kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 6/14/19 7:59 AM, Jeff Young wrote:
> My plan had been to support both two-step (first selects tool; second draws object) and immediate (always draws) actions, and let the user assign the hotkey to the one they prefer.
> 
> But I’m discovering a bunch of things that are unsettling about it.  It hard to discover if we chose the default option that’s not the one you wanted.  Which actions does the Place menu show?  It kind of has to do a select-tool action, but that’s inconsistent if the tool is already selected.  And to make matters worse, you’d really like to show the immediate hotkeys there because that’s the first place people will look.

This was why I suggested that we have separate hotkey vs menu
accelerator paradigm but that was dismissed.  Your statement above
illustrates why they are separate actions.  I'm not sure what that
answer is here but we seem no closer to solving the issue.

> 
> Then I had an epiphany: it’s easy enough to distinguish select-tool from draw-object contextually (did they use the menu or not?); the real differentiator between two-step and immediate is whether or not the tool remains selected after the object is drawn.

How about this?  If the previous tool was the select tool, then the
hotkey selected drawing tool remains active until dismissed.  If the
previous tool was not the selection tool, do a one shot action and
return to the previously selected tool when the hotkey action is
complete.  This would most closely mimic the legacy tool behavior which
a significant number of users seem to prefer.

> 
> So how about if we add a preference for that instead?
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