[Bf-taskforce25] Keyboard Shortcuts Proposal

[William Reynish]

Hi Pablo,

That's OK, I expected to get reactions :)

It's good to get comments. Some things can simply be an oversight,  
there are a lot of commands to keep track of!

On 22 Jun, 2009, at 12:51 PM, Pablo Vazquez - www.venomgfx.com.ar wrote:

> I hate to sound so conservative and all, so I wont complain about
> mouse-select switch as default and stuff :) , just will try to give my
> opinion in some things.
>
>> * Removed most F-key commands. Many keyboards and computers use  
>> these for special input like volume, brightness etc.
>
> I don't agree with this, I've been using many different keyboards and
> laptops during the past years for Blender and never got the F-keys
> annoying me, only one time on a Mac, which I had to turn on a special
> option for it, but being that most of the community uses Windows, and
> the next one in popularity is GNU/Linux running usually Gnome or KDE,
> then I don't see a problem with keeping them, all laptops have a
> "function" key to enable certain options on their F-keys, please keep
> them, it speeds up workflow a lot.

Yes, while I want to avoid using those for vital functionality, they  
can of course still be used for shortcuts to get to different areas in  
buttons window. Perhaps let the order of the keys follow the new order  
of the tabs in the buttons window though?


>>
> There are some other things but I would extend it too much, for
> example I'm missing the Select Linked options (Shift+G) on the 2.5
> layout, but I guess that would be somewhere else.

My thinking for this is to use the W key for these kinds of 'special'  
selections. Really it doesn't have to be W, it could be any free key.  
But the advantage is that having just one key for all these things  
would make it much easier to remember, and at least as fast with  
radial menus.

>
> The one I will really miss is Shift + Space for fullscreen, since
> Ctrl+Up/Down is just too slow (for some reason I find *too* slow to
> use my right hand for shortcuts, traveling from the keyboard to the
> mouse back and forth is too much).

We have three keys combos that do this though, which is a bit much.  
Could also just use shift-space and reserve Ctrl-Up, Ctrl-Down for  
other functionality.

>
> Just my 2 cents, since we'll have custom keymaps i don't bother too
> much in going through every little change, but there are a few that I
> find really fast for workflow and I wouldn't like new users to miss
> them.

No, that's ok. We have to make the best possible layout for the  
majority of users. There is no way everyone will be 100% happy, but if  
we can make a super consistent, fast layout with less crazy key  
combinations it'll be great for most.

-W