On Thu, 2007-09-27 at 12:00 -0400, Michael Ross wrote: > > > On 9/27/07, Hans Breuer <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > wrote: > > At least Esc would confuse me if it is the key to leave text > editing mode > without also reverting the last text edit. > > Because other programs have used Esc to abort things, I will often hit > it as one of several last resorts with programs I am just learning. > > Esc is very easy to find with the left hand. Shift+Esc could be a > useful alternative, but small hands than mine might find it > uncomfortable. Laptops are a different story. There are always > problems because there are different hands and different habits..
Agreed, Esc is for leaving what you're stuck inside. Both Emacs and vi agree on that one:) Not sure what program has text edit revert on it. > My early experiences with computing were with CAD programs. > Pre-Windows there was AutoCad (DOS) and a number of UNIX based > systems. Heavy users of CAD, which has a very strong mouse or stylus > use component like Dia, would quickly find that placing the left hand > on the keyboard and the right on the mouse and using as many left hand > keystroke shortcuts as possible was the most productive manner of > operating the programs. > > These programs had command line interfaces. In Autocad there was > something called AutoLisp that let you compose series of actions and > call them with a keystroke combo. The Unix programs often had > cascading menus that you could type the first letter of a command in > the active menu. You could memorize cryptic combinations to do > complex tasks and it was very fast. Cadkey numbered every menu option > and you could type in strings of numbers to run the various functions. > Windows killed that. > > Best of all was the mapkey function of ProEngineer. A text file with > simple syntax allowed you to compose very involved series of commands > with pauses for numeric or text input. Because of the command line > input you had to do nothing with the cursor to activate these. > Anytime the window was active, if you typed, it was looking for mapkey > macros to activate. We had some that were 700 lines of code for > automating harness drawing functions. You could record keystrokes ti > write the mapkeys very quickly. It was incredibly fast if you learned > to use it, but it was all lost in the migration to Windows where new > customers were convinced that Windows would be better. Interesting. I agree that we've lost a lot of the "power user" systems over the years, and I wouldn't mind seeing something like that in Dia at some point. > > So that would be my wish - to call macros with simple left handed key > combos. The easier it is to write or record those macros the better > of course. Anything to off load activity from the mouse hand > (actually I use trackballs because they are more ergonomic) is good > for productivity and for the health of the mouse hand. > > Is at all possible to compose macros in Dia, but I simply don't know > how to do it? I'm afraid not. Being a long-time Emacs user, I miss that, too. There's Python scripting, but that's it. Scripting != macros. -Lars _______________________________________________ Dia-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list FAQ at http://live.gnome.org/Dia/Faq Main page at http://live.gnome.org/Dia
