything* in shortcuts, even before it had menus.
It's a productivity booster when you know the keys. But precisely
memorizing the keys is the problem. Most people have a rather small limit
of infrequent keys that can memorize. If you rarely use a feature you won't
memorize the key, but just the name (which you will search pressing space).

Another aspect to keep in mind is how reachable are those keys. The old
Blender rule was "one hand in the keyboard, the other in the mouse", and we
had (and still have) most of the frequent shortcuts in the left side of the
keyboard. I would move some keys of the right to the left, and use the
double tap funcion more.

Grouping similar functions = good.

Ctrl+shift+alt+U = bad.

DiThi


2013/2/28 Prashant Sohani <prashant.sohani at gmail.com>

> One of the major ways in which a piece of software can generally increase
> its productivity (in the sense of speed of working) for end users is by
> supporting a large number of hotkeys.. and needless to say, Blender more
> than realizes this fact. But exactly how powerful hotkeys can be, is
> something I never fully realized until going over these calculations today:
> Simply put, a standard keyboard has about over a 100 keys; this is not
> counting the modifier keys: Ctrl, Alt, Shift and Super('windows'). So for
> every other key, these 4 modifiers can create a total of 16 combinations.
> Thus we have a total of 1600 'command keys', if you will.
>
> The implication? Just 2 command presses away( such as those that any Emacs
> user would be familiar with, like Ctrl-C Ctrl-S to save the current
> buffer), we have a staggering 1600^2 = 25.6 lakh commands possible! I doubt
> if even all the distinct commands used in all the programs I've used so far
> till date add up to 25 lakh.
>
> So.. really, if only someone could think of a highly systematic way of
> organizing as many options as possible under these hotkey assignments..
> for instance, I might be able to press Ctrl-Super-P to pull up the Power
> management settings, then in just one go, press Shift-Alt-B to switch to
> 'Balanced' power plan, save and quit..
>
> Not sure how to go about doing this currently, though...
>
> Of course, programs such as Emacs have done a lot in this direction, but
> it's still not 25.6 lakh, probably :D
>
> I wonder how far Blender can push this..
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