[Bf-taskforce25] Keyboard Shortcuts Proposal

[Ben Cox]

As several people have mentioned here, there appears to be an issue for
newcomers to Blender in that they may be attempting tutorials or be being
given information that uses a different keymap to their own. I'm going to
chuck out an idea that came to me that may help solve this - what do you
think?

The idea involves writing a web module, easily available at blender.org so
that anyone can use it in their own site. When writing their tutorial, the
author writes operations, rather than explicit button-presses. For example,
let's say that the method chosen to implement this was by an XML parser of
the "bl" namespace. Your tutorial might run something like:

"Hit <bl:key value="extrude" /> to start extruding, drag to the left by one
unit and <bl:key value="operation-finalize" /> to confirm."

As opposed to:

"Hit E to start extruding, drag to the left by one unit and left-click to
confirm."

When a user visits the site, they have the option, by clicking on a link, to
upload their personal keymap file, which can be exported from Blender. The
server takes this file and either stores the associated map as database-held
user preferences (if the site has a login) or as a cookie.

Then, as the source of the requested page is being parsed, the <bl:key />
tags are replaced by their associated key-presses. If no keymap file has
been uploaded or otherwise indicated, then the default Blender key-presses
are used. Otherwise, they are replaced with those held in the keymap,
allowing each user to see a different version of the tutorial.

I hope I've explained this in at least a slightly cogent way - please say if
not and I'll try to rephrase it! What do people think about it?

Ben

-----Original Message-----
Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 02:54:23 +0200
From: Alberto Torres <kungfoobar at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Bf-taskforce25] Keyboard Shortcuts Proposal
To: "The Blender 2.5 TaskForce" <bf-taskforce25 at blender.org>
Message-ID:
	<bf7d15e10906221754o3490cf71h97159e2f619ce196 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

2009/6/22 William Reynish <william at reynish.com>:
>
> For all users, teachers, students, pros etc, changes are also annoying
> - you are used to one way of working, and changing things around means
> some amount of re-learning.
>

I actually don't mind re-learning a new layout if it's more consistent
with other apps and it's done right. What I don't want is to remove
some easy-reachable keys as defaults. My productivity with blender
started increasing the moment I began to use G/R/S instead mouse
gestures, and got one step further each time I learnt a new key (X
instead del, shift+space instead ctrl+up, Z instead disabling "occlude
bg geometry", etc).

As Pablo V?zquez says, I wouldn't want newbies to miss this
opportunity to be faster. Sure, keys could be changed, but most people
don't change defaults even if it would be faster. Hey, blender has a
LMB mode which works very well nowadays (it lacked some features when
I tried it 3 years ago), but rarely seen used by people (well, the
reason of this is probably that the setting is rather hidden and
rarely mentioned by manuals).