XSIBlog

XSI keyboard processing accommodates sharing the keyboard keys in different contexts by searching for the target of a key in a priority list. The items at the top of the list are high priority, and if an item doesn”t handle that key the next one down the list is queried for it. It’’s fairly obvious, but it may be of help to know if something is not working as expected.

This is a system to handle keyboard shortcuts such as CTRL+S, and is not related to keyboard focus used when typing text in an edit control. If the system keyboard focus (and therefore the blinking “caret”) is inside an edit control, that control will get all the keyboard keys regardless of any keyboard mapping.

When you press a key, the system will search the keyboard Mapping Group List this way :

1. The Current Interactive Tool

“Interactive tools”, which describes anything that handles the mouse in a specific way in a view, has the highest priority. These include : Tweak Tool, Walk Tool, Weight Paint Tool, AM (Animation Mixer) Marker and Transition Tool. It’’s very frequent that there is no Current Interactive Tool that handle the keyboard. There can be only one Current Interactive Tool at any time, it can depend on where you mouse is.

2. The Current View

The view under the mouse cursor (no need to click on the view) is the second most important group. Only one view is the current view…

Includes : Animation Editor, Texture, Editor, Shelf, Browser, etc. Also includes some views that are embedded in a property page, such as the Animation Editor when used as a profile curve, the “RichText Edit” used for 3D Text, etc.

The 3D viewports, Main Command Panel and Module Toolbar do not handle any keys. All of their commands in the “XSI” group below.

3. The Custom Script Commands group

Any user-defined command is searched next

4. The “XSI” commands

Generally commands of XSI that do something in the viewport and that are available all the time.

5. The global commands

Undo/Redo Manager, Layout and view Shortcuts, and Global are the last ones to be searched.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 5th, 2005 at 7:02 pm and is filed under General, User Interface. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.