Hi Ed,

> Talking about UIs... What do you think Michael, about cycling shortcuts
> like in photoshop? And assigning a shortcut to a group of tools??

Could you maybe describe again what those are in a bit more detail?

For the second one do you mean bringing up a "command set" group of tools like the line tools with a shortcut key? If so then that's possible currently with setting the following script on a shortcut key:

script: /* open line tools */ moi.command.execCommandSet( 'lines' );

- Michael

Well, with "cycling shortcuts" i mean that you can press a letter for example "L" and it activates the line tool, but if you press the "L" letter a second time it activates the polyline tool and then if you continue pressing that key it cycles through them. Then you can apply a shortcut to a group of tools.

In photoshop it works by default with "shift" plus the original key, but it has an option for just pressing a key repeatedly without the shift key.

Hi Ed, well I guess with a system like that you would be looking at setting up some dozens or maybe hundreds of default keyboard shortcuts right out of the box.

MoI's shortcut key philosophy is sort of opposite of that - it's more like letting you set up shortcut keys that personalize things to how you may want to do things with only a pretty small number of defaults.

But it would probably work to use scripting to make a cycling shortcut like you are describing - at the moment though the name of the current command is not exposed to script, so that's something I can add to the script interface for the next beta and I think that will then make it possible to create a script to do that type of cycling.

- Michael

I still don't know why I decided to do this, i guess it's my feeble attempt at being creative and trying to organize stuff for myself.

I called it "minimoi" because I wanted to illustrate something simple and minimal and also because its also an alternative version of "minime". :)

Maybe one day I'll finish it as an alternative ui thanks to the wonderful work of Michael Gibson. Just thought I'd share it with you all.

If any one wants to contribute some icons feel free!

-Luis

Luis:

That is a pretty cool looking gui.

I like it and would enjoy interacting with it.

mjs

Love your Icons. :)

perhaps I find the Time to contribute some too...

-Hi Ed, well I guess with a system like that you would be looking at setting up some dozens or maybe hundreds of default keyboard shortcuts right out of the box.

-MoI's shortcut key philosophy is sort of opposite of that - it's more like letting you set up shortcut keys that personalize things to how you may want to do things with only a pretty small number of defaults.

Well I think thats great but one thing i thought is that you can let the users assign one shortcut to a group of tools inside the options panel.

Think of having a window where you assign one key (like right now) but instead of being limited to add one tool to that key, you can (for example) clic a plus button and add another tool below to that same shortcut key and then when using it, the tools behind that shortcut will cycle in the order you added them.

Currently i have the left side of my keyboard full of shortcuts for working with the left hand in the keyboard and the right hand with the mouse, but even if I use all the keys in my keyboard, they will not be enough for all the tools i use often. Actually I almost use all the tools you have put inside of MoI and more that i have in my plugin gallery.

I think for enhancing the shortcut system and preparing it for all the new tools you plan to add, this cycling solution can be a lot better than having a more-than-one-letter shortcut system and having to press enter or spacebar for activating each shortcut. It will be more intuitive too.

Hi Ed,

> Think of having a window where you assign one key
> (like right now) but instead of being limited to add
> one tool to that key, you can (for example) clic a plus
> button and add another tool below to that same shortcut
> key and then when using it, the tools behind that shortcut
> will cycle in the order you added them.

That's a pretty elaborate UI that would be specific to just this one particular "cycle between tools" use.

Rather than some special UI for just that one particular purpose, I'd rather let you just pick one action for the shortcut key similar to how you do now, but that action could be a script that contained whatever logic you wanted in it, including cycling between tools.

Basically once I add the ability to retrieve the current running command for a script, it should then be possible to have a script that will do this kind of cycling without having any special setup UI like what you're describing now.

Eventually I want to make it easier to assign a script to a shortcut key, something like letting you connect to a list of named scripts so you wouldn't necessarily need to see the actual script code itself in that dialog, you would just pick something named like "Cycle between line tools" for the keyboard shortcut for doing that kind of cycling stuff.

The thing that's good about this approach is that there is a tremendous amount of flexibility in what you can do in a script - it can do all sorts of combination of actions like do a view reset, and also switch to the next tool but only if you're over a certain viewport, or anything like that, far beyond just simply switching between 2 tools.

So for improvements in the shortcut key editor, I'd really be looking more at making it easier to pick a script for that shortcut key from some kind of script library, and that script library could contain all kinds of stuff including tool cycling as well.

- Michael

Thanks mjs & sw03!

I don't know if this will be alive anytime soon since as Michael pointed out, he is still working on the release
and things are subject to change.

I will still try to work on some of the ui icons during my free time.

Maybe when the system is more stable I can push something out.

In the mean time, I'm just laying things on my head and pondering about the elements and interactions I'd like to
see in my idea of an ultra simple and elegant minimal ui. :)

I think Michael has taken great strides in that direction. Certainly inspired me with Moi. :)

I'll keep you guys posted.

-Luis

-So for improvements in the shortcut key editor, I'd really be looking more at making it easier to pick a script for that shortcut key from some kind of script library, and that script library could contain all kinds of stuff including tool cycling as well.

I like that!