Editor Shortcuts... #3162
Replies: 8 comments 7 replies
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Just a heads up that you used The manual section about keyboard shortcuts mentions that they are designed to work the same on all the supported platforms, e.g. the Mac-PC thingy with the At some point it also mentions that the shortcuts aim to provide an alternative to reaching for the arrow keys. But i can definitely agree with you on the proposed additions. Especially the lack of a search function has tripped me up very quick. |
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"designed to work the same on all the supported platforms" whatever that means. And why would anyone want that? Most platforms have their default set of shortcuts that the users are used to. But they are different from other platforms. So it would make sense to provide the set of shortcuts that fit the platform, so the users can do what they are used to. Instead everyone has to learn Mac commands because someone is using a Mac. And compared to Linux and Windows, where the shortcuts are pretty similar, Mac is the oddball here. |
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A command to stop the programming from running does allready exists I agree that the For me as windows user it was new for using the alt key to trigger commands, since I was used to the Ctrl, but the same goes for mac users with the CMD key. Since the main purpose of this tool is to educate people and the main users are teachers. It makes sense to make a generic shortcut key the Alt in this case for all platforms. This way a teacher does not have to re-explain why Ctrl+C is not working on mac over and over again. But adding more short cuts can be a great feature, to improve the usability. Especially for live coding sessions. |
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I have just discovered Sonic Pi today and had a quick jam session. I have noticed that as someone using a code editor every day, I was expecting many of these shortcuts to work. To the ones listed at the top of the thread I would add the ability to tweak numeric values (as you may know from browser dev tools) with keyboard. Alt+Up/Down – change by ±0.1, Up/Down – change by 1, Shift+Up/Down – change by ±10. For live jam sessions this would make the workflow of tweaking numerical params so much easier, in my opinion. Edit: I have realized that the edit up or down w/o any modifier key could cause some strange issues as the params are just code (moving up in the code, cursor running into a number, getting stuck modifying it, panic 😅). |
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Not so frequent user here: any time I try learn music with Sonic Pi, I get stuck at learning the interface of the editor. So many things with this editor are non-standard solutions, so I have to learn the editor first before I can learn the music and this is very demotivating. Plus: as a user with a German keyboard layout I can't even use some of the most needed shortcuts like commenting out lines. So I tried it with an American layout (on a German keyboard!) for a bit, but this made it way worse because it's another level of complexity that pushes me away from actually learning music. Why can't we just have configurable shortcuts like any other editor? As an advanced features we could even do templates/configs that can be created by everyone and shared with other users. Might even be a fun community activity that brings people together. |
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It will be great if all the vim shortcut can be integrated into the sonic pi editor. |
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@mrkskwsnck I love the reference 😄 Usually vim keybindings (in any editor) would be a setting or a plugin. Anyway! @loijilai have you looked at others' attempts of running sonic pi in a different editor than the native one? There is even a Vim plugin for it. BTW:
They currently don't on Windows. They use ALT as the mod key, which feels very counterintuitive. |
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I understand that sonic pi built-in editor is designed to lower the barrier of entry so that everyone can start making music easily . Maybe a more suitable approach is like @jhaagmans said. A keybinding option in the setting menu and can be turned on or off to suit personal preference. I’ve seen some IDE and web-based text editing environments like leetcode and overleaf provide this feature. Yeah I’m currently testing out others solutions, thank for your suggestions !😃 |
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Yes, thats the idea. But the current approach lowers the barrier of entry only for Mac users with a US keyboard, which is a very limited set of users. For everyone else it significantly raises the barrier. I'm not sure if the devs are aware of this... |
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The keyboard layout issue is also still a valid point, I agree. I hate that Apple by default sells their stuff with ANSI keyboards in the Netherlands (it's the only manufacturer I'm aware of that doesn't default to US International in NL). Do mind that the modkey issue is more of an issue for people who have programming experience. Like @loijilai mentioned, this project has a strong bias towards people (children) without programming experience who don't have this muscle memory in place like some of us do. |
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I understand the priorities. But even children will become professional pretty quickly and then - like all professionals - want to be more efficient with the editor (and tooling in general) to be able to focus on the music. And not all professionals (esp. children!) can afford a MacBook just to be productive. And even if you have one, what is it worth if it's not an US layout? I'm talking about the aspect of making music accessible. This editor is the opposite of accessibility, because I feel like I'm wasting more time on the editor itself than what I'm doing inside of it. Children might be a bit more forgiving because they might not be used to better user interfaces. But is this what we want to teach them: a dull tool might eventually get your stuff done as well, so don't bother sharpening it? |
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Agreed that an overhaul of the shortcuts would be desirable - especially with a focus on customisation. However, it's not a high priority for me at this present moment. If someone has the motivation to work on it (it would involve quite a bit of C++/Qt unpicking and reworking) I'd love to consider pull requests or to discuss early prototypes. |
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A while ago I looked into this and made a list of the shortcuts I could find within Sonic Pi. Some of them are a bit unintuitive to those who are used to using common shortcuts from other editors, so it would definitely be good to allow users to change them. |
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Hi https://github.com/sonic-pi-net/sonic-pi/blob/dev/app/gui/qt/mainwindow.cpp#L535 I'd be happy to digest and understand the code so that we can look at making changes, creating custom keymaps, etc |
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In line with #955 (among other) it might be good practice to support other common (coding) shortcuts, like:
Ctrl-Spaceto trigger code-completionCmd-fto trigger a text-searchCmd-Wto close the windowCmd-,to show settingsCmd-.to stop runningAlt-[Up/Down]to move one or multiple lines up downCmd-#rather thanCmd-/Cmd-[os]to load / saveCmd-nto make a new songAlt-Clickto open docs of the clicked functionCmd-Clickto jump to the definition of the clicked variableMost of these are universal, however, for reference I used VS Code (the most used IDE in 2019 according to StackOverflow)
Also, there are some questionable shortcuts, where I'm not sure why anyone would need them, like:
M-[ul]- Convert next word (or selection) to upper/lower caseC-[pnfb]- Move curser (same as ^,v,<,>)C-[hd]- Delete forwards / backwards (same asDel,Ctrl-Del/Fn-Del)S-M-[ud]- Move up / down 10 linesSo what I'm basically trying to say is that the shortcuts as they are right now are quite unintuitive and make it hard to work fast and productive at least in my exp.
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