Again... Alt&crsr Instead Of Shift&crsr 4 Blockmark

[Ambivalence]

@pvcf

@ vvoois, bantai, taktik

why did you try to discuss us how we have to like our keybindings?
please let US decide whats better for us.

As a proud citizen of the EU I strongly disagree that the US should decide what’s better for me!

Oh, wait…

And being serious, I used trackers since Protracker 2.x. Used also OctaMED, FT2, IT, Modplug, et al. But come on, in two months’ time it’ll be 2007. As a person who works with more than one program on his PC, I tend to get used to things that are in common everywhere. So I usually stumbled upon things like Alt + …, cut-copy-paste, Tab, etc. Yeah, sure, I’m not that dumb so finally I could get used to all the inconsintencies. But still, every other piece of software behaved differently.

Triton, when designing Fast Tracker in 1995, could not be wrong with any standards since there weren’t any at the time. Windows 95 was just about to be released (and receive tons of bitching because it was soo resource intensive and not like Win 3.11, remember?), Amiga Workbench and others had their absolutely own style, *nix had already a few window managers which were incompatible with each other. There were no standards at the time.

But now things are quite different. Soon the word “Windows” will have “an operating system by Microsoft” as the first meaning in the dictionary, followed by the glass-filled frame. Even non-Windows systems tend to copy many things. And Windows is copying other functionality from other systems (MacOS X Spotlight?). It’s better to follow standards than force users to learn every single program.

And hey, what’s the problem here? That you lose, say, half a second every cut-copy-paste? That you must use another finger? Come on!

Nevertheless, if that would be configurable, everybody could be happy in their own way… But if it already isn’t, I personally don’t find it justified to waste devs’ effort on a thing like that.

Just my .02 ¤

[vvoois (vV)]

@Ambivalence

But now things are quite different. Soon the word “Windows” will have “an operating system by Microsoft” as the first meaning in the dictionary, followed by the glass-filled frame. Even non-Windows systems tend to copy many things. And Windows is copying other functionality from other systems (MacOS X Spotlight?). It’s better to follow standards than force users to learn every single program.

Windows has a lot of things cloned from other platforms, they even stole ideas from OS/2 from IBM.
The only reason OS/2 died because IBM couldn’t keep up with the competition of Windows.
Microsoft has a good marketing department and they caused this effort to put MS in a monopoly position.
I’m astounded every time some representative of MS or even Bill Gates himself performs a new demonstration of the new operating system and then the OS seems to show a will of it’s own by not behaving as expected.
(BSOD, formatting harddrives instead of floppy drives, speech interpreters that don’t listen very well).
When looking back, they clearly were an omen of what was coming.
But there is one line that crosses all these situations and that is that the software gets better everytime no matter what.
If nobody nagged, software remained as buggy and as exploitable as it was when released.
So nagging has a good influence on improvement of software development, but it doesn’t always mean that a claim of things going backwards can be profound.
Some changes have to be made to open possibilities for future implementations, this goes at the expense of things that have been embedded for a long time and it changes workflow habits but you can either choose to figure out a new way to get adjusted to it or desert the software.

Complaints about changes of keymodifyer behaviour doesn’t sound very justified because it is not a unique way of usage (you can find this back in many applications so not getting adjusted to it in a short notice is bull, not even mentioned a lot of us in the testing team already got adjusted to the new method). If you would rather choose to abandon software just because it messes up workflow instead and not looking at what kind of positive sides has been done to it, this is up to you.

[pvcf]

and not looking at what kind of positive sides has been done to it, this is up to you.

sorry, i really doesnt have find any positive sides of the new keyhandling overall, workflow have drastically lowered.

-i doesn’t can leave all editors with one key (esc would be fine, but in pattern editor i need esc for edit on/off),

-i doesn’t can drag the line in automation and can continue work in pattern and sequencer without to click with mouse back in pattern

-i doesn’t can define my blockmark like i want

what i can: give houndreds of commands which better should be to use with mouse a hotkey, which i really seldom need and where is not important to waste the ALT key (fckng hardbinded focus overide function!!!)
(or with hardbinded left and right mousebutton in automation draw with the same function, ps: even middleclick will loose the focus on pattern )

so, please stop to try to argue things right, the workflow IS lowered drastically and getting used to be is not the proof that its now better.

[Pysj]

You do have the ‘lock to middle view’ enabled [F8]?
Or du you use alt+mouseclick in every operation you do?

I also agree that there really is no use for the alt+mouseclick to force focus when this function is also on the middle button.

[pvcf]

You do have the ‘lock to middle view’ enabled [F8]?

yep

Or du you use alt+mouseclick in every operation you do?

very often

[vvoois (vV)]

@pvcf

“and not looking at what kind of positive sides has been done to it, this is up to you.”
sorry, i really doesnt have find any positive sides of the new keyhandling overall, workflow have drastically lowered.

That is what i mean exactly:just only looking at that aspect and not looking to the rest of the program.

[pvcf]

That is what i mean exactly:just only looking at that aspect and not looking to the rest of the program.

i doesn’t understand you: i’m not complaining about the rest of the programm, its great, i’m complaining about forced keyhandling, and thats the topic in this thread.

[vvoois (vV)]

@pvcf

That is what i mean exactly:just only looking at that aspect and not looking to the rest of the program.

i doesn’t understand you: i’m not complaining about the rest of the programm, its great, i’m complaining about forced keyhandling, and thats the topic in this thread.

Okay i’m sorry, to be real honest:I cursed the first few weeks as well, but eventually it gets used, trust me.
So we saw this discussion coming somehow the only thing we can keep advising is just:Remain calm, give it a chance, spare your keyboard.

[raina]

@It-Alien

is using SHIFT not for selection which makes trackers so special in your point of view? I hope not: we all say that trackers are special because they let you do something other software cannot, or which you would never think of doing with other software, but amongst these things there is surely not the ability to use SHIFT key for anything else than selection, don’t you think?

Just had say this: Of course not.

Getting over the initial alarm makes me think wtf, sure I can adapt. You just tend to take these things all but lightly since the software is so dear. As I see it both sides justify their point of view well but if the new keyboard system really does’t allow the configurability of the past, I guess there’s not much to do other than getting used to it.

[vvoois (vV)]

It took a very long time to get this keyboard focus thing stabile and we had a lot of more cursings than you currently had.

Reversing the modifyer key thing back to the original setup and have all the local shortcut features as well was a no-can-do option but thanks to various testing and using by the complete test-team, things like storable GUI and focus presets have been added, some keyshortcut combinations that are really very often used (like changing arranger positions and instrument positions from various places), got local assignment in various areas as well.
In the beginning most of those general shortcuts only worked from within the pattern editor but nowhere else (not in the mixer or instrument envelopes etc).

[pvcf]

It took a very long time to get this keyboard focus thing stabile and we had a > lot of more cursings than you currently had

sorry, but keyboardfocus doesn’t work at all, even with the mentioned middleclick my pattern everytime loose the keyfocus if i press alt, and i MUST press “alt” to shift up the automation key (and its again hardcoded )