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History of AD Keyboard Shortcuts


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I know there's been a lot of talk about shortcut keys, and how and why AD doesn't use many of the standard Mac shortcut key combinations.  I think MattP alluded to a discussion on them in a reply to someone.

 
I was wondering whether that discussion was internal to the Affinity team at Serif, or was is here on the boards somewhere I haven't yet been able to find?  Specifically, I'd like to know the reasoning behind scrapping much of 20-plus years of established convention.
 
Please understand: this isn't a complaint.  At least, it isn't yet.  Oh, I'm firmly in the you'd-better-have-a-d*mn-good-reason-for-making-me-relearn-something-I've-known-how-to-do-for-years camp.  That having been said, the allusion I heard (something to do with ergonomics and productivity) certainly peaked my interest, and I'd like to hear the arguments for and against AD's current set of shortcuts.
 
I understand that this issue will be rendered (largely) moot by the upcoming Custom Keyboard Shortcuts feature.  That having been said, if there's a valid argument to be made in favour of the current shortcut assignments, I'd love to save myself the trouble of re-setting AD to use conventional keyboard shortcuts.
 
On that note, I think I'm going to post a suggestion in the Feature Request forum that the Custom Keyboard Shortcuts option include a method for sharing those shortcuts.
 
Anyway, thanks for reading, and thanks in advance for any good answers!
 
—Russ Johnson
Murfreesboro, Tenn.

—Russ Jonson

Still and video design, logos, branding, and more 

RussDoes.com

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The current short-cuts are a compromise between Mac standards, Adobe standards (which are often different), and the specific needs of our apps (which often have more powerful ways of doing things that need more keys to control). There is also an issue of consistency across tools. For example, Alt always toggles snapping, so it isn't usually available tor other purposes even if some other standard uses it. All of these are intertwined, so making a single change to one shortcut can create conflicts with others, requiring many others to be rethought.

 

The biggest issue is between Mac standards and Adobe ones. In several places we tried to follow Mac, but a lot of our users come from Adobe apps and really hurt if they have to relearn muscle memory.

 

See also the post by Ben in this thread for more on the ergonomics.

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