[PD] Keyboard shortcuts for "nudge", "done editing"

Marvin Humphrey marvin at rectangular.com
Sat Sep 24 20:56:02 CEST 2011


Greetings,

A couple questions from a PD noob:

First, is there any keyboard shortcut to signal "I'm done editing text"?  When
entering text into an object, a message, etc, it seems that the only way to
signal that you are finished is a mouse click outside of the item being
edited.  I'd like to press a key -- <ESC>, <TAB>, <ENTER>, whatever -- and
have the focus leave the text box.

Second, is there any keyboard shortcut to "nudge" an element?  It would be
great to select an object (or a group of objects), then press <LEFT_ARROW> to
move it one pixel, or <CONTROL/COMMAND><LEFT_ARROW> to move it 10 pixels (or N
pixels).

If such things are not possible, I'm curious what other mechanisms people have
come up with to streamline the editing process, because it feels like I'm
having to touch the mouse waaaaaaay too often and it's slowing me down.  It
seems I'm not the only person to have made such observations:

    http://artengine.ca/~catalogue-pd/18-Lee-Bouchard.pdf

    One obvious shortcoming is that users are required to constantly switch
    between keyboard and mouse to operate the program. This becomes especially
    problematic in the context where patches are developed rapidly. 

I'm using PD Vanilla, built from the latest sources.  I'm an experienced open
source developer, fluent in C and learning Tcl, so suggestings that involve
hacking the source are welcome.  

Cheers,

Marvin Humphrey




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