kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Ian McInerney <Ian.S.McInerney@xxxxxxxx>]

Seth,

I am not sure about if they would cause usability issues on other platforms
(it could be that they don't, since there have been no reports about it),
but I do see a downside/idiosyncrasy with having them duplicated.
Currently, the 5.1 hotkey configuration tools have no idea which tool is
enabled/disabled when other tools are active. This means that its duplicate
key detection (that is currently included in 5.1.2) flags any actions with
the same key code as a duplicate when the user enters the code. Therefore,
a user is prevented from entering two items with the same key, so they
would not be able to enter the key combinations currently in the defaults.
That to me seems like an odd way to ship things, since the defaults are not
achievable just through the user entering keys (aside from the reset to
defaults button). On a side note, it also means that the patch I just sent
will always flag it as invalid since I just used the existing check
duplicate function, meaning the user will see it as an error if that patch
is included.

Perhaps in 6.0 the duplicate detection can be made smarter by including
knowledge about which actions are disabled when others are active. Then it
could only check for duplicates in the actions that could be activated.

-Ian

On Tue, Jun 11, 2019 at 7:40 PM Seth Hillbrand <seth@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi Ian-
>
> On 2019-06-11 12:56, Ian McInerney wrote:
> > Somewhat in relation to the patch I just sent, 5.1 currently has some
> > hotkey issues with the default hotkeys that are being shipped with it,
> > namely with pcbnew where:
> > Paste is a duplicate hotkey of Add Microvia (both have Ctrl-V)
> > Add a similar zone has an invalid hotkey (it is currently ctrl+shift+.
> > )
> > Routing options has an invalid hotkey (it is currently ctrl+shift+, )
> >
> > The invalid hotkeys I think can be modified to simply be the upper
> > symbol of those keys, so:
> > Add a similar zone: ctrl+>
> > Routing options: ctrl+<
>
> These make sense to me.  I suspect that the greater-than/less-than
> symbol is fairly accessible on most keyboards.
>
> > As for the duplicate, what hotkey should add microvia be moved to?
>
> I think that the microvia hotkey is OK here as it is only enabled when
> paste is disabled, specifically when we are routing.  I don't think
> that's a duplicate.  Both actions seem to work appropriately for me when
> using pcbnew.  Do they cause issues on non-Linux platforms?
>
> -Seth
>