kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[hauptmech <hauptmech@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 7/09/2011 11:27 a.m., fabrizio wrote:
> Good morning,
>
> let's sat that we change ctrl-alt-L to Alt-K we still have three more
> conflicts: P, H, T.
>
> the following keys needs to be replaced because they are already
> assigned to Place, Help and Tool
> Alt-P
> Alt-H
> Alt-T
>
> Any suggestion? Once I change these 3 too, the correspondent  hotkeys
> will be different too..... Are we all cool with that?
>
> Are we sure that we want to go a head with this? What we are doing
> here is drawing a difference between hotkeys and accelerators which
> maybe many future users will not get and which I am not sure we should
> be doing.
>
> cheers
> Fabrizio
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 8:54 PM, jean-pierre charras
> <jp.charras@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> Le 06/09/2011 11:51, fabrizio a écrit :
>>>> Hello,
>>>> in attachment you can find the simplest patch I can think of to:
>>>> 1) add the Alt- to all "Place" menu accelerators
>>>> 2) leave current hotkeys behaviour unchanged
>>>>
>>>> is this whole idea good?
>>>>
>>>> ctrl-alt-L needs to be changed (in the hotkey default set up I think)
>>>> because it makes my system log off ! can we changed it? what do you
>>>> guys propose? any other hotkey cause conflicts?
>>> K or O should work.
>>>> I am not sure it will work in windoz/OSX.
>>>>
>>>> Please let me have some feedback
>> I forgot:
>> Hot keys in Kicad sources are just default keys.
>> do not forget hot keys are editable,
>> so it can take a while before the best compromise about hot keys is found.
>> Moreover this compromise must work fine under Linux, Windows, and MacOSX.
>> Don't give up.
>>
>> --
>> Jean-Pierre CHARRAS
I came late to this conversation and have trouble remembering the
conclusion of all the various threads of this conversation; but I'm a
lover of hotkeys so I going to add my thoughts. If I'm covering
something resolved then it can be ignored for now.

I agree with those that feel that adding a mouse click (tool start) to
tool selection is bad for those learning kicad through it's menus and
that listing a hotkey in the menu for something different (<W> or
whatever) in counter intuitive.

I don't think it's necessary that the power-user Tool-select-plus-start
hotkey be discoverable through the menus. Being discoverable through the
hotkey configuration screen is enough.

I also don't think it's necessary that every menu item, even in the
place menu, have a default hotkey. In fact for kicad to be accessible to
new users I suggest that only the standard hotkeys be set by default;
(ctrl-o, ctrl-w, ctr-p, alt-f4, etc). A suggested hotkey setup for power
users (the existing defaults) can be distributed with kicad and loaded
once by any present user of the defaults or any user that is interested
in trying them.

I personally would prefer having tool select and tool start not be
joined. I use hotkeys extensively and start the tool in the wrong spot
accidentally often enough to be a minor annoyance. I do sympathize with
those who do like it and think it's a nice feature.

Ideally recorded macros would implement whatever wicked combination the
user wanted to apply. Not practical for kicad at this point. Maybe a
solution is to have a check-box option for 'auto-start' of each tool in
the hotkey list.

A modal hotkey list is only partially useful; it usually takes me a
while to learn my awesome keyboard layouts; more if I don't use the app
that often. Having the list open while I work (or printed) is a must. If
we have a html list, why not save it as a file and load it with a web
browser?

I'll stop there. I have some hotkeys to propose but I'll save that for a
separate thread. I'm psyched to see any work towards usability and
hotkey in particular! thx fabrizio!

-hauptmech