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  • Published 13 Sep 2019

Add Virtual Keymaps for having infinite keymaps and avoid conflicts with addons mappings too.

There are many custom keymaps for Blender and now even more for Blender 2.8x that mimic the keymaps of other software packages. Then almost each Blender addon either free or not comes with its own set of keymaps that practically always overwrites some. Managing keymaps conflicts is a real pain and the number of keys and mouse combos is not really infinite even because it is really unusable to have any keymap with like 4-5 keys or more maybe even placed anywhere on a keyboard... it is a huge waste of time.

So what could be the solution to solve all of this ? Well... adding a Virtual Keymaps feature to Blender would be the best way I'd say. It means creating a new layer of functions/classes/methods for all Blender functions/classes/methods using keymaps in the code. Everything related to keymaps should then automatically reroute to the new abstraction layer that would allow Virtual Keymaps to exist.

So with such an abstraction layer it would be possible to give users on the UI the ability to quickly load many keymaps and select which one would be currently active. That way when installing an addon it would be possible to have it register its shortcuts keymaps combos in the currently active one and it wouldn't matter if it would overwrite some other keys combos that would still exist in another keymaps set. Same goes for custom keymaps files. It would be possible for example to create 10 sets of keymaps .. let's say I wanted to load a full keymaps file on set 2, I would make set 2 the active one then load the file and overwrite the keymaps there while not affecting the other 9 sets. Then switching between keymaps sets could be both with an UI button/selection and with a shortcut that should always exist in each keymaps set (forcing a fixed keys combo global to any loaded keymap might not be the best approach but having a keys combo for switching between sets is needed to make it work, the combo can be user assigned on each keymap too and can't be blank otherwise the switching obviously would stop working) , such a key combo would allow to quickly switch to the desired keymaps set number/id/name. The user should be able to see which keymap set is the currently active one on screen all the time, the number alone could be enough maybe the UI element should expand itself on mouse over showing the name that the user assigned to the set.

Calling such an abstract layer Virtual Keymaps could be a good naming for end users too along with calling Sets each set of keymaps. Anyway what matters is the feature itself. I hope this request will become a reality if not with Blender 2.81 maybe with 2.82 ?

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Development Status: Open

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DarkS474
13 Sep 2019

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