On Fri, 14 Apr 2006, bulia byak wrote:
On 4/14/06, Alan Horkan <horkana@...44...> wrote:
What Inkscape has _now_ is very very far from Sodipodi :) And it's always being developed and expanded, changing with every version.
I was assuming you mostly expanded rather than outright changed the keybindings but in case you did change things I suggested the alternative of a "classic" set of keybindings.
Yes, mostly expanded, as there was not a lot to change :) Anyway, this process should be user-driven. If after some of our changes, someone prefers old Inkscape bindings, he or she is welcome to submit
In practice a user would need to be very disgruntled to bother making that much effort, whereas it is relatively little effort to do it preventatively.
the corresponding profile file and we'll include it in the list of alternatives. I see no reason for us to do this preventively. Why do a snapshot of 0.44 and not e.g. 0.43 or 0.45?
One would hope the Inkscape keybindings would not fluctuate so wildly as to need more than one "classic" profile.
The Gnome HIG advises against trying to have keybindings for absolutely everything. I understand now why, because Inkscape has keybindings for just about everything it is very hard to add any new keybindings.
(The HIG as usual has to be taken with grain of sceptical salt. It gives direction but very little idea of the intention, and enough room to move that you could convince yourself Inkscape doesn't have a lot of keybindings and follows the guidelines perfectly.)
It would be ridiculous
hold off on the firey rhetoric please, implying my suggestions are ridiculous might be seen as hostile (I'm trying to get used to it but your word choice still seems harsh)
not to have convenient shortcuts for something widely used _now_ in
yes, if it is something widely used which requires fast frequent access
however having a keybinding for something like Preferences indicates a design problem as users shouldn't need to be changing preferences on a regular basis or take another example if inkscape had really good tools for batch exporting a keybinding might not seem necessary for export since the rest of process is streamlined.
as Inkscape evolves and workflow improves a few keybindings will be improved
anticipation of some other feature that will arrive years later and will need the same keys.
While I like to err on the side of having plenty of keybindigns I can see the downside of having keybindins for almost everything.
Initially I felt the same way since the Inkscape developers had a change first ask questions later policy I thought changing thing later would be possible. When I tried to make changes there was massive resistance and any change was tied in to several other changes making it very difficult to make any changes at all let alone.
Are keybindings choosen because they are the most appropriate or because they are the only ones available at the time? I doubt you were entirely happy with all your keybinding choices and even you will want to review them at some point.
I see no reason not to have,
You have never tried to get bulia byak to change his mind! :)
at all times, a set of shortcuts that best reflects the current functionality of the program. Moreover, I think the fact that we had such a set from the beginning was a very important factor in Inkscape success.
On balance it has been very good. However I want to chagne the keybindings so I can forsee that will be difficult if it happens. If working tech support has teaches you anything is that software churn and the required retraining is a huge pain in the ass. If and when things like keybindigns get changed you dont want to be changing them too often.
Can it happen that we'll want to switch some shortcuts to different actions in the default set? Yes, absolutely. I see no tragedy in that,
It is easy for developers to make the change but harder for users to adapt, but frequent and expert users like yourself are best able to adapt.
provided this is driven by the real needs of the users and is given good discussion by real everyday users of the program.
We need to get this absolutely clear you want to have keybindings based on the "real everyday users of the program". You want to optimize for the fastest most efficient professional work possible of people using Inkscape everyday (some other similarly huge amount of time). You want a Vi/Emacs powerhouse of an application, which is fine. The risk here is of a users accidentally hitting and doing something not easily reversable or getting trapped in a mode of some kind. (It is amazing how often user get trapped in Overwrite mode. I got bitten repeatedly by Windows silently changing keyboard layout on me thanks to a "helpful" shortcut.)
I have seen users who essentially relearn everything from scratch each time the uses a computer, I will call "forever beginners". I'm like this when it comes to filling at paperwork at the Bank, others have a similar reaction to programming their video recorder.) This is part of the reason why I put so high a value on having a shallow learning curve and making it easier for users to transfer knowledge such as consistent keybindings across Gnome or as I mentioned before those keybindigs which both Macromedia and Adobe saw fit to use for the same tasks in their drawing apps.
Our two goals - two different user archetypes - do overlap mostly. however we are not deciding the keybindings in vacuum and any evaluation has to include what keybindings are known from other applications and from past versions of Inkscape and factor that in too.
Is it true that some of the shortcuts were assigned to little-used commands that could easily do without keyboard access? Probably. But again, the practice and discussion is the best way to find it out, not blindly following some recommendations.
Is it true that some of the shortcuts were assigned to little-used commands that could easily do without keyboard access? Yes. You draw an interesting distinction between recommendations, and discussions.
In fact, the primary value of the customizable profiles is exactly in this - to facilitate experimentation and encourage discussion.
How long do you give it before someone makes Inkshop* packages? :)
[* Gimpshop is a version of the GNU Image Manipulation program with Photoshop settings. I'm joking about Inkshop, I hope Inkscape will continue to be inclusive and things will turn out differently as is happening here.]
I will be happy to see more people tweaking their shortcuts and submitting their profiles, and to consider incorporating their proposals into the default set.
Numero uno:
F1 for Help
Thanks in advance.
We also have quite some room to grow in terms of improving consistency and always doing what the user expects, which often means adding more functionality to the existing keys used in new contexts, without having to use any new keyboard combinations.
That sounds risky, users might expect the wrong context but we'll burn that bridge when we come to it.
I strongly believe the default keybindings should try to be easier for beginners to learn.
Absolutely. But the way to achieve this is not artificial limiting of shortcuts. This is best achieved through _consistency_. We are doing pretty well in this - in most situations, most keys behave in predictable ways. Though of course there's room for improvement.
Jasc Web Draw keybindings http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~horkana/inkscape/WebDraw_Keyboard_Shortcuts.html
This one is really small.
I included it because I had it lying around and it was easiest to find, I might do it myself but as you say probably not worth bothering with. I have a soft spot for WebDraw even if it did cause me to obsessively edit the SVG markup directly it was a shame Corel abandoned it entirely after they purchased Jasc.
Macromedia Freehand keybindings http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~horkana/inkscape/freehand/FreeHandMX_keybindings.tx...
That one is helpful, with good explanations. Quite ripe for making a profile out of.
Adobe Illustrator Keybindings http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~horkana/inkscape/illustrator/Illustrator%20CS%20Def...
This one is less helpful, perhaps only a real Illustrator user can make sense of these.
I had a side by side list for Adobe and Macromedia in nicely formatted HTML around somewhere, I'll see if I can dig it up later.
That will be very useful.
Found it agian, searched for 'horkana illustrator' and turned up a post I made on the Koffice list. Anyway here is the Macromedia Fireworks MX keybindings lists: http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~horkana/shortcuts/keys.html
N.B. Read the footnote: "This table was created by exporting the keybinding sets from Fireworks and then crudely fitting them all together in one table. This may be wildly inaccurate."
Sincerely
Alan Horkan
Inkscape http://inkscape.org Abiword http://www.abisource.com Open Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org
Alan's Diary http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/