Its funny you mention this example as the first thing I did when undo/redo came was to reassign redo to ctrl+ key to the left of Z
What makes a tracker special is that you dont ‘type’ as much as in a text based program. You (at least I do) use alot more arrows and lots of play/stop song/pattern etc. I use those keys far far more then special function keys. So in the long run I get a better workflow the ‘old’ way.
I also reassign my very most used hotkeys close to my left hand.
That said, I have no problems whatsoever to see that some people would hate this approach.
Enabling the right-side modifyer keys can also increase short-cut availability.
What about having “RShift + F1” is doing something totally different than LShift + F1"?
It’s ofcourse a delicate matter not to link a innocent action to the one and a very harmfull action to the other.
Exactly my view. Preferrably I would like to be able to map LShift+F1, RShift+F1 or EitherShift+F1. But I really don’t know whether it’s possible…
OctaMED had both left and right as separate modifiers and this allowed you to set up many many shortcuts, which was imo very good. It didn’t take me long to get used from protracker style (one key) to octamed amiga+space combination.
I think it’d be a step back, for reasons other people have explained better than I could. It’s more convenient for me to have the righthand set of option keys perform different actions.
That said, it’s not that important to me - I don’t feel it’s a such a huge step backward, but there wasn’t an option for “I’d rather not, thanks”.
What I know the right keys have always worked as modifiers in MED. Or was there an option for this? Cause I always used them as modifiers and that was one of the things I had hard to get over when I did start to use Renoise… I want to be able to use for example RShift+Arrow up for one thing and LShift+Arrow up for something else. That was how it used to be in MED and that is what I want to be able to do in Renoise aswell…
While I think it’s a HORRIBLE HORRIBLE idea to start changing tracker functionality just to workaround windows bugs, I do like dual modifiers. Maybe it’s because I never liked FT2, but the proposed behavior would at least be similar to the thousands of others programs I’ve grown familiar with.
I also totally agree with the comments about the function keys being defaulty wasted on tab-switching. I’m GOING to have to use the mouse to interact with those tabs - so I’m not going to bother using the keyboard to get there. Fortunately, we’re already afforded the benefit of mapping - but keys as well seperated and functional as functions keys - should have more functional functions
I think it should also be kept in mind that we can have control over obscure and specific features without fear of cluttering up the UI too bad. Most of the people I’ve met with a tracker mentality - came from a ‘nerd’ mentality and have no problem taking a file into a text-editor, if it means not having to adjust the creative process.
I personally can’t write music in software, if I’m struggling to use the software. There’s basically “learn mode” and “track mode”.
Well i certainly do not hope that the right side modifyer keys will be set to operate identical to the left side.
As you can notice currently:the right side modifyer keys are doing something different than the left side, so they are independably programmable to do different things. (The left shift key returns a different value than the right shift key)
If they would be enabled to do the same things:yeah that would be a waste of the effort.
It would be very nice to have different “prefab” keyboard hotkey templates to come with RNS (and simple to setup I would think) that you could then choose:
Rename hotkeys.xml hotkeys.bak and rename their chosen Config.xml to hotkeys.xml and restart
I find the modifiers working as hotkeys to be very foreign from what I am personally used to but I never tracked on old old computers like Amiga/C=64/etc. Only on PC where modifiers were always modifiers
imo it’s not very important if a key executes a certain function…
what’s important is that every key is user-mapable… (as far as possible atleast).
(ex. I just loathe the functionallity of the space key in a fresh installation of Renoise… it’s not supposed to start and stop the song (or whatever it does) but as long as I can change it back to it’s ‘real’ action Im happy… )
Ive been using rCtrl, rAlt, rShift, space(edit on/off) and Return-keys for so long (almost 20y now. some peeps in this forum hasn’t lived that long… heh )
that it’s hard-coded in my brain and fingers to use them… I could track blind-folded with the old setup if need be… so, if the possibillity to map these keys to the functions Im used to would dissapear I would be very confused…
what’d they say about old dogs again… huh!?
(if possible)… let us old trackers be able to map the keyb to what we’re used to
and let new users map to what they find convenient…
as the first thing I did when undo/redo came was to reassign redo to ctrl+ key to the left of Z
)
)