[Rwp] OSARA keymap

[Scott Chesworth]

Hi John,

Functions to import and export keymaps already exists in Reaper, so
that's good news for anyone who wants to maintain a separate map.

I see a few things about these common functions requiring more than
single keys that'd make usability clunky:

First, I find it hard to imagine how some of the current power users
would be able to work at the pace they've built up if they had to hold
down modifiers before some common functions and not others. You could
argue that they're power users, they can just maintain their own
mappings, but bigger picture, are we not trying to find something
agreeable to most to lessen the amount of questions that'd need to be
asked when someone is having a problem, and also pave the way for
newbies to become power users who can work at this speed in the
future?

Second, the concept of common functions being bound to single
unmodified keys, then bringing in the modifiers to carry out more
global commands such as to unmute all tracks or announce which tracks
are current muted throughout the project seems pretty elegant here,
can't really think why anyone would want to hold down three keys to
mute something when they could just hit one, and the three key combo
is bound to something that's related, but used less often throughout a
session.

Third, requiring a control surface to be able to work at a decent pace
just isn't a good thing fullstop, especially not in a DAW like Reaper
where the price and footprint is kept intentionally low. There are
fairly cheap single strip surfaces etc, but having owned a few, I
found them clunky and slow to use for anything beyond very specific
tasks, and unless OSARA is different, the amount of speech feedback
you get by default when using a surface is practically none. The
latter doesn't bother me really as I come from a Pro Tools background
where that's always been the case, but I've seen plenty of Sonar users
go goggle-eyed over how little the computer talks to Tools users, so I
don't think that'd be met well by most users.

FWIW, I'd grudgingly give up on the crusade for function keys being
involved if we moved Mute, Solo and Arm to M, S and A respectively,
because it'd be another parallel between the Reaper and Pro Tools
keymaps that'd make my life easier in the long run, but i'd bet losing
their instinctive muscle memory for markers and splitting items would
cause fits of rage in some of the more accomplished editors. IMHO, the
more parallels between DAWs the better, and with Pro Tools still being
something of an industry standard, that makes a lot of sense. Trouble
is, Tools is a long way away from being widely used by screen reader
users, so I doubt my opinion will be shared by most people.

Sorry to disagree over pretty much everything :)

Scott


On 2/23/15, John Schucker via RWP <rwp at bluegrasspals.com> wrote:
> I personally don't mind multiple key presses, and I'm pretty sure
> CakeTalking does this, for example. I also find function keys annoying,
> e.g. in GoldWave. They're a stretch for me to reach from the home row,
> so I just have to treat them as a separate row, and I usually end up
> counting and such. So I'm in favor of Jamie's keymap.
>
> Could we have a keymap import function, or some simple way to replace
> it? I mean, if we're just overwriting files, I don't see why Jamie can't
> have whatever keymap makes sense to him as a default. Then somebody else
> can maintain a map with function keys and such, similar to Reaccess I
> guess. If you want that, if it's such a problem for you that you can't
> use function keys, I'm guessing you'll know enough, or easily be able to
> learn, to overwrite the default Osara keymap. It sounds like all you
> should need to do is copy and paste a single file anyway, so it really
> shouldn't be that hard.
>
> But for what it's worth, I'd prefer non-function key mappings. I don't
> think pressing ctrl-shift-m, for instance, is all that much harder than
> pressing 'm' by itself, and certainly easier, for me at least, than
> figuring out what function key I need to try to find. I'd also think if
> people are that much in need of single keys, again, you could either
> import a map, remap them yourself, or get a control surface. I realize
> surfaces aren't cheap, even the Behringer is a couple hundred, but I
> imagine if you're arguing that you're doing so much serious work that
> ctrl-shift-m slows you down unnecessarily, you'd probably want some kind
> of surface anyway.
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