On Fri, Oct 14, 2005 at 11:04:34PM +0100, Alan Horkan wrote:
The Patch assigns F1 to Help, Keys and moves some other keys around mapping them to ones used by Xara.
It would be very helpful if you just gave a full list of old and new key assignments here. Not everyone can read patches,
Okay. I'll attempt to explain it futher. It aint poetry but here it is:
F1 was used by the Selector F2 is now used for the Selector
F2 was used by the Node tool F4 is now used for the Node tool
F3 was used for the Zoom tool Shift F7 is now used for the Zoom tool (as well as other keybindings)
F4 was used for the Rectangle tool Shift F3 is now used for the Rectangle tool
F5 was used for the Arc/Ellipse tool Shift F4 is now used for the Arc/Ellipse tool
previously F1 was used by the Selector F1 now used by Help Keys
Thanks for listing the changes. I am not a heavy keyboard user, so don't know if my input matters much on this, but all these changes look fine to me. I really like the idea of mapping F1 to Help, even if it requires shifting some of the other F-key shortcuts around. I think since we have such good help in Inkscape, the easier we can make it for users to access it, the better it'd be for everyone.
The long term solution is of course to have fully switchable keyboard profiles. That doesn't change the need for good defaults and I hope by trying out these ideas (even if they need to be reverted before the next release) it will encourage people who do not like it to come up with better suggestions rather than blocking changes.
Like I said in the bug, any wholesale key reassignment patch is only acceptable if it adds a preference option making it possible to use the old layout as well
Does everyone feel that way? Are other changes held to such a high standard? If every change was required to maintain the old behaviour it would be a lot tougher to make progress. Inkscape version 0.42 will always provide the old layout.
I don't feel that way. I do think it's a good idea to use the preferences for enabling users to control how things work, so these are certainly good ideas and recommendations, but it seems to be establishing unusually high standards for this particular change... But that aside, I think you'd find making new preferences to be fairly straightforward and a useful thing to learn. It sounds like if this is done, you and Bulia will have come to an acceptable compromise, which is good.
I have already suggested this could be tried out and reverted before 0.43 if you people feel very strongly about it. Putting it in even for a while might encourage people to discuss it and come up with better ideas.
I suspect this might be best done as part of the 0.44 development; since 0.43 is nearing completion, folks won't have much time to try this change out before the release.
Bryce