It's always been a bit of a kink in my workflows.

You want to quickly apply the last Preset, and sure enough, hitting the Enter/Return key after the dialog opens jumps to a preview of the last recorded preset. ve made for that specific dialog.

Hitting Enter/Return key twice does nothing currently in the dialog, so if the return button is hit again, is it possible to have it just commit the changes? This would dramatically help hotkey based workflow in GIMP.

Thanks again for all your wonderful work on GIMP!

-C

Which dialogs that have Presets don't use an OK button accessible using Alt-O ?

Not many, but there are clashes, for example Hue-Saturation Alt+O does not work at all.
Aside from that, Alt+O is a two-handed hotkey combo, and is much more difficult to use with a mouse in your other hand. I'd rather not have to take my hand off the mouse every time I want to apply the dialog I'm looking at.
It slows me down a lot, and it would be faster to just use the mouse and click the button.

-C

Kevin

________________________________________ From: gimp-developer-list on
behalf of C R
Sent: 18 May 2016 07:31
To: gimp-developer
Subject: [Gimp-developer] Can hitting Enter/Return twice apply changes made in popup dialogs?

It's always been a bit of a kink in my workflows.

You want to quickly apply the last Preset, and sure enough, hitting the Enter/Return key after the dialog opens jumps to a preview of the last recorded preset. ve made for that specific dialog.

Hitting Enter/Return key twice does nothing currently in the dialog, so if the return button is hit again, is it possible to have it just commit the changes? This would dramatically help hotkey based workflow in GIMP.

Thanks again for all your wonderful work on GIMP!

-C _______________________________________________ gimp-developer-list mailing list
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Wait, what? Oh, I mean the third enter. Sorry, you're right, you have to hit enter to confirm the option.

1st enter opens the combo box, 2nd enter confirms the selection. Third enter commits.

From any of value box (be it combo or otherwise), you should be able to hit Enter/Return to apply the changes of the dialog, after hitting enter to confirm the value.

Better?
-C

On Wed, May 18, 2016 at 4:39 PM, Michael Natterer wrote:

On Wed, 2016-05-18 at 07:31 +0100, C R wrote:

It's always been a bit of a kink in my workflows.

You want to quickly apply the last Preset, and sure enough, hitting the
Enter/Return key after the dialog opens jumps to a preview of the last
recorded preset. ve made for that specific dialog.

Hitting Enter/Return key twice does nothing currently in the dialog, so if
the return button is hit again, is it possible to have it just commit the
changes? This would dramatically help hotkey based workflow in GIMP.

You are essentially asking for:

1st enter opens combo box

2nd enter confirms entire dialog

Absoluteley not, this breaks the expected behavior of the combo box and would lead to total confusion.

An enter in an open combo box (in all open combo boxes in GTK+) simply confirms that combo box.

Regards, --Mitch

1. open combo (space)

2. confirm entry (enter)
3. confirm dialog (enter)

Is that really a good approach? I'm concerned that it's too easy to accidentally commit some change by using the same key. Would it be better to leave Enter alone, and have a global Ctrl+Enter or Shift+Enter to accept+dismiss any dialog box?

It's a convention that is used in most of the graphics (and other) software I've used over the years. It's the most intuitive way to handle it. If it's a problem, or an accident, it will only happen once before the user will see how it works.
Can always be undone ctrl+z, so it's not that big of a deal if a misfire occurs now and again.

-C

Chris

And yet hitting Enter/Return key to commit/save is standard here too, which is why there's a popup warning on overwrite in cases of overwriting a file.

-C

On Thu, May 19, 2016 at 5:37 PM, Liam R. E. Quin wrote:

On Thu, 2016-05-19 at 09:59 +0100, C R wrote:

[...]

Can always be undone ctrl+z,

This isn't true for Save As and Export dialogues, where enter will accept filename completion in the first instance. You can't undo overwriting a file on most file systems...

