What's with the knife tool??

p_vertex_ · Post by **p_vertex_** » Thu Dec 04, 2003 8:48 pm

Since my bug report was deleted, I never did get to understand why someone thought it was more intuitive or efficient to have to "confirm" a cut with the knife tool by hitting the enter key. I'd like to request that the original functionality be returned, where the left-mouse button was used to draw the line, and the right mouse button was used initiate the cut. It makes far more sense to me, and it doesn't require that I remove my hand from the mouse in order to use it.

theeth · Post by **theeth** » Fri Dec 05, 2003 12:51 am

Right mouse is used to cancel and action for pretty much everything in
Blender. Doing an exception for the knife tool is counter intuitive and wrong by any UI standard.

Martin

p_vertex_ · Post by **p_vertex_** » Fri Dec 05, 2003 1:00 am

OK, a fair comment, insofar as blender is concerned. Consistency is important.

Within the bigger picture, however, most applications use escape, a command-key combo (on the mac), or control-C. Unless the use of the right-mouse button to cancel an action is common in other 3D apps, blender, as a whole, is rather inconsistent in this regard.

matt_e · Post by **matt_e** » Fri Dec 05, 2003 1:52 am

And if you'd like to make a list of ways in which Blender is inconsistent with other 3D apps, you'll be here all day

The most important thing for now is that it's internally consistent, so that you don't have to stop and think every time you perform an action "dammit, what do I have to press this time again??", rather it just comes naturally.

IoN_PuLse · Post by **IoN_PuLse** » Fri Dec 05, 2003 4:25 am

Yeah I LOVE to reach over and hit the ESC key every time I want to cancel what I'm currently doing. SWEET.

I like to think that Blender is it's own little world, with it's own rules and keys, because it's available for so many platforms making it exactly like one of them would be unfair, and making every version like every platform is just baaad, plus Blender's UI is better than all of them IMHO. I'd love to have an OS with Blender's UI and key shortcuts.
Shift-Backspace clears the current textbox! I mean that's just genius, I don't know why MS hasn't gobbled that up yet.

ilac · Post by **ilac** » Sat Dec 06, 2003 2:29 pm

IoN_PuLse wrote: Shift-Backspace clears the current textbox! I mean that's just genius, I don't know why MS hasn't gobbled that up yet.

Well, CTRL-backspace knocks off a word at a time in windows which isn't bad!

Karim · Post by **Karim** » Sat Dec 06, 2003 7:26 pm

Shift-Backspace clears the current textbox! I mean that's just genius, I don't know why MS hasn't gobbled that up yet.

And yet industry-wide standards like Home & End, Shift-highlighting, and Click-drag highlighting of text remain un-implemented. These behaviors span all major OSs & interfaces.

I can understand choosing to innovate and come up with new ways of doing things, but why does Blender have to break so many standards? Things should not be different, just to be different.

I NEVER would have figured out that you hit ENTER to confirm the Knife tool... that's crazy. It even breaks Blender's standards. I've tried using that feature a number of times, and gave up because I couldn't get it to work. If I hadn't read this post...

How about follow the industry standard for Left-click chaining operations and have a Double-Click confirm the action? Or one could even pop-up a Confirm/Cancel dialog when the Knife tool is activated.

theeth · Post by **theeth** » Sat Dec 06, 2003 7:46 pm

Karim wrote: And yet industry-wide standards like Home & End, Shift-highlighting, and Click-drag highlighting of text remain un-implemented.

Someone made a patch for Home and End, it's being evaluated before integration. Was already implemented for Text buttons through Shift-Left/Right.
As for Click-drag to highlight, it's already there for the text editor. It's not there in text buttons since highlighting there would mean nothing (no copy/paste)

I NEVER would have figured out that you hit ENTER to confirm the Knife tool... that's crazy. It even breaks Blender's standards.

errr, no, it doesn't break any Blender standard. The ENTER key is used EVERYWHERE to confirm actions. The only thing that is not standard with the knife tool is that left click is used to draw freehand or poly lines.

How about follow the industry standard for Left-click chaining operations and have a Double-Click confirm the action?

Double click was suggested, but it's not as easy as it seems.

Martin

Mel_Q · Post by **Mel_Q** » Sun Dec 07, 2003 5:41 pm

theeth wrote:Right mouse is used to cancel and action for pretty much everything in
Blender. Doing an exception for the knife tool is counter intuitive and wrong by any UI standard.

Martin

Good point, theeth. A lot of us, myself included, already use the right mouse button to cancel a transform. Standard or not- we're already used to using it. Guys like me have to stop and remember that just because we're used to doing something doesn't men it's intuitive to many. As for the knife tool- I really didn't have a problem with it (until I used the tuhopuu version- amazing what leaving the vertices on can do

).
The thing that gets me nutty is the move -> layer command. If I had a dollar for everytime I didn't press enter after "M -> 2"....
That's just me though- If you really want to see me lose it, get someone to make my windoze desktop 'single-click'. It's more intuitive, I guess, but I can't get used to it.