[Bf-taskforce25] Keyboard Shortcuts Proposal

[Tony Mullen]

Hi,

>(could be a bit messy when teaching though)

This is my biggest issue with having proliferating "non-conservative"
defaults. I don't mind setting my own defaults up to mimic what I'm
used to, but it does create huge headaches for teaching students when
defaults change from one release to the next. I personally am in favor
of options till the cows come home but with conservative defaults.
However, I suppose that 2.5 is the time to do it, if it's going to be
done.

> As starting points for an optimal keymap you can really assume:
>
> - 3 button mouse with scrollwheel

I've made this point before in IRC but I haven't yet posted here. I
feel that it is very, very important to have an easy, accessible
alternative to the MMB, which I do not regard as a standard component
of pointing devices. Every different pointer interface has a different
and in many cases totally unusable ad-hoc alternative to a 3rd button.
Laptop touchpads require the nearly impossible pressing of two buttons
simultaneously to mimic this feature. I use Blender on laptops (and I
mean *on my lap* where an external mouse isn't reasonable) all the
time. Pen tablets should also obviously be supported by Blender out of
the box (when I'm not using a laptop I'm almost always using a pen
tablet) and they have no straightforward equivalent of this 3rd mouse
button. Furthermore, requiring the use of the MMB forces the user to
make a lot of what I consider to be awkward lateral finger movements.
I really don't want to be endlessly moving my index finger right and
left. So personally, I have always considered Alt-LMB to be the proper
key combination and the MMB to be a kind of weird novelty. I use
Alt-LMB even when I'm using a mouse with a third button, for reasons
of muscle memory and comfort.

It's really been a showstopper for me that the early 2.5 builds don't
yet have Alt-LMB implemented, and I'm desperately hoping that nobody
is seriously considering doing away with this. I don't think
catastrophe is too strong a word for that. <shudder>

Tony