kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Kristoffer Ödmark <kristofferodmark90@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello all!

I just wanted to highlight an emerging problem to catch it in its cradle.

The new tool and dialog patches that has been merged are great. But they 
also introduce secret functionaly, examples:

Ctrl + click:   highlights net ( modifier to select tool )
ctrl + drag:    snap angles in arc tool
shift + click:  adds/removes to selection in select mode
shift + scroll: changes increment values in 3d-previewer

These are the few examples I found right now, what I would like to see 
is a standardized way of informing the users to this before more tools 
get these hidden functionality.

The way that current shortcuts are indicated I think are great ( the 
grey text next to their selection in menus Maybe we could expand on this 
to create tooltips to the menus with a list of modifier keys for the 
hovered tool in the menu.

Another way that Gimp uses is to put this information at the bottom 
information bar, Maybe we could do that as well by modifying the current 
position information bar

Yet another way would be to have tool specific settings given screen 
real-estate, much in the way of gimp and inkscape.

At least I think this issue should be addressed and agreed upon before 
tools specify their different modifiers willy-nilly all over the place 
and you need a kicad-phd to remember them all. Just having an idea on 
how to do it can enable a good team-effort of supporting it.

--
 -Kristoffer