kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 9/13/2011 8:44 AM, fabrizio wrote:
> 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

You could add the shift key Alt+Shift+P.  Although I think Ctrl+Shift is an
easier modifier pair to use and I don't think Ctrl+Shift is used anywhere in
Kicad so there shouldn't be any conflicts.  It may be worth considering
Ctrl+Shift instead of Alt+Shift.

Wayne

> 
> 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
>>>
>