Visual Shortcut Editor

Case

As mentioned in this thread - the Shortcut editing system needs an overhaul to make life easier and also mitigate the huge shortcut issue with updates, changes and defaults - work around the big "standarization" debate between the conservative Blender traditions or personal use.

Issues:

• No conflict checking
• No custom organization
• No clear definition of global and local hotkeys per area error checking
• Not all operators are clear
• No addon groups/conflict checking
• Not all features/operators can be hotkeyed
• No ergonomic discoverability in the hotkeys editor

Proposal

Softimage has the best shortcut key system I've found in ANY software. You have a keyboard layout. You have the "View" group and there you have the operators (not based on code). From there you can click and drag it to a hot key. You can see which key is used, which is used under a modifier (shift/control/etc). It's fun making keymaps, because it's visual, it's easy, it has error checking, it is physically accurate to your hand, and the system. What's more, you can press a key, and it will jump to the operator in the list and highlight it, showing you what a key does without being in a context sensitive workflow!

Overview:

1. Map types you can save, load, delete
2. View context - for modes and view hotkey groups, or maps
3. All Operators - so you can see all the operators in that particular view/context.
4. Modifiers under Operator descriptions - aid creating and assinging with modifiers
5. The Visual representation of hotkeys - the best part. Dark colours are occupied keys, light are free keys. Red are highlighted, and green mode is the "assign" mode.

Learning/Revision/Conflict Checking:

1. Mouse select of key highlights the operator in that selected mode.
2. Keyboard press of hotkey highlights the visual key and operator in that selected mode
3. Pressing a modifier hides the keys and shows what's available/assigned with that modifier.
4. When an operator is highlighted, you can read a description.

Editing/Assigning:

1. In this version, you can't search, but you can select by name the correct operator you'd like to assign or reassign.
2. Press, toggle or select the modifier
3. Once you have selected it, you drag the operator to a free hotkey and viola! A new hotkey.
4. (not present) now you can select that key or press it on the keyboard and it will show that operator. Instant discoverability and error checking.

Features:

• Context/View list
• All operator list depending on Context/View
• Keyboard press to highlight operator assigned
• Select visual keyboard to highlight operator assigned
• Quick and easy Operator descriptions
• Drag and drop operator assignment
• Activate and toggle modifiers via mouse visually, keyboard or modifier toggles.
• Visual representation of assigned hotkeys
• Visual representation of free hotkeys
• Conflict check warnings
• Custom hotkey list management
• Pressing any hotkey in the correct context highlights that operator to discover it instantly.

It's a dream come true.

If Blender devs could build a third party application or integrate a system like this for Blender hotkey map creation, it would be gold.

This by far is the fastest and funnest way to edit hotkeys I've ever experienced.

Extra Features

• Add an operator search/filter
• Add mouse modifiers and the "pressed" "double" "release" modifiers
• Add an context/view search/filter
• Add a whole new context list THEN view list

Tasks

1. Build a system that can visually assign hotkeys from an "All" context sensitive list, check and highlight hotkeys, etc - like this proposal
2. Minimize bare essentials for Blender, let users define and have a couple good defaults or full use Blender heads
3. Create the operator list described in detail, maybe even with image highlights to the UI equivalent.

Thanks for reading!