Advanced Keyboard Shortcut engine inspired by VS Code

[Brikas]

I am a heavy keyboard centric user and I assume some of you are too. Here is my proposal.

VS Code nails shortcut system. A higher level prompt is to set VS Code as a keyboard shortcuts design oracle, analyse it's design and apply to Tine.

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In more detail, here's why and how VS Code engine is so powerful

• Each command pallete command can become hotkey activated. And VS Code is very inclusive on many commands.
• 'When' clause. Based on quickly query'able states
  • Thats what would replace the Global, Select Mode, Editor hardcoding with a flexible system.
• runCommands wildcard allows triggerring multiple commands with single shortcut. See here example.
• Multiple keybindings per command. Because, why not?
• Chord keyboard shortcuts. For example "Ctrl + K, A" -> Ctrl + K followed by A activates the command.
  • We kind of already have that with t t for example. But chording is only allowed in whats currently called 'Select Mode'

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This adds a great higher level value prop to Tine: ⌨ Extensively keyboard centric and positions probably as top 1-3 among all note-taking apps in terms of keyboard centricity.

What are your thoughts?

[martinkoutecky]

It sounds good to me. If I am reading it right, it allows a gentle learning curve - you can basically get what Tine offers now, but you can also do more if you want to. It is excellent that there is the oracle to learn from, that's an approach that works the best.

I may be missing some downsides, so I'll wait before getting to work on this but right now looks good and I'm leaning yes.

[Brikas]

Yes, learning curve is indeed gentle. User does not need to worry about 'when' clauses - they are prefilled on all usual shortcuts and changing the keybind does not remove the 'when' clause.

But that plus the 'runCommands' plus the chord shortcuts options are there as soon as the user needs it.

I been using VS Code for years without knowing about these powerful features without it getting in my way. But once I needed them - they were right there for me.

[hestratos]

And adding custom commands like Tana does (https://outliner.tana.inc/learn/features/command-nodes) will make this feature awesome. For example: assign a keyword shortcut to a custom command that sets up some properties and add a tag to a block.
It’s like applying a template but in a more powerful way.

[Brikas]

That's cool!

[Dieterbe]

I've been following this course - https://logseqmastery.com/ - and the author recommends setting up keyword expanders.
So for example he'll typ "jjib" or "jjip" to easily let him input information about books and pdfs respectively. the special strings are recognized by his text expander software and replaced by templates that he has predefined. This sounds really cool, but i wouldn't want this to happen inside other applications, so i think this would be like the custom commands you're talking about here, right?

[Dieterbe]

Sounds similar to neovim although neovim doesn't have the "when" concept as a first class primitive.
What I also like in neovim (and maybe it's the same in vs code) is that for sequence based shortcuts it shows a popup with all available shortcuts. Super useful if you don't remember the exact key sequence.

[Brikas]

A popup/overlay for sequence based shortcuts with available shortcuts sounds great