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

[Marvin Humphrey]

On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 01:59:20PM -0400, Mathieu Bouchard wrote:
>> None of these combinations provide that behavior on Pd Vanilla built from
>> latest git on OS X 10.6:
>>
>>    control-Enter
>>    command-Enter
>>    option-Enter
>>    shift-Enter
>>
>> I could live with control-Enter instead of <ESC> (especially since I've
>> rewired my caps lock key to control at the OS level using the Keyboard system
>> prefs) -- though <ESC> works so well for switching modes in Vim. :)
>
> The only thing that has made sense to me is :
>
>   Enter for accepting changes made in a box's text and exit that mode ;

Well, that's the simplest and possibly the best design.   It mates up the
most easy and obvious keypress with the most common case.

However, it's also the most invasive modification.  If anyone is accustomed to
being able to produce a newline with Enter while editing text into Message or
Comment boxes, they will have to change their habits.  Are there people who
would object to such an change?

>   Escape for cancelling those changes and exit that mode too ;

Good idea -- that's consistent with Mac GUI design for closing dialog boxes
without making changes.  I like it!

Is that also consistent with the traditional behavior of Escape under Windows
and X?

>   Shift-Enter to insert a literal newline in a box's text (currently
>   meaningless because they get replaced by Space by the loader/saver) ;

Newlines seem to be normalized to Spaces for Pd Objects, but that doesn't seem
to be the case for either Messages or Comments.

Using Shift-Enter for newlines doesn't seem like a very intuitive design to
me.  I suspect that a significant fraction of the people who want newlines
will never discover the magic key combo.  However, that may be a price worth
paying to optimize the common case.

>   Those shortcuts don't necessarily apply to the main Edit Mode... I don't
>   recall whether we bound Enter to « switch to text edition ». 

Your English is 100x better than my French, but I assume that when you wrote
"edition", you meant "editing"?  

>   Escape has no effect in that context, because there's no modal
>   dialogue-like thing to get out of.

So, if I understand correctly, you are suggesting that these key bindings
would only take effect while actively editing the text of an Object, Message,
or Comment.  If that's the case, +1 -- I agree.

Cheers,

Marvin Humphrey