[Traverso-devel] keymap.xml patch

[ben levitt]

Hello Traverso devs,

I'm sure this is a common story, but I've been looking for an
opensource audio tool like this for ages!

And I love the power of the keyboard-based editing scheme.  I feel
like it'll really allow heavy users to speed up their work.

But when I first started using it, it was hard to do anything, since I
didn't know the keys yet.  I found learning the interface to be a bit
frustrating.  I felt like I could see the objects, but that they were
ignoring me, which made me mad at them.  :)

So I was thinking that a good way to help out new users without losing
any of the power of the advanced interface would be to make more use
of MouseButtonLeft.

I like the idea of heavily loading the behavior of the left mouse
button with basic object-interaction commands, like moving clips,
moving curve nodes, moving clip edges, moving track marks, moving the
scrollbar, setting the position of the work cursor, selecting clips
(does selecting a clip actually do anything in this soft-selection
framework?), etc.

I also kind of like the idea of using double clicking to create track
marks and curve nodes.  :)

Then after we hook users with the ease of doing simple things, they'll
use it a lot and start learning about all the keys that act as
extra-mouse-button shortcuts.

I made a small patch to keymap.xml that implements most of this (cvs
diff -u), and it's attached.  Please let me know if you prefer a
different format, or a different delivery method.  (Bug/patch
tracker?)

You may notice the line that references objectname="AudioClipEdge".
It currently does nothing.  Any suggestions on how to implement
dragging an edge if the mouse click started near an edge?  I was going
to try to have the AudioClipView check how close the mouse pointer is
to an edge, and then dispatch the correct event, but I haven't read
through enough of the code yet to figure out how InputEngine and
friends are dispatching events.

But more importantly, how do these ideas sound to you?  I don't want
to come running in late suggesting changes you don't like.  I'm just
excited.  :)

Thanks!
Ben

keys.diff
Description: Text document