kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[fabrizio <zonkyu@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 2:34 PM, Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 9/12/2011 4:20 PM, hauptmech wrote:
>>
>>
>> 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'm not sure but once again there seems to be some confusion about the
> difference between a hot key and an accelerator.  They are _not_ the same thing
> even though people have used the terms interchangeably.  Putting the hot key
> character (<W>) in the Place->Wire menu item was probably a bad idea which
> caused a lot of the confusion.  The hot key editor also mixes the two concepts
> together which just adds to the confusion and probably should be fixed
> accordingly.  Pressing the W key has never performed the same action as
> selecting the Place->Wire menu item or clicking the wire tool bar button.  In
> fact for the most part hot keys have completely different code paths than
> accelerators.
>
>>
>> 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.
>
> You can have that without disrupting the existing behavior by assigning an
> accelerator to the menu item.  The logical way would be to use the same hot key
> letter with a key modifier like Alt+W.  This gives you the best of both worlds.
>  Pressing W would give you the current hot key behavior and Alt+W would be the
> same as selecting the Place->Wire menu entry.  This seems like a reasonable
> solution to me.

As already discussed it sounds like a good idea. What do you propose for :
Alt-P
Alt-H
Alt-T

they are already used.


>
> Wayne
>
>>
>> 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
>>