Liam

-- Liam R. E. Quin

In cases where you are unlikely to change every single option, it's still much faster to handle it exactly like originally stated, and is why other very popular graphics software applications use the convention. In workflow, it makes sense to focus the dialog on the next likely action, so if the user is filling out a form, focus would naturally be on the next blank field that needs to be filled in.

The reason for auto focusing to the history combo box is for speed on repeating the last used settings. It makes sense that the next focus should be the OK button for these dialogs. In which case the Enter key would function as requested, to press the OK button and commit changes.

The logic:

1. If you have chosen a history item from the combo box, you most-likely want to apply the changes immediately following, so the OK button is focused.

2. Hitting Enter/Return presses the button and completes the workflow for this result.

If it's desired, I can do some workflow comparisons to show the difference in various workflows with this "new" convention. :)

I believe most workflows will benefit from this change without the need to add more non-standard hotkeys to GIMP.

-C

It makes little sense to then have to change your hand position to apply the change with another hotkey, since we have already decided to focus it instead of the first item in the dialog, especially when the default when you press enter again is to do absolutely nothing. Also two shift keys are not always present, and tab works fine to move focus, so there's not much point in having Enter/Return focus the next box, instead of applying the change, which is intuitive. After all, enter commits the value, so it makes sense enter again will commit the dialog. On 20 May 2016 1:49 am, "Liam R. E. Quin" wrote:

On Thu, 2016-05-19 at 19:03 +0100, C R wrote:

And yet hitting Enter/Return key to commit/save is standard here too, which
is why there's a popup warning on overwrite in cases of overwriting a file.

Yes. (sorry for not being clear)

Whether enter commits the action in those cases depends on the focus and autocomplete status, unfortunately.

I'd favour something like shift-enter doing the default action - still one hand and not easily done accidentally.

I am not sure why Enter doesn't move from one text field to the next in e.g. the Rotate dialogue - tab is needed instead. The Sun and AT&T UI research led to the idea of pressing enter focussing each entry in turn until you got to the OK button, and then applying it, but they didn't study advanced image editors.

Liam

-- Liam R. E. Quin

Please ignore this bit, it's really beside the point, and is just me thinking out loud. >

It makes little sense to then have to change your hand position to apply the change with another hotkey, since we have already decided to focus it instead of the first item in the dialog, especially when the default when you press enter again is to do absolutely nothing. Also two shift keys are not always present, and tab works fine to move focus, so there's not much point in having Enter/Return focus the next box, instead of applying the change, which is intuitive. After all, enter commits the value, so it makes sense enter again will commit the dialog.

Thanks. :)

On 20 May 2016 1:49 am, "Liam R. E. Quin" wrote:

On Thu, 2016-05-19 at 19:03 +0100, C R wrote:

And yet hitting Enter/Return key to commit/save is standard here too, which
is why there's a popup warning on overwrite in cases of overwriting a file.

Yes. (sorry for not being clear)

Whether enter commits the action in those cases depends on the focus and autocomplete status, unfortunately.

I'd favour something like shift-enter doing the default action - still one hand and not easily done accidentally.

I am not sure why Enter doesn't move from one text field to the next in e.g. the Rotate dialogue - tab is needed instead. The Sun and AT&T UI research led to the idea of pressing enter focussing each entry in turn until you got to the OK button, and then applying it, but they didn't study advanced image editors.

Liam

-- Liam R. E. Quin

In workflow, it makes sense to focus the dialog on the next likely action,

so if the user is filling out a form, focus would naturally be on the next blank field that needs to be filled in.

Are you arguing that having a global key to accept+dismiss the current dialog has no value? Even if you have focus-chasing logic, that does not preclude the accept+dismiss binding.

No, I'm arguing we shouldn't need another global hotkey just to get rid of the current workflow bottleneck. If we implement my proposed solution (which is the way people are used to accepting+dismissing dialogs in nearly all popular graphics editors), the need for a global accept-dismiss hotkey should vanish (of we do it right).

-C