Re: [Traverso-devel] Key shorcuts re-evaluated

[JC Cheloven]

Hi Remon, nice to hear from you :)
I'm in my 'bad months' now, you know. I didn't much audio work lately, but I'm glad to participate in some discussion. One ofthe virtues in the development of Traverso is that it's never considered "too late" to wipe out anything and start over, if needed.  

I wouldn't dare to make such a proposal on my own, but once you said it, I have to say it makes also sense to me, as it does for plutek. The current scheme is great, but ... well, here my thoughts in short:

- After the long process last year, it seems to me that the big set of otherwise good ideas for keyboard actions, was rather difficult to stabilize, and/or make to work in a snappy way.

- Once the keyboard-only possibility is assumed for Traverso, which is absolutely awesome btw, it would be nice to aim for similarity to other common apps, typically a word processor (there are many diffs, sure, and the layered structure doesn't help). The learning curve would be less steep for the newcomer.

Your present idea can match to a greater degree with the 'word processor' bit, it will hopefully be easier to make snappy, and it will simplify the workflow in traverso overall, so I think it's a good one !

Cheers
JC
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2011/3/4 Remon Sijrier <address@hidden>

Hi list,

It has been quite silent for a while, so I thought, lets make some noise here!

I've been using the keyboard 'shortcuts' in Traverso for a long time now, and
I'd like to propose a change, based on using the concept for a long time and
valuable user feedback.

Currently you can dispatch a 'shortcut' by means of pressing one key, or 2
keys at the same time, holding a key, or press and hold 2 keys at the same
time.
Examples are: [ G ] for changing the gain, < G N > to normalize an audioclip
gain value, [ D ] for dragging clips around, [ D V ] for vertical dragging
clips around, < S > to select clips (and now also curve nodes) etc.

The downside of the whole system is that you have to press/release the
shortcut in a given amount of time, around 150 milli seconds.

Users find this hard to do, and for 'quick' actions it's in fact not quick.
Example: muting 4 tracks. If you go quickly over the 4 tracks with the mouse
pressing the mute shortcut key on each track, the 150 millisecond timeout
actually delays it enough to only mute 1 or 2 tracks due missing the
'press/release' timeout, the mouse no longer hovers the pointed track when the
timeout arrives.

OK, so the proposal is this: Simplify the shortcut system to just one key at a
time that fires off instantly as soon as you press it.
This means you no longer can do < E P > or [ F G ] and so on.

Instead, functionality will now be centered around one key only.
E.g.: G  will be the Gain key. When you press it, you can change the gain by
moving the mouse or using the up/down arrow key, or you can change the gain
value by using numerical input. After releasing G the new value will be
applied.

P is the Pan key, press P and use mouse or left and right arrow key to change
the pan, or press R to reset pan.

S is Select
If you press/release it it'll (de)select the item that has currently the
'focus' if you keep it pressed, you can extend the selection by using arrow
keys, clear it by pressing C and so on.

The primary idea behind it is that each key once being pressed can execute new
functions when another key is pressed.
These keys will show up in the 'context help' widget once you have the key
pressed, basically giving unlimited 'shortcuts' in a very understanding and
easy to learn way, without doing difficult key presses.

Examples:
http://traverso-daw.org/screenies/shortcuts/zoom_active.png
http://traverso-daw.org/screenies/shortcuts/drag_active.png


Now is the time to agree, complain or do nothing :D

Besides working on the workflow features in T, I'll try to fix the routing asap
which means fixing the jack support and getting all the new features in git
stabilized, polished or disabled, depending on how much time it takes to finish
the important bits.

Best regards,

Remon

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