Keyboard Shortcut Visualizer like softimage - how?

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Draise
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Keyboard Shortcut Visualizer like softimage - how?

Post by Draise » 28 Apr 2018, 20:47

I have been enjoying the luxery of keyboard shortcut editing in Softimage with drag and drop, visual highlights and quick assignment. For Hotkeymap development, I think it's amazing.
XSI_2018-04-28_13-34-40.png
I have been working with Bforaritsts to try make hotkeys, but like Softimage, there are many context sensitive shortcuts. But editing them and checking them is like checking 3400 lines of code by hand.

I'm starting to see a huge bottleneck when it comes to hotkeys and editing/verifying them. I wish there was a system like Softimage or Adobe that you can use that shows you where the conflicts are from the get go, have a visual way to assign/test and on top of that, already be documented.

I feel I spend a lot of time looking for hotkeys, seeing if they conflict, and really....a software should be able to check hotkeys, drag around, have the areas highlights/troubleshoot, show a function of the key showcased and it all working, and integrate into some kind of UI friendly description.

So I dug around a little...

Options out there:

I found a Keyboard Hotkey Visualizer on Github.
https://github.com/waldobronchart/ShortcutMapper

You can see it in action here:
http://waldobronchart.github.io/ShortcutMapper/#Blender

You can technically branch it and put in the Keymap for Bforartists and I think you can parse it so that that particular site can host those hotkeys. It's a very easy way to see all the hotkeys, you press a key, modifier, and see what's happening.

Softimage and Adobe both have a similar system - except in Softimage you can drag and drop operators onto keys out of will depending on the context, and SEE what is happening on the keyboard. You can inversely hit a key or combo and it will detect it and show what's assigned to it in that particular context. It's really extensive. I can't believe how few people use a system like this - seems it's only Adobe and Softimage.

In contra, this github version is good but is not editable ,unless you parse a new database (from the net), but it does show the different keyboard layouts and languages.

Cons
Now building a said software or webservice is a big project and most likely impossible for Blender/Bforartists UI code (and who knows how hard it could be in 2.8 code), and updating one to the Github service above is a pain, and it's not integrated into the documentation very well - I'd need to document/parse and then fork that code to that site which would stlll have a lot of conflicts if I don't solve them before - also it can't be integrated into the documentation. Also building a visualizer is probably not able to output and create a hotkey input map for BFA to use - it would need to create Input maps everytime you edit.

I also can't find another service.

And I can't make software it seems.


Do you have any recomendations? How do you verify custom hotkeys and create a visual UI system to do the thing for any software?

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Mathaeus
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Re: Keyboard Shortcut Visualizer like softimage - how?

Post by Mathaeus » 29 Apr 2018, 01:38

Draise wrote: 28 Apr 2018, 20:47

Do you have any recomendations? How do you verify custom hotkeys and create a visual UI system to do the thing for any software?
For now, if I want to assign a custom shortcut, let's say V for move tool, I'm doing a search for everything assigned to V, I'm disabling all of them (or, where is sense to do that). Then, I'd assign V to move tool.
As you already know, Blender is able to change assignment of mouse actions too, for example I have double LMB for component loop selection, so probably you'll need to add a picture of mouse too, in your input editor - and that makes things even more complicated.
Perhaps you can go with Maya style, less ambitions, but still usable. In latest Mayas, picture of keyboard displays occupied keys and modes (different editors or modifier keys), however there is no drag and drop to keyboard pic.

Or......... just force any Blender user to use Maya for year or two, and they won't be complaining about anything, anymore :D . Honestly to say, I started with pretty much huge customization of Blender, only after two years of Maya. For more than ten years I didn't, I was spoiled by Softimage. So not that bad is Maya thing, sometimes...

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