Re: Patch for Delete key behavior (for dia-0.96.1)

[Lars Clausen <lars raeder dk>]

On Thu, 2007-09-27 at 12:00 -0400, Michael Ross wrote:
> On 9/27/07, Hans Breuer <hans breuer org > 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