[Bf-taskforce25] Keyboard Shortcuts Proposal

[Nathan Vegdahl]

> As for RMB select for tablet use, I couldn't agree less. RMB is
> ridiculously clunky for tablets, you have to hover the pen above the
> surface and try to aim, while pushing a side button that will actually
> push your stylus out of the way of what you're pointing at.

It may depend on the tablet.  I use an intuos 3, and hitting RMB is
convenient and moves the stylus at least as little (if not less) as
tapping with the stylus tip.  Other tablets may have styluses with
less convenient button placement.

But regardless, I don't think micro-movements of the cursor (resulting
from either RMB or tapping) hurts selection in Blender.  If I had to
be pixel-perfect to select something with Blender, I'd already be
screwed.  Blender is extremely good at working with imprecise
selections.

What I have noticed is that the only time a stylus is actually precise
is when it's already touching the surface of the tablet, because you
have resistance.  Therefore the only truly precise "clicking" you can
do is lifting the stylus *off* of the tablet.  Tapping moves the tip.
Lifting doesn't.  At least that's been my experience.
So for tablet use it would be nice to map LMB-up to things where
precision matters most.

--Nathan V

On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 6:12 AM, Matt Ebb<matt at mke3.net> wrote:
> Haven't had time to go over this proposal yet, will have a better look
> tomorrow, but here's my 2c on the mouse button issue.
>
> On 22/06/2009, at 10:15 PM, Jason van Gumster wrote:
>
>> I'm on Blender a lot, for
>> long stretches of time. Excessive left-clicking can and does lead to
>> tennis elbow. Furthermore, right-click select is actually idea for
>> tablet use. Please keep these things in mind.
>
> On the other side of the coin (anecdotal evidence too :) all of us at
> work use LMB select every day, and it's just fine. Nowadays most of us
> are on tablets though, so not really clicking, but it used to be all
> mice, and no tennis elbow. Not to mention that just about everybody
> that uses any other 3D application will also use LMB select, I don't
> hear many of them complaining and wanting to configure it to RMB ;)
>
> As for RMB select for tablet use, I couldn't agree less. RMB is
> ridiculously clunky for tablets, you have to hover the pen above the
> surface and try to aim, while pushing a side button that will actually
> push your stylus out of the way of what you're pointing at. Not to
> mention that painting/sculpting/etc only makes sense actually using
> the pen as a pen. I can't possibly imagine using RMB select on a tablet!
>
>> Helping new users is an admirable goal (trust me, I spend a lot of
>> time
>> with new users) but my impressions of 2.5 is that it's purpose is to
>> improve the experience of existing Blender users moreso than new
>> users.
>
> There's another point in LMB select's favour though that's not just
> for new users. For people who use a fair few different apps in a 3D
> pipeline (other 3d apps, external modellers, comping apps, etc) it
> gets frustrating having to mentally switch gears to different
> selection modes every time you alt-tab. That's the main reason why I
> created the LMB select option in the first place.
>
> Anyway, regardless of what is decided upon as the default, it would
> also be a very good thing to have a startup screen when Blender is
> first installed/launched that provides a few keyboard/mouse navigation/
> selection presets to choose between, perhaps like:
> * Blender 2.5
> * Blender 2.4
> * Max
> * Maya
> * etc.
>
> This will go a long way towards easing the transition for artists from
> other packages.
>
> cheers,
>
> Matt
>
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