Hi Kristoffer, John, I agree this is an important problem to solve.
I am not convinced that this is the perfect solution, but I wanted to share a way a commercial tool does it. Here's a screenshot from Mentor Graphics Xpedition showing what I mean: http://i.imgur.com/H0wDK0F.png At the bottom of the screen is a list of keyboard shortcuts, that change based on what you are doing. So, when you are in "place components" mode the list is different than if you are routing a track, for example. The developers chose the most common things to do for each "tool" that can be active, and assigned them to function-keys. Note that in Xpedition, the hotkeys themselves change, i.e. the icons on the bottom of the screen always correspond to the function keys F1-F12. But, even without adopting that scheme (which would conflict with some of our existing hotkeys), we could use the UI concept of a larger "quick reference" to hotkeys (I'm including mouse actions in the definition of hotkeys here) at the bottom of the screen, for example a quick mockup: http://i.imgur.com/wB0Yecy.png Then we would just need to define up to N hotkeys for each tool / tool mode that should be hinted to the user. (Where N is some number that looks not too cramped) -Jon On Wed, Mar 15, 2017 at 7:11 AM, Kristoffer Ödmark < [email protected]> wrote: > Yes, the status line is way to small it. However it could maybe be used to > show which modifiers are in use. Not what they do. > > I believe that knowing which modifiers are in use would be enough, because > many modifiers would probably be very self explanatory once activated, for > example the angle-snap, having a grid snap etc. > > Then the idea of having an explanatory panel available somehow on-demand > would probably be best. > > Attached is an idea mockup for putting on the left side in the status line. > > It shows when the arc tool is active and has ctrl and shift modifers where > ctrl is currently held and angle snap-active. > > > > On 03/15/2017 12:11 PM, John Beard wrote: > >> Hi Kristoffer, >> >> I agree that the "secrecy" of KiCad shortcuts is a pretty major issue. >> It serves to make people good at KiCad think it's great, while new >> users struggle (probably in silence) because they don't know there's a >> better way. >> >> Expanding documentation is important here (he says, not having >> documented his new features yet) but it's unreasonable to expect users >> to wade through hundreds of screens of prose to be told incidentally >> that the arc tool snaps angles when you hold control. >> >> I certainly think some sort of easily accessible (at minimum hotkey + >> some sort of obvious visual affordance) method for a user to get >> contextual help is very important. Ideally something that doesn't >> break the user's flow. Popping a dialog that you have to dismiss is a >> little clunky, I feel. Perhaps some sort of panel that appears only >> while you're holding a key down? >> >> I'm not a huge fan of the Inkscape-style status line, though it's >> certainly better than nothing. It feels squeezed to me, since the >> information is really more like a list of possible modifiers than a >> one-liner. We do have a little area of the status bar that tells you >> what tool you're in, but that's nowhere near big enough to naively >> plonk screeds of text. >> >> tl;dr agree but no ideas yet! >> >> Cheers, >> >> John >> >> On Wed, Mar 15, 2017 at 6:34 PM, Kristoffer Ödmark >> <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> 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 >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers >>> Post to : [email protected] >>> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers >>> More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp >>> >> > -- > -Kristoffer > > _______________________________________________ > Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers > Post to : [email protected] > Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers > More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp > >
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